Anastasia Pt. 3

I really haven't worked with that many "professionals" in my short lived career shooting what I want to shoot and doing things the right way, and the precious few that I have had the opportunity to work with have been more random luck than anything else. I have been approached by some amazing models, but usually my schedule or finances don't line up with the opportunity I am presented with. C'est la vie. This particularly extraordinary soul found me back in early 2012, when everything happened to line up beautifully.

Little things like that have made my life what it is. Those are the things I have been trying to define; those are the things that I've just let be. The summer after shooting her I ended up catching her and Rebecca Lawrence on their tour (I booked her in January, LA, and September, desert. Figure that one out). After that, after really feeling like she had become a friend, I basically disappeared. Shortly thereafter I was almost beaten to death, and by the dawning of 2013 I had been fired and evicted, well on my way to solitude and banishment to the desert.

When she announced that she was on her last tour of the States as a full time model I knew, after everything that was my life, that I needed to reconnect with her somehow, but my work schedule didn't line up with her dates, again. After talking with her a little about my only day off during her time in Southern California, she serendipitously asked me for a ride to San Diego from LA on a day when I could.

I got her to her shoot an hour late, because driving in LA fucking sucks, but everything turned out beautiful. My girl has shown some unexpected interest in "modeling," and I knew Ana was more interested in shooting, so I presented an oppornituy for her to shoot my girls, plural. While she was at her booked shoot in SD, I scouted out a beach that has personal history, and my girls drove down from my little mountain town to meet us. Everything strangely worked. I don't even know how to describe it.

We didn't have much sun, so I encouraged Ana to use it to shoot my girls, while my girl encouraged me to shoot Ana...

I wish we had more time, obviously, and I can only hope that Anastasia captured more beautiful things to add to her portfolio, on her beautiful journey. In the meantime, everything keeps moving forward, and I am grateful for every single, beautiful, little moment, with my girl, and my family, and this strange little circle of amazing friends.