Third time's the charm w/ Stephany!

What’s up, Hive? It’s nearly 1:00a.m. on a Friday night. I’ve had a difficult time posting regularly. Honestly, my life is in shambles at the moment and has been for a few months. The mental and emotional stress has been unbearable so I’ve been trying to triage how to meet the family’s [and my own] basic needs. For the last month, it’s been hard but a few days ago, I took steps to insulate myself from what was causing me the most pressure. I deactivated my Instagram account; something I’ve never done. It’s helped me focus. @guthrie and I remodeled and painted his room and today I was able to edit for hours at @caffetto.

)

The fruit of that editing session is what I want to share tonight. In April of this year, I went to Los Angeles and Las Vegas with shoots in both cities. One client was a returning friend that I’ve shot with on two other occasions. Her name is Stephany and I first met her during a modeling event in Vegas in 2022. I was the guest photographer and once she was shoot ready, we only had 30 minutes to collaborate. Our chemistry was great and the images from that afternoon were some of my favorite of the year. We shot again at my home in Minneapolis four months later when she flew in.

This was now our third shoot together and we were able to skip the warm up to making magic. She hired one of my favorite hair and make-up artists in LA and we met at the Gable’s estate in Pasadena. I knew there was no way we could fail. We moved throughout the house capturing dark pinup photos with sophisticated lighting that mixed warm incandescent dietetic light with cool window light in several of the guest bedrooms. Stephany was familiar by now with my style and directing and within two hours, we’d shot almost 900 images.

This was the second time I’ve passed through the shoot marking my favorites for the upcoming editing sessions. They’re easily my favorite of everything we’ve shot since the spring of last year. I’m so grateful to meet down to earth, dedicated models like Stephany. We’re already talking about our next shoot together, possibly in New York City if we can coordinate. For now, I need to get to sleep. @guthrie has friends coming over tomorrow to show off his new room and I know I’ll be woken up early. Have a great night and for more photography and the stories behind the work, follow me here.