Tax Day

“ The camera just helps you show other people what you see.” Greg Iles in Dead Sleep






The best tax day ever, a lovely nude model, great conversation and a home made meal to end on. Then because I shoot film I had a week of waiting, hoping the film wasn’t too out of date, that the processing would be right. Nothing short of birth could be as difficult as waiting to get that film back in my hot little hands. Now for the time I live for, the time to let my work sink in... to study every little frame and find the treasures. I can breath again The time before digital wasn’t easy, terror was a day in day out part of the job. Certainly there was polaroid to ease that terror, but until that film came back from the lab you were on tender hooks. Once you could see the contacts, once you could actually see the film to know it was alright life just wasn’t the same. Film came in different flavors too, grain you had to plan for and it was on every frame. There was a certain level of skill involved, you couldn’t “fix” that in Photoshop.

I hadn’t picked up a camera in over a year and I was plenty rusty. I hate to admit it but I had trouble know exactly how my cameras worked, which button to push in what order to get the damn thing to rewind. Then there was the lovely young woman semi-nude or nude before me waiting. Honesty is the best policy, I told her a story about the first time I shot a model. She was one of the cool girls in high-school, very blonde, very pretty and impossible beyond me. I got so nervous I almost dropped the screw in lens I had in my hand. I told her how I was thinking, considering the best lens to use with her. The model I had before me laughed, I shared a secret that somehow made us both human with all the failing of humans, made what we were trying to accomplish more real. We could relate to one another, trust one another. Made the fact that one of us was nude so much more comfortable in mind and sprit.







I love working with nude models, of getting those arms and legs just so, the get the look I want with the feel I want, to be able to share with the viewer how I
see this person before me... what I have discovered in her. I ask a lot of my model’s, I ask for there trust to get the image I see in my mind. I ask for the latitude
to try something so very personal to see how it might look, how an idea I have might translate to film. It’s a bond we share... it’s a trust that she is allowing me and my vision. All of my models are lovely young women, my age give me a different perspective on age. My most recent models are in the thirties, a few years ago the average age was early twenties. I like this age, more mature, more comfortable in their skin and they know something about life.

Then after we share a meal together, something I’ve made especially for her, time to decompress, to get back to the every day world. This young lady and I have shared something special, we’ve shared a vision... ideas that we both bring to the shoot. Is it something to change the world... probably not, but just the act of creating something that didn’t exist before feels so good.

Model: Vada