Honoring our Veterans. Thank you for your sacrifice and service.



All images courtesy Samuel Nesbitt

Rachel Anne Taylor was recently intoduced to us while shooting on location for Star High Beauty. She is a student in the Napa Valley. Would you believe Rachel is half Puerto Rican?!

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MUAH: Star High Beauty

Model Mayhem provided an avenue for the ladies of Star High Beauty to contact Shane seeking images for their web site in-progress. The concept: Barber Shop Pinup. Excited to join the project, we showed up in just two days’ notice. I have been wanting to participate in a barber shop scene, but mostly I enjoy that somebody else put in the effort to dream up a concept and organize the shoot. I could grow accustomed to this. What a fun day!

This is the first of a series of images, more to come from this day!

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MUAH: Star High Beauty
Model: Rachel Anne Taylor
Design concept: Star High Beauty
Wardrobe: Mine, by Bernie Dexter

Shane and I recently created Model Mayhem accounts, and experienced our first successful contact with a local photographer, Sam Nesbitt. This project excited me from the start with his initial statements of intentions for a shoot with his father’s World War Two Army Air Corps uniform. We headed to the hills, and I reveled to participate for the first time in a shoot that was not my brain child nor my efforts to tell a story. This was Sam‘s scene and concept, and all I had to do is show up and pose, a fun change in pace right when I was feeling discouraged that personal budget cuts were going to shave off the amount of work we are able to produce for this blog. Meeting Sam is a brilliant new adventure on this journey, and I look forward to broadening my scope as we work with this fellow Creative Mind and Engineer. Collaboration is genius!

I did bring along three of my own props to add to the scene: a borrowed M1 Garand authentic to the era of the uniform, an over coat also authentic to the era, though belonging to a WAAC, and a real WWII helmet I picked up at the Sacramento Antique Faire months ago.

All images courtesy Samuel Nesbitt
Hair by Danyelle “The Hair Maverick” Johnson

So the Starks say, Winter is coming, and I could not be in more agreement. This is the first of three lovely jackets I found at the Folsom Antique Faire, owned by the same petite Asian lady as I have acquired many pieces. She had TASTE. Notice the 1/2 length sleeves, popular in the 1950s. I am also wearing an authentic vintage 1950s blouse acquired at Racks Boutique in Midtown Sacramento, and reproduction high-wasted jeans by Rock Steady. The watch was Gigi’s and the shoes were purchased second-hand from a Dancer friend. Love them.

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MUAH: Danyelle “The Hair Maverick” Johnson

Shane and I enjoy Blues Fusion dancing weekly, and recently spent an entire weekend at a Justin Riley workshop. Icing on the cake at the end of it all: a social dance involving costumes! I love dress up: Vampire and his Prey. What do I love about Blues Fusion? Enjoying a beautiful, at times exciting and surprising conversation without a spoken word. Three minutes in time, and together a song is interpreted in kinisthetic motion. Something about that is satisfying, and yet addicting. No dance is ever the same, for in no given moment are two people ever the same. To dance well demands utter presence. Show up, spend some time with yourself, and walk away with healing or a deeper knowing. Whoever said. “life is beautiful” danced to music.

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MUA: Danyelle “The Hair Maverick” Johnson

Choosing to love is choosing exposure to pain. Pain of separation may come in the form of death, but often it arrives by a choosing to leave by one party or the other. To some relationships, the pain of being together is greater than the pain of being apart in which case a “good riddance” stance may develop. For others, there’s a kind of love that does not leave the soul. It resides there, in the mind, will, and emotion, ready to come surging up at the hearing of a song, a poem, or some story told by another. That love may be stirred by a smell, a taste, a situation, a place, or otherwise inanimate objects. Such memory triggers are often dealt with and worked through by desensitization ’till days may again be embraced without constant reminders of loss. Conscious memories and their triggers may be massaged to neutral, yet nevertheless and perhaps most often, that love surges up in the still of night, when the mind most relaxes. Awake from that dream, with for a moment difficulty sorting reality. The object of your affections may be separated from you by death, but not always. Lost relationships hurt with equal force, broken bonds cut into the soul with similar pains.

Push down and otherwise distract to get through the moments, but at the end of those moments and even during them, a grieving process is reigning. Life is full of loss: relationship, role, income, physical ability. Learn to grieve well that you may live well.

*Side note: some of us develop emotional attachment to vehicles. Bond with them during enjoyable times shared with loved ones, or by spending hours working on them to create a desired outcome. Part with said vehicle, and spot it cruising around town only to have a sense of ownership or longing for what was shared in that vessel. Perhaps this is just an American thing. Most folks who have owned a special vehicle may relate? They can be as a family member, yes?

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MUAH: Danyelle “The Hair Maverick” Johnson
Model: Matt Martin

More images from this series!

Cabaret Act 1

Cabaret Act 2

Cabaret Act 3

Cabaret Act 4

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Location: Firehouse 5
Model and Co-Creator: David “Gravy” Castillo
MUAH: Self

Cool Patch Pumpkins is our standing favorite patch to visit each Fall. We collect beautiful pumpkins and gourds for decorating September through November. A day or more on the farm is a sweet treat for the kids as well as myself. Special to visit where food and living stuff grows, and to support local farmers. We go at least twice each season.

This was the first year we entered the Guinness Book of World Records 60-acres corn maze. Two to Three hours to trample through nine and ten foot tall corn stalks. What a maze it was. Mind boggling in the dark as it were, and our team was fortunate to have Shane take the lead and find our way on the map. If you’re local, I encourage you to check out the experience sometime, guaranteed to be unique.

Excuse the photo quality, as these were taken with a little Sony while our camera was in the shop for repairs from damage at the “Waterfall” shoot.

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This scene was originally designed to tell a story of a date, or rather of a couple in love. During the shoot I knew we couldn’t pull off more emotion beyond a first date impression, so instead of presenting “young love” or “new love” this is just what it is, two people enjoying a sweet ride. This shoot was meant to lay the foundation for an upcoming story, so keep your eyes peeled!

Car info…Matt found this 1955 Hudson Wasp in a ditch, or rather did someone in his community. He at first came to look at the car under the impression it was a different year. Not as sexy a year as what he wanted, but the body was so straight, he decided to take it.

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MUAH: Danyelle “The Hair Maverick” Johnson
Model: Matt Martin