So, I guess is deserve a spanking. I have had three photo shoots since the last time I posted, but no blogging. Sometimes life (Burning Man) gets in the way, but I am back and I will try to share some insights on each shoot.
The “Make Mistakes” crew held the August full moon party, up Left Hand Canyon, just above Boulder, CO. The party was about an hour and a half drive from my house in Denver and turned out to be quite the debacle of a night. I arrived to a dark disorienting scene of tents, people, bonfires, and loud house music scattered though a shadowy aspen grove. Winding through the whole area was a small, shallow stream. I had been really sick all week and was finally starting to feel better, so I thought going out for a few hours would be harmless.
I rolled my camera bag, the quarter mile from my car, down the pavement to the entrance and stashed it under a tree. My initial explorations led me down a well-worn footpath that followed the edge of the stream away from the party. Moonlight was filtering through the Aspens and pooling on the forest floor in a way that made my eyes jump and have a hard time adjusting to the darkness. I felt dizzy and light headed. Soon, I had wandered far enough to no longer hear the music, and was mostly alone except for the occasional explorative partier like myself. The area was strangely un-deserted and had some ax murderer hunting cabins and a 60’s geodesic dome house, complete with barking dog. I felt all the hairs on my neck stand on end as I passed.
Eventually, I heard the sound of a small waterfall, and knew I had found the place for which I was looking. Earlier that week, I had seen the proof sheet of new work my collaborator Aloyse Blair had just created in the Adirondacks. She was naked in a waterfall, and had done some long exposure stuff with her pinhole camera. I returned to the party, retrieved my equipment, and quickly found myself laying naked in a freezing mountain stream on a cool summer night. The spot was shaded from the moon so I had to use some alternative light sources. The flashlights I had kept flickering and slowly fading, so it was hard to get an accurate light reading. Some of the images were ruined because the light completely went out during the shot. After a few tries, I decided to put an orange filter on one of the lights just to add softness to the image.
Once I was thoroughly freezing, and could not take the cold any longer, I dressed in green and headed off to do some pure moon light shots. I found a small meadow further up and created the forest nymph series. These images were pretty much exactly what I know how to do, so they were easy to create once I decided how I wanted them to look.
After I finished shooting, I felt clear and fresh. All of the disorientation had vanished, and I was light and focused. I found some friends and went to dance. Soon I was hot enough to take off my jacket and boogie down. A few minutes later I looked over to see that my jacket had vanished. My car keys were in the pocket. I spent the rest of the night futilely searching in the dark for a black jacket. I was flashing everyone who walked by, hoping someone had accidentally borrowed my nice North Face. My night of a few hours ended with the sunrise. As it grew light, I sat down in a fancy camping chair at the entrance to scope out the patrons as they left, hoping for a glimpse of my coat. After a little while, I started to fidget with stuff in the built in cup holders. I looked down and there were my car keys and my glasses. Only in Boulder can you go to a full moon party and get your jacket stolen, but the thief is kind enough to leave you your keys and glasses behind. Needless to say, I got sick again.
