Deserted....

It's been such an amazing trek. As I've said before, I've been so very fortunate to work with fantastic, creative and inspiring photographers here in the LA area. In some ways, Flickr has been good to me. With each photographer, I guess that they like working with me, so they tend to tell their friends. I'm not sure exactly what they say, but I hope that it's all good. ;)

So I met Kronos, a Denver-based photographer, through another photographer friend. There was a certain quality to his work that I was just drawn to, a je ne sais quoi. Well, actually I do know what it was - his work is dark, surreal, erotic, and definitely something that I wanted for my portfolio. We had been teasing each other on Model Mayhem for a while, saying if either of us were in the other's city, we'd hook up. Now a lot of times, this is just bullshit. But sure enough, I get an email from him last week saying that he's coming to LA - and wants to shoot me. Of course, I jump to the occasion. So we start texting, talking, etc., leading up to the shoot.

Finally this past Sunday, we meet. And we get to know each other over the course of the day - and when I say "day", I really mean it - as he picked me up at 9am, and didn't drop me off until 12 midnight. Certainly my longest shoot to date. And probably will be for a while.... Especially since we spent most of the day fighting the post-Thanksgiving traffic. :(

We drive out to the desert, through Palm Springs, on our way to shoot at deserted locations around the Salton Sea and Joshua Tree. We get there; it took about 3 hours, stopping for coffee and gas along the way. And because of my luck, his camera doesn't work. Now, for those that know me, that have shot me, I like to take my clothes off. Sometimes with an audience. And I was totally itching to get nekkid. ;)

But a photographer without a camera is a very frustrated, tortured soul. And this one, since he's already a tortured soul, was certainly no exception. Kronos spent the next couple of hours, trying to make the camera work, calling anyone who's ever heard of an "Error 99" on a Canon camera; I spent time draining the battery on my iPhone, surfing the net looking for anything that would help. To no use. Only a few shots were taken out there, despite our finding absolutely perfect places to shoot - a decaying former recreation building (which at this point is just a place for the birds to shit all over), an abandoned silo, and even a rocket - or an ICBM, as I called it. ;)

We leave to head up to Joshua Tree, to the motel that Gram Parsons died at. Where, supposedly, his ghost roams. We didn't see the ghost, but there were some strange occurrences, flashes of light, sounds off in the distance, to feed the fire. Along the way there, we stop and buy a new camera. Almost did the shoot with cell phone cameras. They've come a long way, but still not the same as a DSLR. So, armed with a Smurfy-blue point and shoot camera, we finally made it to Joshua Tree, checked into the room, charged up the camera, and got busy. Now, if any of you have checked out the work of Velvet Scars, the name he goes by for his work, you'll know the type of work that he produces - it's certainly not Vargas-style pin-ups! I was tied to a chair, wearing a gas mask and little white cotton panties, holding in my hands a crucifix-shaped dildo. Later, wearing the same cotton panties and gas mask, covered in blood in the shower. Sort a bit of a pre-teen menstruation accident gone wild, with a bit of bio-chemical warfare mixed in. Trippy.

Because of the painting process that Kronos uses, I think that it's going to be a while before you see any of the work that we produced, but once I do have something, I will share it with you all. This way, you'll have to come back! And come back often.... :)