Tonight's dark pinup shoot w/ Reality House star, Emily!

This may be one of the fastest camera, to card, to Hive posts I’ve ever done! I’m sitting on top of a mountain in Topanga Canyon, CA. I have over a dozen shoots booked on this 10 day trip through southern California and Vegas and tonight’s was one of the most anticipated. Emily and I have been Instagram friends for years and with tons of mutual friends, we’ve always wanted to shoot together. This will most likely be one of my last trips to LA for a while and we finally set a date to make it happen. This was that day. I’m still coming down from the high, I think, but I wanted to share the first couple of edits.

Emily is one of the stars of season 3 of Reality House. She informed me that this is actually her first shoot since filming for the series wrapped a few weeks ago. Driving around Hollywood and seeing billboards on Melrose Ave of the friend you’ll be shooting just one day later is one of the many surreal parts of this job. Celebrities are just people and as soon as I met her, I felt an immediate warmth and sincerity; not at all surprising considering our friend circle. She threw her bags in my car and we made our way up the mountain.

I booked a really expensive AirBnB in Topanga Canyon and climbing the turns around each hill, we finally made it to this bohemian retreat. We laid out wardrobe and chatted while I set my camera up. Once we started shooting, it was evident that Emily had it. I can’t tell you what, it is. It can’t be defined, but when a model has it, I know it. A captivating interplay with the camera that sets the photos apart from almost every one else. In fact, I’ve only worked with about five models with this unique gift in my 20 years of shooting.

The shoot only took two hours, but a two hours that seemed to fly by. Almost everything I shot was gold, with the exception of some shutter difficulties with my Nikon Z6II. More on that in a future post, but for Emily’s part, she was the perfect muse. Once we wrapped, I knew I had it. Rarely have I had this much confidence in the images before even reviewing them. I couldn’t help myself. I picked out two and edited them tonight. I’m sharing them here on Hive first, then maybe dropping them on my Patreon tomorrow. Enjoy and good night!