Dan Kitchens

Kitty Shot By Alex - BTS

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Since I am bouncing around presenting different shoots for each Tier for this month's "Monthly Kitty" posts, it was the perfect opportunity to post this set, since its one of the only times I have every purely assisted on some other photographer's shoot.  I literally was there to hold the bounce reflector to light Kat Malone with golden light while my neighbor (and über talented boudoir photographer) Alex Kacha photographed her.

It was super fun to watch my dear friend and my neighbor work together.  You can tell from this BTS footage I took (I only brought my iPhone that day) that we were having a lot of laughs. Alex's photos were pretty stunning in the end, and her little set ups, which are deceivingly low-fi, even made my iPhone pics I got of Kat look pretty great.

I have only done a couple shoots with Alex, but I learned so much from them. Alex is SO GOOD at giving direction and really boosts the models' confidence while they shoot. Their people skills are SO good and it really helps models (and non-models who hire them for boudoir shoots) relax and feel beautiful and sexy. Its also really informative to work with a photographer who has a pretty different aesthetic than me - Alex's style is so "romantic", they really understand the feminine so well, and how a woman feels beautiful, alluring, and sexy.

Kitty at Rooster Rock

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This set of Kat Malone was taken on the Oregon side of Columbia River at Rooster Rock State Park, which has a great clothing optional beach area.  It's nice to be able to shoot nudes without having to find a place where no one was around - here the locals didn't much give a  shit about naked ladies posing and being photographed.  This set was actually shot right after doing another blackberry smearing shoot with Kat and model Jordan River.  That shoot was pretty amazing to see them smashing those bloody berries all over each other and touching one another, bathed in sunset light in this beautiful place.  I can't believe I still haven't posted that set!

Anyhow, after we finished shooting, and the light was dying, the girls washed themselves clean in the river, and Kat and I spent just about 10 minutes getting some images of her alone in the shallow water. 

I remember also that Kat and I went out to dinner after dropping Jordan off, and after a few sips of whiskey Kat had me taking photos of her yet again, this time flashing me in the middle of the bar we were eating at in Portland. The fun never ends with Kat - she really LIVES the image she presents in her work!

Kitty - Trainwreck

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There is an agitated feeling in the air these days when it comes to this photography project.  I haven't felt it touch me yet, but so many people I have come to know and care about in this "nude art photo" community (both photographers and model, but more so the models) are being silenced by platforms. I was shocked to read today that Dahlia Datura's O* F* was deleted for its content that included "public nudity"! That doesn't bode well for my own project, and secondly,  that platform was kind of the last bastion for many of these models to properly have ownership of the monetization of their own bodies. This has happened on various platforms to so many of the amazing women I have worked with.  There is this constant feeling of oppression and exploitation by the rich and powerful that is so off putting...  the creative freedom of expression on the internet feels like its headed for disaster...

On top of that, these days I have been so swamped with my other art projects that I haven't had time to work on this or even make posts for you subscribers.  Its disheartening, but i still have a lot of content I want to share with you.  In particular i still have so much content from last year's summer road trip with Kitty Malone (I am not even sure how we shot this much, but I love so much of it, so I want to post it),   I think for this month's "Monthly Kitty" posts I will jump around and not focus on one shoot - different tiers will be getting entirely different shoots. 

I suppose this set was aptly named for my mood today, but actually on the day of the shoot it was all fun and games.  Kitty and I were headed in a hurry back down to LA and about to pass into California when we saw a train stopped near the highway near Klamath Lake in Oregon. She LOVES getting onto heavy machinery and was bummed that we couldn't do a shoot on any big construction equipment in Portland as we'd hoped to, so pulled over and went to work on this train real quick. Kitty really seems to draw energy from this massive machines - I totally cannot relate to that feeling, but I had fun watching and documenting it anyway!

Highlights from recent posts...

Oh!! I have not been paying attention to making posts on my Instagram, so I haven't had any uncensored posts to add here for my $1 patrons in ages! I am so sorry folks! To make up for it though, here is a selection of highlights from some of the sets I posted  for my $5-$20 teirs in the last month!

Previously unseen shots and video of Ariel supposedly modeling looks for a clothing brand (but really she just didn't want to keep them on, which made it more interesting for me), my first attempt at a remote ZOOM shoot with my goofy pervy friend and former lover Sarah, BTS images and video from an epic shoot Kat Malone and I did at Mt. Rainier last year (these photos SEEM unreal - what a beautiful place! It was the first time either of us had been to that National Park and we made the most of our afternoon there), my first and only attempt at an underwater shibari bondage shoot with adult performer Freshie Juice, which was a totally fascinating, fun experience and I am not sure why I never posted this underwater shoot here before, and lastly I just posted this very cute set of two of my dearest friends, Celia and Taylor, meeting for the first time to help me play around with water and smoke.  Whew!

Smoke on the Water (And Fire Underneath)

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Back in September of 2019 I got Taylor and Celia, two of my dearest friends together (they had never met) to mess around in Celia's pool (not that kind of messing around!). Celia had a smoke machine and we had wondered what it might look like to push smoke out on the water (cue Deep Purple) and shot split "over/under" shots of her.  I knew it was really the kind of set up that needed a whole crew to execute properly though, so even for this experiment I knew we'd need more hands - Taylor jumped at the chance to hang and do some creative tinkering.

This set is more tame than most of what I post on here, I hope you don't mind!  We were just focused on tinkering with the set up and I never got around to asking them to get out of their bikinis (which is strange for me - I normally spend most of my time with both Celia and Taylor being mostly naked). It was a real pain in the ass, and a learning experience. We really need a better way to control the spread of the smoke - with no boundaries on a large pool is just drifted away so quickly, so we quickly abandoned the smoke machine and concentrated on the split shot aspect.  Split over/underwater shots should really only be done with a very large dome port on the underwater housing (I have a small 5-inch dome port and its small size made it had to stay right in between the surface when the water was moving at all).  Still we had a lot of fun, and some the images are pretty interesting as far as all in-camera, practical abstractions. Plus Celia and Taylor always look great, so I never mind staring at them for a few hours...

Underwater Shibari - Extras

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This set contains the bulk of the images where Freshie Juice was most restrained by June St.Paul and leaving it up to us to make sure she got to the surface safely. Freshie was so relaxed the whole time that she honestly made it look almost TOO serene.  It made me think that if we all had the opportunity, we could have done this in the ocean and just tossed have the side a boat and let her sink 40 feet to the bottom of a kelp forest - THAT would be an amazing shoot...

Underwater Shibari

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I don't know why I never posted this set I shot back in the summer of 2016.  Its such a memorable shoot, and so fun.  Instagram brought me together with artist/adult performer Freshie Juice and we were in total agreement of what we wanted to shoot the next time she visited LA - an underwater shibari set. You don't see underwater shibari much.  The sound of it alone feels dangerous, like some kind of sexual Houdini act.  Freshie is the kind of gal that thrives on making anything unusual though (just check her IG) so I had faith we could pull it off.

Once she was in town we scheduled a day and she got in touch with June St.Paul (who I also shot with a year later), a rope artist she knew and I got my wife to come along with scuba gear just to be extra safe (my wife never passes on a chance to jump into scuba gear though).  We met at the pool and set to work.  

We eased Freshie in, and I just shot a bit at each stage - first just swimming around, then swimming around with one arm tied to a big rock, then her legs tied to the rock, and then June set about binding Freshie's feet together, and binding her arms behind her back, and then chaining her legs to the rock, throwing Freshie into the water to sink each time and see how it felt. Like any  experienced bondage model she seemed really calm every time, no matter how precarious the situation got.  The more control she ceded to us to keep her alive, the more relaxed she became.  Both Freshie and June were just quite professional and it made the shoot really smooth, and allowed us to just focus in on that experience - those moments when she was at the bottom and getting closer and closer to needing air, waiting for us to feed it to her... 

Special Delivery - Extras

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I feel like this shoot with Sarah revealed more about ME than I was assuming it would.  She is a pleaser - in terms of kinks she is a submissive and needs to be ordered to do things in order for her to enjoy herself. I am more of a voyeur (maybe why I do nude photography in the first place?) so I prefer to watch without giving direction, just observing what people do.  In this case though, to make my friend happy (and manage the difficulties of shooting remotely) I really had to give her a lot of orders and tell her what I wanted to see... and Sarah has no boundaries with me, or what we would shoot, so I guess my personal fetishization is on display in these images more so than in other shoots... It turns out I mostly want to see my friends bent over shoving their genitals in my face?  That is more embarrassing for its banality than its perversion in a way! 😅😅

Special Delivery

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When he Pandemic started taking hold in the US and lockdowns went into effect, most of the folks in the nude model/photography community started turning to doing "FaceTime shoots" to keep creating during the quarantine and social distancing restrictions.  Some photographers I know have really turned it into a successful short term business model to tide them over in these crazy times.  Since I moved to Japan right when the shit hit the fan, I was a bit busy with other life matter to pay attention to photography (I haven't done a shoot since January) so I never jumped on that bandwagon and started doing these remote shoots.  I am still not exactly sure how they are supposed to be done, and I may not have a fast enough internet connection out here in the Japanese countryside to pull them off adequately.

A few times over the summer though, certain close friends of mine wanted to do a shoot of some sort and were sad that I was no longer in Los Angeles to photograph them, so we gave a shot at shooting over the internet.  I will say that its a HUGE pain in the ass - very frustrating for me as a photographer, and a lot of extra work for the model.  I did have fun doing these shoots because it was great to spend several hours straight with particular friends of mine (especially since they were naked most of the time), but it really made me feel like it wasn't worth booking time with a proper model for this kind of shoot unfortunately.

My first attempt with this FaceTime shoot (actually we used Zoom - a first time for both of us using the app actually) was with my really dear friend Sarah, an artist who makes a living as an InstaCart delivery person, which makes her an "essential worker" and means she has had a secure living, but a stressful life during the Pandemic. She is also super kinky and needs an outlet for that sort of stuff, though it became harder to do so in the socially distanced world.  So it made sense for us to have a bit of fun shooting a "naughty essential worker" scenario in her living room.  Due to the hassle of getting her set up for the shoot we didn't take it far other putting her in actual work uniform with lingerie underneath, but it still made for a lot of hilarious innuendo during our shoot that really made me miss hanging out with this kooky woman!

Kitty at Mt. Rainier - Extras

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As we went further along this little trail and realized no one else was coming or going along it, we stopped for longer bits of shooting, I got to set up those shots that really capture that feeling of the grandeur of the mountain and the rest of the settings in that area as well.  Kitty was just enjoying herself as always, getting down the dirt along the trail so we could make it look like she was really IN the wildflowers (a few times she really was in the grass, but mostly she was just on bare dirt or rocky patches net to the path or on the trail itself - i would position myself downslope from her so flowers would between us would make it feel like she was really in the field of flowers - this trail was perfect for these kinds of shots).

At some point she was getting pretty dirty so she stopped at a tiny brooke the crossed the trail and took a mini bath, washing herself in the no doubt frigid snow melt water.

Kitty at Mt. Rainier

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This month's monthly Kitty Malone shoot from our road trip up the West Coast last summer is from our quick afternoon stop at busy Mt. Rainier National Park.  Neither of us had ever been there, and I didn't get to do a ton of research beforehand to hunt for good locations to shoot at.  Really we were just there to see the place along with the other hordes of tourists (its a busy place in late summer since the wildflowers are blooming then and its quite a short drive from a big city compared to many national parks in the US). 

In a "big mountain" type of National Park like this, there is often just one main road that goes to a main visitor center that is a launching point to trails to see the big attraction.  The mountain itself is omnipresent, and it harder to wander further afield to get away from the crowds, plus we really just wanted to see Mt. Rainier - its a gorgeous volcanic mountain, don't you think? So we followed the herd along the paved trails wandering around Paradise Valley.  Still, we were both itching to make some pictures - how could we fail to get some shots with this landscape - the park was at its peak (no pun intended) a crystal clear sky, wildflowers popping everywhere, little clouds swirling around the mountain itself.  It was really quite stunning. 

So we start to just take quickie pics when no one was looking, or just stood off trail a few feet and Kitty would strip quickly before a family of Chinese tourists would come around the bend... but it wasn't quite cutting it. We decided to wandering back down and check some of the other paved trails to see the mountain from a slightly different angle.  At some point I noticed a little dirt trail leading off down a hill... the call of the wild (ie getting the fuck off a paved path) was strong, so I checked the park map and indeed this was a maintained and named official trail, but none of the tourists seemed to be ditching the safety of the paved paths for this tiny dirt one.  That was where I knew we had to go.  

It paid off as there was no one on it and when we stopped no one came behind us.  We got to work quickly - shooting for 15 minutes here, then walking further, and shooting for another 15 minutes and wandering further... all in we did this for about an hour and a half and never really saw another person until we were headed back up the trail to the main network of paved paths and we were so grateful for it!  

I will have a bunch of images and video for the higher tiers.  Maybe the view will be repetitive for some folks? I just couldn't get enough of this iconic mountain on a perfect day (not to mention the beautiful nude figure - it really put me back in my original intent with shooting nudes in nature in the first place - to show how fragile and dwarfed we humans are be the intense and IMMENSE grandeur of what nature has created.  I have shot a lot of images of Kat that are about her, her sensuality, her power - her intensity as a model kind of drives the focus of many shoots with her, but the scale of Mt. Rainier made me stop back, and shoot wide so I could feel in the images how vulnerable Kat looked in that landscape...

Kitty's Cherry

Halloween is next week, a time when I would have a valid excuse to indulge in my gummy candy addition!  Sadly I am in Japan, and Halloween and trick-or-treating is not a thing here, but it reminded me of this little sequence I shot with Kitty Malone last summer on our epic road trip up the West Coast of the U.S.

This was shot during the STRANGEST part of our trip - when we were staying on some old dude's ranch near Sisters' Oregon, so that Kitty could start in a custom death fetish video the guy was producing for a private client.  Kitty had to pretend to be erotically executed over and over again all day - and that was just the tip of the weird iceberg... Maybe someday I will make some long posts with pics and videos of the rest of that story...

Cacia Dancing in Bed-Stuy - Extras

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I am not aware that Cacia Zoo has any formal dance training, but she really thought of "dance" as a truly pure form of personal expression.  One of many great things about Cacia, both as a model and a person, is her lack of inhibition.  She just GOES FOR IT in all things, not worry about what people will think of her. I am not like that AT ALL, so I really admire this quality in her. 

When it comes to filming her dance - that utter faith and commitment makes the sessions rather mesmerizing (even if they might not technically be up to snuff) so I jump at the chance to do it anytime she asks me to, which is why, if you have been following my Patreon for a while, you might notice this is not the first "dance" sequence I have shot of Cacia.

Another thing that always gets me about this shoot is the scarf. It was a cold March morning in NYC so kozy arrived to the brownstone bundled up and had this yellow scarf with her.  In the photos of her dancing though, it amazes me how "alive" the scarf become in her hands (and flying in the air).  The way she wielded the scarf it became this magic carpet dance partner. In many of the images it feels like its moving of its own accord and reacting to her rather than just being flung about by her.  

I have to say that I credit this shoot and Cacia with really inspiring me to do this whole nude photography thing. I had shot some friends in the past, particularly some underwater shoots, but the amount of fun Cacia and I had, and the amount of fun images we generated in a small time really got me hooked on this sort of collaboration with models who thrived in front of the camera (rather than just my friends, who were often shy when the lens was pointed their way).  The next month after this shoot, Cacia came out to California, when we did our first pool shoot AND went on our first road trip to shoot in nature (we went to Death Valley) and she continued to deliver such great moments and we laughed so much and built such a good friendship - I think forever after I have been chasing that feeling of excitement and creative collaboration and mutual discovery...

Cacia Dancing in Bed-Stuy

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I just had some old hard drives shipped over to Japan from our house in LA (seems we will just NOT be going back to LA until we see if the US collapses or what after the election). In going through them I found all my old shoots with Cacia Zoo and it was making me quite nostalgic - this was the first model I had ever hired, and met to do a shoot without knowing them in advance, and the shoot laid the foundation for a deep friendship that continues to this day. Also I realized I still hadn't posted this sequence from our very first shoot together way back in 2014.  

We were shooting in my friends' empty brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.  They hadn't begun remodeling it yet, so it had that nice, dilapidated look that is perfect for shooting classic NYC nudes in. Over the course of a few hours, we basically did a different shoot on every floor of the house, including the roof, and this sequence on the third floor was possibly my favorite.  It was also the first time I shot Cacia dancing.  Maybe "spazzing out" is a better word for it?  Either way it was fun to just set the camera up in one spot on a tripod and just start click-click-clicking away while laughing as she just let it all hang out and burned off a bit of her seemingly bottomless well of energy.  

I had in mind to shoot it all from one exact spot in order to make a time-lapse video of the whole sequence, but Cacia was jumping around SO much, rattling the old floor boards so that the tripod was actually bouncing around a bit and the shots don't quite line up (plus the camera went out of focus for a long sequence) - I have pieced it together, but I am not sure if its worth sharing.  Still, there is a LOT of lovely images of a beautiful figure in motion, so I wanted to share a bunch (I have more images coming for the $10 and $15 tiers as well).

More of Kitty at Grotto Falls

This set of 40 hi-res images is now a part of the massive Archive folder for $25 patrons and above. Consider upgrading now to access thousands of images and videos.Waterfall shoots always look amazing, but damn they are HARD for models, especially in places like the Pacific Northwest, where all these rivers are formed by snowmelt.  The water is NOT warm, and actually, despite this being the depths of summer, it wasn't that warm on this particular day.  If I had been there with just some random friend, they probably would have refused to go into this water.

Kat Malone is totally a PRO though, and in this kind of situation I was really grateful to have a pro model with me - she just WORKED it.  Worked through the shock of the chilly water, pushed down the chills, and even made the chill work for her to get some really beautiful, evocative images that day. The goosebumps and water drops are everything to me in these shots.

We only shot in the water for maybe half an hour. By then Kat was chilled to the bone and craving whiskey, but we were both exhilarated by the place and the experience and the images.

Kitty at Grotto Falls

This set of 30 hi-res images is now a part of the massive Archive folder for $25 patrons and above. Consider upgrading now to access thousands of images and videos.

Starting with my monthly Kat Malone shoot!  This was one of the stops along the way on our 3 week road trip up the West Coast last summer.  I had been to this remote waterfall before last summer with a friend, and really wanted to return with a proper model.  The spot looked as beautiful as it had the previous year (and just as devoid of people), although less water was running in the falls than the previous year.  Its a totally amazing site to see with your eyes, but dang its really hard to capture the feeling of the whole scene with a camera, luckily Kat makes for a pretty amazing subject to put in that amazing scenery.

I love the contrast between her pale skin and the green moss and trees.

If you are subscribed to a higher teir you will see her use the waterfall to shower, and more...

Uncensored Instagram from this Week

Uncensored versions (plus a couple bonus images) of the sequence of shots of Ariel Fahey and Steph Sinn I posted on Instagram this week for my $1 patrons.  If you were subscribed at a higher tier you'd have access to a lot more images and videos from this shoot!

August Memory Vault Previews

A preview of the special sets i added to the growing Memory Vault folder for $20+ patrons

The first set is from the last moments I ever shot with March 2019 Penthouse Pet Jay Marie, as she enjoyed herself among the fruit trees in my friend's backyard this past January. The set has 24 hi-res images and a quick little video clip.

The second set this month is from August of last year when I was traveling up the coast with my friend, model Kitty Malone, and we were camped along the banks of the crystal clear Smith River.  We went skinny dipping in the river in the morning and I made sure to capture lots of images and footage.  I put a whopping 64 hi-res images and I edited together 3 and a 1/2 minutes of revealing underwater footage of Kitty swimming in the river.

If you have never subscribed to the $20 or $25 tiers, you are missing out on quite a deal, with literally Gigabytes of downloadable content, that is growing monthly!

Ariel in Bear Canyon Part II - Extras

This set of 33 hi-res images is now a part of the massive Archive folder for $25 patrons and above. Consider upgrading now to access thousands of images and videos.

This was actually my favorite part of the shoot in my secret canyon that day with Ariel Fahey!  Not only did she have a lot of fun posing in that water, draping herself on those rocks, but it just inspired me to try some other stuff later on on future hikes that feels exciting.  I have been shooting in this canyon for many years, so its nice to know that it can still inspired new ideas for me...

Ariel in Bear Canyon Part II

This set of 31 hi-res images is now a part of the massive Archive folder for $25 patrons and above. Consider upgrading now to access thousands of images and videos.

I meant to post the rest of this shoot with Ariel Fahey last month (after posting the first batch in June), but I totally forgot!  I have 3 more posts from this shoot so here is the first one.  

When you have a good long day in the wilderness planned there is time to hike, to relax, to chat, to swim, and break up those activities with short bits of photography as situations present themselves. You end up with all these very different scenes from the same day which makes these hikes to my secret canyon so rewarding!

I kept playing with this sheet of dichroic film (usually put on ultramodern building windows) that makes crazy colors, either over my lens, or bouncing sunlight off the sheet while bending it to throw abstract shapes of of color light onto the scene, but it was so bright most of the time it was hard to see the color, but later in the day when the canyon was in shade, the color started to pop and Ariel and I made this little sequence against one of the big canyon walls that I rather liked.

Also late in the afternoon we finally found a decent sized garter snake that was chill enough for us to pick up and handle for a while to get some shots - I always like to add to this series of models holding these charming little snakes.

Taylor and Gen for Together California

Download 23 hi-res images HERE!

last week on my instagram I was posting some of these shots from the first time i ever shot with models Taylor and Gen.  We had quite a FULL day - shooting both my friends' pool, and then heading to the ocean to shoot at tide pools not far from my friends' house in Palos Verdes, CA.  We shot a bunch of lookbook stuff for my other friends' clothing company, Together California, and then shot nude stuff for you, my Patrons!  

This shoot was actually almost 2 years ago, so i think all the nude stuff is already moved to the Archive for $25 Patrons (the Archive has literally thousands of images and videos, is growing every month, and is kind of an amazing deal for the price, so if you never considered subscribing at a higher tier - you really should!). A little sample though...

July Additions to the Memory Vault

Ack - I forgot to post about these new additions to the Memory Vault!

I added 2 new sets for my $20 and over patrons this month.  

One set from my blacklight painting series with the really buxom (like Russ Meyer busty vixen style) Pris. This was the first time Pris and I had met and worked together (you can find the results of our later underwater shoot in the Archive if you are subscribed at $25), and I have to admit it was not one of my best painting jobs, but we actually had a lot of fun as evidenced in the videos (How could a video called "Slow Mo Boobs Fail" be bad?). For those of you subscribed there are 25 images and 2 videos in the set - look for "Pris in Blacklight" in the Memory Vault.

The other set is a really beautiful set of Kitty Malone in and then out of a bikini on the shore of Diamond Lake in Oregon at sunset.  Totally impossible to get bad pictures in such a beautiful setting with her piercing eyes and crazy figure... Also the short video included with her complaining in the tent after the shoot about the prudes at a nearby campsite who gave her the stink eye for playing naked in the flowers during our shoot is priceless and pretty much encapsulates the goofiness of our friendship. 47 images and a short video in this set - look for "Kitty at Diamond Lake" in the Memory Vault. 

If you haven't ever subscribed to the Memory Vault - you should give it a shot! It currently has over 3000 uncensored images and videos from shoots over the last 12 years!!

Emily in Bear Canyon - Part 2

This set of 39 hi-res images is now a part of the massive Archive folder for $25 patrons and above. Consider upgrading now to access thousands of images and videos.

 I like to shoot "regular folks" but what does that mean? They are somehow not blessed with the DNA that gives them strange outlying traits that make them fit into this odd, narrow sense of what is supposed to be "beautiful" at the moment (and lets be clear this concept changes constantly throughout history)? It kind of silly when we think about it. This makes it fun to shoot them though, and find all those shots that, without even the tons of photoshopping that goes into commercial images you see of models online, reveal their own allure and beauty.  Anyone can get those sort of shots actually! Its always nice to send them the resulting images and get their enthusiastic feedback when they see themselves in the right light and angles and color treatment in the right setting, even when they were feeling so vulnerable with no clothes on. 

Emily actually has a really good attitude about her health and figure and looks, but she still appreciates this body of images we have been building up the last couple years documenting her physical self, and gets surprised to see herself looking “sexy” even in a few of the shots. 

Also, and commentary on people's particular body parts is not something i usually make, but every time Emily and I look through our photos of her together, I always comment on how damn cute her nipples are - I dunno I just love them!  Is that weird? Or do you all have particular taste in nipples too?  I am curious. I love the variety and shapes and colors of bodies - as an artist that just makes life more exciting, but anytime I revisit shoots with Emily that thought of loving the look of her nipples pops up again in my head.

We are aiming to do it as a long term project with annual shoots if we can execute a virtual shoot this year. its really been a dream of mine to document a bunch of folks over many many years, so maybe she will be part of this grand plan.

Emily in Bear Canyon

This set of 30 hi-res images is now a part of the massive Archive folder for $25 patrons and above. Consider upgrading now to access thousands of images and videos.

Every shoot Emily and I did has been wet in some way - rain and getting into cold swimming hole in the first shoot, snow in the second shoot - so it was nice to have a hot day so we could actually enjoy the water. So most of the photos and videos we took are shot in or near the creek.  It was great actually take time to make use of the water and the light and reflections dancing on the surface for a lot of the shots this time around.

It was also just nice to finally get to enjoy the whole day comfortably - enjoy the hike, enjoy sunbathing, taking time to sit in the sun and catch up on life, and to explore the secret canyon since this was her first time there.

Emily in Bear Canyon - Preview

I am uploading 100 hi-res images and video for my various tiers of this really nice memory of a hike to my secret with my pal Emily last June.  

I love doing these kinds of hikes, with people originally on the periphery of my life who have become dear friends through the experiences of photographing them in nature.  I met Emily years ago when I used to go to a certain coffee shop every morning where she was one of the baristas.  We followed one another on Instagram and kept in touch vaguely in that particular social media way (where I learned that she was also a writer and actress besides slinging coffee) until she reached out and asked if I photograph "regular people" too (I thought this a funny phrasing since a lot of my photos are of regular people, but I guess my photos made them appear somehow elevated?).  Of course I agreed to take her out to shoot with her.  

The first time was shot was on a misty winter morning as a storm was approaching LA - it made the setting beautiful but utterly cold and wet and a severely challenging situation for a first nude shoot for anyone! The second time we shot was in winter AGAIN, but this time in a snow storm!  After that i PROMISED if we shot again i would take her to my secret canyon in the summer, and so this shoot is filled with extra joy for Emily and I when we look back on the photos and recall how much more relaxed and fun it was - not just a challenging shoot that we conquered together, but a day spent relaxing and laughing and soakin up the sun and learning a lot about each other.

Kitty - Blackberry Sacrifice 1 - BTS

This set of 23 hi-res images and a video is now a part of the massive Archive folder for $25 patrons and above. Consider upgrading now to access thousands of images and videos.

Kat Malone and I had a good time at this private campground along the banks of the Smith River near Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park in California in August, 2019. We cooked some good meals, had a good night rest with the white noise of the river next to us, went skinny dipping, did some berry picking and put them to good use with our photoshoot next to this unspoiled locale.  I couldn't have asked for more from this particular stop on our road trip...

I mostly just let my iPhone run the whole time she was playing with the berries, but i tried to cut it down to some choice moments for you...

Kitty - Blackberry Sacrifice 1 - Extras

This set of 38 hi-res images is now a part of the massive Archive folder for $25 patrons and above. Consider upgrading now to access thousands of images and videos.

It was really interesting to see the additive effect of more and more berries as Kitty Malone continued to eat, smash, smush and smear the fruit all over herself.  The bright red rivulets that dripped and coated her pale skin could be horrifying if viewed in a certain sense, even though I knew their innocent origin.  She reveled in it all though.

I had fun, much later on, trying to decide how to treat the RAW image files - the color was so important.  I could really ratchet the saturation up to give the images this "gory" sort of feel. Normally that is NOT at all my thing, but in this instance it really amused me to make some bloody good fun, especially on Kat's pale soft skin.  I had photographed her so much that year, but never quite like this.

Kitty - Blackberry Sacrifice 1

This set of 30 hi-res images is now a part of the massive Archive folder for $25 patrons and above. Consider upgrading now to access thousands of images and videos.

 Kitty Malone and I camped literally 15 feet from the edge the Smith River in Northern California, and had that stretch of the river to ourselves. So we woke up and went skinny dipping together, and then collected a shit ton of blackberries that were ripe in all the wild berry bushes (blackberry bush is essentially a weed in that part of the world - farmers hate how quickly it spreads across their fields, but it was nice to have endless massive bushes surrounding our campsite, and we were there the exact week they thousands of berries were ripening on the bushes) to try and do a shoot i kept having in my mind since i camped at the same spot the previous summer.

Kat is just always up for getting messy with anything. Its definitely one of her best qualities as a model. She isn't just willing to give it a try, she really relishes getting messy - having stuff poured on her, smearing stuff on herself, licking things she probably shouldn't. She really seems to get into whatever that character is in her head, which makes it damn fun to watch it unfold.

Blackberry Sacrifice 1- Preview

The month got away from me AGAIN.  This Japanese farmer lifestyle has me DRAINED folks.  Also July is the rainy season here in Japan.  It rains seriously about every day.  I have had 2 days of sunshine in the last 3 weeks, and my days are dedicated entirely to working on our yard, or in our little farm plot, which seriously has me missing my home of California, and adventuring there in the dry days of summer!

I think my posts this month have to all be dedicated to California summer fun! I will start out today with my monthly Kitty Malone set, shot in early August last year, near the far northern border of California along the Smith River (the last undammed river in California, and truly one of the most beautiful places on Earth).  I originally got the idea the previous summer camping in the same spot with another friend, so I made sure to get this same private camp spot again since I KNEW Kitty was the perfect person to help me execute this idea!

92 hi-res images and a video coming if you are subscribed at least at the $15 BTS tier. I might have another set for the Memory Vault documenting the skinny dipping we did as that river was stunning clear so I got some beautiful video footage from below Kat as she swam...

Bree in Azusa Mountains - Preview

I just finished posting sets from this shoot with a the very pregnant Bree for my $5, $10, and $15 tiers (in all, 81 images and a video). I am totally not sure if its everyone's cup of tea, but this little nature maternity nude series i have going has always been really special to me.  Usually its because the models are personal friends of mine, but in this case it was because i had the chance to meet this very special woman for the first time in person, make some images with her, and talk about all kinds of personal things in a way I rarely get to for fear of being judged! 

Anyhow - she looks GORGEOUS while pregnant (and the story she tells in the BTS video cracks me up) so I think the shoot really fits in well with all the other work in this project of mine.  If you have never subscribed at one of the higher tiers - give it a try!!!