A Day in the Life

Every photographer can attest that at times our job has inherent dangers. I faced several over the course of this weekend and here is how it went down. A friend/colleague and I decided to road trip it together for a few photoshoots. For the first one we drove about six hours east to the top of a mountain with three models, only to find out half the mountain was on FIRE. Seriously, there were areas blocked off by retired FBI agents, firefighters and various deputized members of the sheriffs department. This normally treacherous mountain top just doubled in danger. Okay, whatever, we can handle this, we're professionals right? So we find a safe area to shoot, and my colleague decides to walk off the trail for a little bit to explore while we get set up. Well not 10 minutes later, a half naked mountain man in his 70's comes up to inform us that he thinks a member of our party may be lost and looks a little scared. He pegs my colleague as the guy in a red tee shirt and ripped pants (wait ripped pants, what???). Yea, thats him, so we start shouting and send another member of our group to go find him with instructions to stay on the trail. This is a national forest and it is very easy to get turned around. So a few minutes later they both return and my colleague looks like he's been through hell and back in just 20 short minutes. I guess he wandered off the trail a little, then got attacked by a dog (hence the ripped pants). Okay so day one and we're on a mountain of fire with vicious off leash dogs, check.

Day two rolls around and we decided to hit up another national park, this time without the fire. We are halfway there when we exit the highway into a seedy party of town. There is a homeless man on the corner that my colleague graciously gives a monetary donation to. We round the corner and apparently karma doesn't exist because we immediately get a flat tire. Thankfully my father didn't raise a fool and I can change a tire with ease. Granted, I still have asphalt embedded into my forearms but that's the least of my worries considering what's to come. We finally make it to the park and meet our super cool models. We head out to where we want to shoot and get setup. Everything is going great until I decide to walk shin first into a cactus. Let me just preface this by saying I will 100% take asphalt to the forearms while changing a tire in a seedy part of town over a cactus to the shin ANY DAY. We left shortly after because I just knew if we pushed things any further someone was going to fall victim to a rattlesnake or brown recluse.

Either way, I was able to capture some spectacular images. Without knowing the backstory to these you may just think wow these are beautiful, but now you know how they came about! These are the things we do for a shot.