Candid Polaroid

By sfphotoarts of Meghan Claire and yours truly

Summer, summer, summer

Iggybug, CA, 2013

 And thus, my excursion Northwest draws to a close.

What now?

A return to home base: i.e., Reno, where I'll be involving myself heavily with some community art projects and the like.

Anyone coming to Reno [or the Bay, or anywhere in between--I'm frequently making the circuit] get in touch! I'll be remaining fairly local until the Fall. 8]

Simple words...

MagiccImagery, MD, 2013

...I've kept in mind since reading Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray at age fourteen:

"To define is to limit."

Father's Day Blurb

Bob Freund, MA, 2013

While my dad's values and personality differ greatly from my own, he raised me to see myself as a "human" first and a "girl" second: to never feel either limited [growing up, I felt equally free to explore interests in figure skating, crafts, and stage makeup as in heavy machinery, extreme sports, and mathematics] or entitled [while I believe women have historically been restricted, and some still very much are, I also don't believe it's okay for the modern woman to get away with being manipulative, self-victimizing, or bitchy in cases where her privilege allows for her own emancipation] by virtue of being female.

I grew up understanding that there are societal factors that shape what opportunities are available to men or women, and that these opportunities are not equivalent [well, no shit--how many freelance male models do you see?], but that equivalency differs from equality, and in my pursuits I should never set my standard at being "pretty good...for a girl."

My dad raised me to feel empowered to take care of myself, rather than depending on any man to provide for--or validate--me.

Hooray. 8]

Today

Amanda [ARP], NY, 2013

is my mom's birthday!

That's all. Not much to report today.

Dug myself an unexpected pocket of semi-free time.

Visiting good friends--some from within the model/photographer community, and some from other facets of my life. Still in California for the moment; but northward-bound. 8]

Summer plans!

But first...some candid-dressing-room-cell-phone shots from behind the scenes of some of my east coast shoots [I recently had a photographer joke that I seem to always be typecast as a feral-child-hippie-vagrant-in-the-woods...so here's some proof to the contrary]:

So here's how things are breaking down from now-onward:

June: Pacific Northwest road trip.
Full-time modeling all the while.
Bay ==> NorCal ==> Portland ==> Seattle ==> back down to Reno [home base]

July: Volunteering for the festival season.
Limited modeling availability along the Reno <==> Bay Area circuit.
Burning Girl ==> Lightning in a Bottle ==> [secret NV event] ==> prep for Burning Man [home]

August: Most likely disappearing for the month.

Fall: Planning an exhaustive cross-country road trip.
Modeling full-full-full time--making a big loop, details soon!
Reno ==> Midwest ==> East Coast ==> South ==> Reno

Until next time, East Coasters! Portland-bound.

With Elena Siddal, who hosted my wandering carcass these last few weeks. Photo by Gary M

Flying out of NYC tomorrow, but I'm already excited for the next time I'll be back.

As usual, there wasn't enough time to do everything or see everyone--but what time there was was swell.

Next up?

From the Bay, headed NorCal-upwards on land [by car, if my poor car's still holding up okay]. Sadly won't be making it to Canada this time around because I'm still waiting on a replacement passport.

Portland and Seattle were acquired tastes for me--I disliked them at first, but kept finding myself mysteriously returning to the area...and then, suddenly, it hit me that I'd fallen in love with it behind my own back.

It's a pretty special part of the country to me; some of my best experiences [both as a model and otherwise] have come out of the Pacific Northwest, but moreover, it seems like I always come up on a LOT of personal growth whenever I take a trip there. It may just be coincidence, but the association exists for me nonetheless, rendering me a bit sentimental.

It is easy...

Bob Freund, CA

...to concoct stories explaining the past or to become confident about dubious scenarios for the future. That there are traps in such endeavors doesn't mean we should not undertake them. But we can work to immunize ourselves against our errors of intuition. We can learn to view both explanations and prophecies with skepticism. We can focus on the ability to react to events rather than relying on the ability to predict them, on qualities like flexibility, confidence, courage, and perseverance. And we can place more importance on our direct impressions of people than on their well-trumpeted past accomplishments. In these ways we can resist forming judgments in our automatic deterministic framework.

--Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard's Walk