I hope you all had a good weekend and are settling into the week just fine. My weekend was incredibly busy, productive and fun. Friday night I didn’t do much, I made some new earrings (photos will be posted and they will be available for sale soon), danced in the kitchen with my little one and went to bed fairly early since I knew I had such a full day Saturday that started with a 7am meeting at work.
Saturday I had a photo shoot (read on, there are photos!) with Taylor Mahoney, a photographer I had contacted on Model Mayhem. For those who don’t know, it is a networking site for models, photographers, clothing designers, hair stylists, etc. He had this great idea for a shoot and I was sold the second he told me about it. After a few weeks of messages and a meet at a local coffee shop, we had the date set. It was going smoothly and things were falling into place quite well, apparently a little too well…
The location was an easy choice and a chance find, my mom’s friend had recently told her about her stay at La Posada in Winslow Arizona and after some research online, I mentioned it to Taylor. Apparently I have a thing for old, historic hotels. La Posada is a railroad hotel that originally opened in 1929 but closed in 1957. It reopened in 1997 with a new owner who planned to restore it to the first owner’s vision for the hotel. The hotel is completely filled with electic art (mostly but not all southwestern), interesting tables, fancy chairs and a very cool black grandfather clock I could not stop staring at. There is also a bar and restaurant that smelled so delicious. The outside of the hotel had a beautiful courtyard and a sunken garden. Since it is winter, the foliage was dead looking which worked extremely well with this shoot. I plan to go back there this summer to eat in the restaurant and see the gardens in full bloom. Now, on to some photos (many more to come!) and how this whole thing almost fell apart more than once.
The heart was the first issue. Since the entire theme of the shoot was to be me holding a man’s heart next to him bloody and sullen, it was pretty important to find one. We planned on using a real pork heart but apparently in Arizona it is illegal to sell whole hearts, they are cut in half for inspection before sent to grocery stores and no local butchers would be getting any in the near future since hunting season is in the fall. Taylor ended up buying a latex prop heart that he had to modify to get realistic dimensions.
The second problem we ran into was who to cast as the poor guy getting his heart ripped out by me. Feeling slightly desperate, I asked around on Facebook if anyone knew any male models who would be available. I got a response from one person who agreed. My mind was at ease and the only thing left to focus on was the day of the shoot.
Here is where things got really bad, dun dun dun!! I didn’t know this until I went to meet up with everyone to drive to Winslow, but the person who had agreed had to back out and return to Phoenix suddenly. He sent Taylor a message on Facebook at 12:30 am the night before the shoot. When I arrived the next day, Taylor told me this and my heart felt like it was in my throat until he told me he found someone else. Luckily Robert Richmond, another photographer, who had modeled for Taylor before (he is in Taylor’s ‘Paper Work’ series that I absolutely LOVE) happened to get on Facebook and agreed with very little notice. Thank you so much Robert, you saved the shoot! And thank goodness for social networking. And of course, thank you Taja and Rhonda for assisting in the gross wind 🙂
The photo above was shot in the sunken garden at La Posada and the one below was in the courtyard in the late afternoon.
I am so excited to work with Taylor again and we have another concept in the works. 🙂 Now to sum up the rest of my weekend. Saturday night after getting home, I ate, changed my clothes and went out with my boyfriend Jeff and a couple of friends. Don E, who is a tattoo artist at Aces High in Flagstaff, had been up at Snowbowl painting for 3rd Rail Jam (a mix of snowboarding and hip hop culture). While hip hop is not normally my cup of tea, it was a LOT of fun and The Gift of Gab was fantastic. I love purposely dancing like a dork and have come to be known for it. Below is a picture of me doing ‘The Sprinkler’ in the middle of everyone with Don E on the right (he’s the one with the head tattoo). Sorry for the poor image quality on this one, I need a new camera!
After that we went to see Andrew Jackson Jihad play at Mia’s where I ran into Robert, talk about a small town. Haha.
So that was Saturday night. Sunday was a lot calmer but still busy. My mom and I went to the craft store and the fabric store, we were having pretty big withdrawals, to find fabric for my outfits I will be wearing in the pin-up contest at Lake Havasu Rockabilly Reunion in a couple of weeks. We found some absolutely gorgeous fabric and I can’t wait to see it all put together! I finished my day by going to work and once I got home, I can’t tell you how happy I was to be able to catch up on sleep.
*Hair and make up was done by me.
You can find more of Taylor’s work here: http://taylormahoney.wordpress.com/ and here: http://taylormahoney.sites.livebooks.com/
Melissa Misfortune 
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