Oh em gee did it feel amazing to finally have ideas flowing out of my brain again and having the passion to pick up the camera and fire it with confidence and purpose. A lot of people don’t understand how exhaustive it is being a creative person and keeping up with demand while trying to stay fresh and new.

A typical day for me is waking up to 20 emails and at least a couple are related to actually business for FotoEnvy, be it wedding requests, seniors or family sessions while 5 or 6 come from models looking for portfolio help or mentoring or both. I’ve become an in demand photographer within the last year and literally burn myself out trying to be kind enough to chat with people, exchange ideas and work out complex photoshoots and of course shooting them. Eventually I become mentally drained and end up being more a zombie than human and my creativity and drive are hurt by this. My new approach to keep myself active and shoot models only when I feel the energy and drive to do so. This technique involves small or long retirement stages where I literally will only talk concepts but not pick up a camera to photograph a model no matter the reason unless you literally come to the studio and demand it. So far it’s worked beautifully except when some models get angry that you won’t shoot with them and go off on you, but those are the people you really didn’t want to photograph anyway.

Yesterday I officially ended my month and a half hiatus to shoot a model I’ve been wanting to work with for over a year. Ashley Pham has been un uber amazing model for the past few years and she has worked with a multitude of kick ass photographers and has work that few models I’ve ever worked with have in their portfolio. We’ve chatted about shooting before in the past, but nothing ever came from it as either her or I were both going through phases of not shooting or personal changes in style and needs for portfolio work. I do have to point out one thing about this ninja of a model, she rocks hard and I knew no matter when I had the opportunity to work with her we’d get some friggin’ rocking imagery.

After some location hunting with Kyle, idea pounding and literally hours of texting with Ashley we came up with some concepts, set up a date to shoot and in the course of all that we laughed so much we peed a little. In order to make this shoot perfect a little extra attention was put in to make sure we would have a steady flow of shooting and laughter so we had to bring a kickass crew with us. We enlisted the powers of Kyle “looks 14 but acts 8″ Wilson and Yunkin “sounds like a disease of white feet and a hunger for meatloaf” Keophomma as an able body of human light stands, coordinators and general fun people. Those guys are a dedicated bunch and wouldn’t have had as much success if it weren’t for them.

I can definitely say that this shoot was action packed. We had a crazy adventure in babysitting going from location to location spanning multiple towns and eventually stopping for dinner. We started our adventure in a completely new location to us around 2pm and found about 5 or 6 different areas to shoot and it really turned out quite friggin amazing. Even posted a 360 of the location: I am currently having some plugin conflicts so if you want to see the pano properly the direct link is HERE.

I have to say that the lighting that was already given to us in here was amazing and it couldn’t have been better. We did use a lot of reflectors, which isn’t normal for me as well as external flashes so you’ll see a great mix of lighting that worked well with our post processing. BTW, I am a total fan of 360 for the iPhone! For 99 cents this is the best app for capturing 360′s and being able to share them with people.

For our next locations we drove all the way out to an old stomping ground of mine. Freeport, the city that isn’t alive on Mondays was pretty much dead but a perfect backdrop for our next action packed spot. I had been to the Rawleigh plant a few times, always wanted to figure out a way in, but those dang people spent literally every ounce of effort making sure no one could get in so instead we used the outside alley as a fine and dandy urban backdrop. As Yunkin pointed out it looked a lot like Detroit and I do have to agree. This time we went a little crazy and had a three light setup rocking out heavily colored images with depth and excitement. It didn’t take long for it to be cut down to one light and as we mixed mood and style later on we threw in some old school techniques to get great shadowing depth.

Our next location was a yummy treat on our little adventure in photography land. The Fieldstone is amazing and definitely some place I will have to go back to in the future. We had some amazing burgers that just tasted out of this world. So much num nuns for Team Panda that it was hard not to stuff yourself. Of course I did a card dump as I topped 900 images so far in the 5 hours we had been snapping away and I did some creative edits at the table just to make sure I was happy. Definitely snagged some amazing stuff and it really inspired us to continue shooting.

We headed out of Freeport, back to good old Rockford, for the final leg of our journey. First stop was a lit tunnel in the fine town of Cherry Valley. After some lighting malfunctions we finally nailed the settings so our lights and the lighting in the tunnel matched for a great final product. We didn’t stay long and I knew we had to hit one more location. I’ve been saving a night shoot at this place for a long time and I decided tonight was the night. Off we went to the service tunnel under state street for some last minute craziness.

Even though the tunnel is pitch black and couldn’t get any scarier than it already is, we decided to venture fourth through the dirty and smelly tunnel laced with graffiti for our final images. The lighting was a heck of lot more difficult that I thought it was going to be so we scrapped the original lighting diagram and created a new one. Definitely a great call and with only one headlamp and total horror movie darkness we snapped away and grabbed some fun urban shots. Oh what a day!

9 hours with these fools and you could tell we got along pretty darn well. Major props to Miss Ashley for being so damned amazing and being one of the coolest pandas to hang with. We definitely get a long way too well and even have the same mannerisms and quotes. Heck we even wear the same ring! Good times. Thank you Kyle and Yunkin for being out there in all of the craziness and being good sports while rocking on lighting. It was the best out of retirement shoots I’ve had and Ashely and I are already planning another shoot as you’re reading this article.

Go Team Panda! Buhahahah!!!!