Masha has appeared before here and here. This is the first of a series of photos I took of her last December. More to follow.

Here’s another unposed Saturday morning photo of Marina feeding Nyusha from a couple of days ago.

Last week I did a test shoot with Andrea, a SF local, and Crystal, who was visiting from Hong Kong, where she writes for Harper’s Bazaar. This is one of the looks.

One of  my favorite shots from last Friday’s shoot with Masha. This was towards the end of the night and I decided to experiment with giving the photos more of a graphic and less of a photographic feel.

Another shot from the same series as this one, slightly darker this time.

Finally, after weeks of travel and chaos, I was able to do some serious shooting last night. This is our first shoot with Sarinka, who I’ve met on ModelMayhem, and who completely blew me away with her ability to show emotion through movement. We had a pretty abstract concept going into the shoot, a marionette as she’s pulled up by the strings, and she nailed it, time and time again. We shot this at an abandoned artillery bunker overlooking the San Francisco Bay.

I’ll be posting more from this shoot over the next few days. Plus, there’s a couple of rolls of wide film waiting to be developed.

Another shot of my aunt Tanya and her dog Dazzy from the same series.

I took this picture of my aunt a few days ago, when I was visiting her in Houston, Texas. I knew I wanted to take some pictures of her and grandma while I was there, so I took one of my alien bees, a light-stand, and a softlighter with me on the plane. All of it fit nicely into my carry-on, with plenty of room for everything else I needed for a 3-day stay.

Here, she’s holding up her dog, Dazzy. When Tanya got her from the pound, Dazzy was already sick with distemper, a disease that’s usually fatal for dogs her age. Over the next few months, Tanya faced a daily struggle, trying to keep her pet alive against all odds, and somehow managed to pull it off.

Here’s another look from last Saturday’s shoot with Erika.

Erika and I have been taking about shooting this for some time now and kept running into scheduling issues, on my end mostly. There’s entirely too many things going on in my life right now and it’s hard to find time to shoot anything involved. The stars finally aligned this Saturday and we hiked down to one of my favorite locations in San Francisco. Carrying all the gear, lights, battery, stands and all, was a huge pain, carrying all of it back up was an even bigger pain, but I think it’s safe to say that the effort paid off.

I absolutely love having the ability to take all my lights anywhere I want (as long as I’m willing to carry them all, that is). Saturday was an overcast day and there’s no way in hell I could’ve gotten this with just natural light.