Guest photography from Viva Las Vegas!

What’s up, Hive? It’s about 2:00a.m. and I’m just trying to get a blog post in before bed. It’s been a day. Silver linings were getting to see Hive account@robrigo on a Hive account@facingsofficial call I was on this afternoon for a client, some Hive account@caffetto time during the evening and ending the night with a classic with Hive account@guthrie. We’re still on our movie streak and tonight we watched Seven. It’s so cool to see him immersed in these great films that I grew up with. Once I finished dishes, laundry and house chores, I was tempted to just crash but I’ve missed about four nights on here and I don’t want to lose my rhythm. I needed new photos to share so I revisited a shoot I did from two years ago during Viva Las Vegas and found some gems.

Two years ago I was invited to be the guest photographer for my friend Cervena Fox’s modeling workshop. I met Cervena through my friend Hive account@joshbalz and we’ve managed to connect in various cities over the years. In fact, our first shoot was a distance shoot during the COVID quarantines where I would set up a projector and do FaceTime calls, then photograph the projection. Later that year, we managed to meet in Vegas, then again in Ohio in 2021, and finally in Vegas again in 2022 after she moved there. She has hosted many of these workshops with various photographers but this year would be ours. The event sold out just a couple of days before I arrived in Sin City.

The models were all wonderful. I made a few lifetime friends there but the shoot was demanding as I had several other private sessions during the Rockabilly Weekend. All in all, I shot a dozen 30 minute sessions during the course of the day. The shoots happened in Cervena’s home and we used diegetic lighting aligned with my approach to dark pinup. It was easy going and all the models did great but tonight, as I revisited this shoot, I found a few outstanding shots that I’d missed the first round of edits. I’ll be looking forward to sending these to the models as a memento of our time together. I won’t be at Viva this Spring; missing my first one in over a decade.

This process has been therapeutic for me. I’ve always thought of Hive as a time capsule. I’ve been writing and documenting everything on the blockchain since 2016, believe it or not! Almost ten years, which seems surreal to me. One day, I’ll have the opportunity to revisit these entries and reflect on where I was at various stages of my life. Career wise, family wise, and the personal struggles I’ve faced through relationships, friendships, creativity and pandemics. For now, though, I’m finding happiness on unearthing the best images from my previous days on the road and breathing new life in to old dark pinup photography. Thanks for reading!