Wrapping up my pinup shoot w/ Darla Deville!

Hey, Steemit! I’m glad to be sitting here working on a blog post. I had a great family day with @vermillionfox and @guthrie. I feel like the work that went in to Dark Pinup consumed so much of my personal time. It was such a demanding project, creatively, physically and mentally. I wasn’t as present as I’d like to have been during the second half of last year. I’m making up for that now that the book is finished, the parties are over and Viva Las Vegas is behind me. We all went to Lake Harriet today for a walk and a swim. Hotdogs, ice-cream and all the typical summer things. It was great.

I also like to stay active on Steemit when the price is down […way down right now]. The majority of my crypto-nest egg was earned during the dark days when STEEM was at $0.08. I was so moved by the idea of a platform, decentralized, that didn’t own my content, and rewarded me for contributing, the principle is what kept me active on the site. Even if you go back to my earliest posts, you’ll see that many of them made less than $1. Principle alone and appreciation for a creative outlet that deserved my art is what kept me so prolific. I had no idea that one day STEEM would go to $2, then $4, then $6, then $8! During these down turns, it’s healthy for me to remind myself of that.

The photography I’m sharing tonight is the last of the series I’ve recently posted with LA pinup model, Darla Deville. I’ve been working on these as often as I can since our shoot together in February. Sadly, I’ve fallen far behind with the commitments of the Dark Pinup book. Now that the release has come and gone and Viva is over, I’ve made this shoot a priority to finish. I’ve been adding images every couple of weeks and last night, I was able to wrap up the last few.

These were taken in the beautiful Gables estate in La Cañada, which has been the backdrop for many of my shoots on the west coast. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, Darla was my last client before making my way to Palm Springs to visit friends. Darla was great because, as with many girls in the pinup and rockabilly community, she was absolutely capable and talented with her own hair, make-up and wardrobe. She arrived shoot ready. I gave her a quick tour of the spaces we could shoot, and then we began.

As a professional model, she took outstanding direction. She adapted quickly to my unique style of diegetic light photography. Some of these last edits are darker than the previous photos and are definitely my favorites. It felt great to get these images to Darla and close out another client I’ve owed work to for far too long. I feel like I’m getting my life back on track, still trying to find a way to bow out of photography and focus on comics for the rest of the year. A lot of that will be up to the cryptomarket, but I’m hopeful.

Thanks for reading. For more photography, art, illustration and the stories behind the work, follow me here @kommienezuspadt!