I'm tired. Today has probably been the most taxing day so far. Not really in a bad way, but after three days of humping 50+ pounds of camera gear on your back, eventually exhaustion begins to take hold.
At breakfast I was given a chance to get my hands on a newly released camera, I didn't get a chance to shoot it...but I was told to share my thoughts with my Instagram followers. And believe me, I did.
After a very brief classroom meeting, we broke off into our teams and began some more specific one on one training sessions.
I've never really shot models with a bunch of other photographers all trying to get their own version of the same shot before. And although I felt very excited to finally be shooting something that really appealed to me, I also was frustrated because it seemed like everyone was struggling to get the attention of each of the models. I could tell it wasn't easy for them as well trying to give to multiple sources at the same time.
Shortly after our lunch break, the exhaustion set in. I've been running on such an adrenaline high so far all week that my body didn't exactly have a chance to catch up. I started to ache. My muscles were at their breaking point. And we still had 4 hours to go.
We ended up having an opportunity to do some optional night shoots involving light painting and longer exposures that was supposed to start at 7:00 pm. Once we broke at 5:30, I intended completely to attend, however, the hotel staff didn't exactly give us all of the details about where our dinner arrangements were. "Right down the street" must mean something completely different here. So after a 20-minute hike to the local Walmart, and then another 20 minute hike (and almost getting lost in the "desert" later), I finally was fed and only slightly delerious.
I got back to the resort around 8:00. Final images for the day were due by 9. I realized quite quickly that I DRASTICALLY over-shot for the day. All of that time fighting to find the right image caused me to shoot much more than I anticipated. I very quickly culled almost 800 photos down to 72, and then finally down to my final 10. I'm not unhappy with the work I did today, but I am far from satisfied.
Once I have more time I will be going through and re-visiting some of these shots, as I feel many of them have a lot of potential and didn't get the time they deserved. Tomorrow is our big shooting day. 8 hours in the Arizona sun. If I don't burst into flames, I think I will have fun.
