Prince William SPCA: Cars, Pups, & Pints - September 24th, 2022

Following a client meeting the morning after arriving home from my trip to St. Louis, like any petrolhead, I spotted a well kept vintage Mercedes S Class while picking up a cup of coffee.  My curiosity was piqued.  Come to find out, the next block over was the Prince William SPCA’s Cars, Pups, & Pints charity and pet adoption car show.  It was a beautiful day, and it has been forever since I’ve been to a car show.  This one was paid entry and juried for prizes, so I left my car where I’d parked it in the lot for my meeting beforehand.

There was a mix of imports and classics on hand; this wasn’t really an exotics show, but there was a healthy lineup of 911s, a V10 R8 previously owned by Van Halen was on display, and a Cushman Truckster also showed up late and parked way in the back out of most people’s notice.

One thing is no doubt: when you see a laptop plugged into the passenger seat of a Supra, you KNOW you’re in trouble.

Megan: Victorian Trenchcoat

Following our first photoshoot together that combined Steampunk corsetry in an old textile mill, Megan and I incorporated some of our foggy graveyard photoshoot idea that never materialized into a similarly moody morning photoshoot, exploring the same textile mill’s grounds in a Victorian trenchcoat.  Although there wasn’t fog like we’d aimed for, the crumbling and overgrown stone walls paired with Megan’s ivy earrings and black lace heels brought mystical vibes to the overcast grounds, with the din of water coursing through generation equipment in the mill’s spillway immediately behind our wall drew us even further out of the 21st century in our secluded corner originating in the industrial revolution.

Having now shot with Megan twice, I can only think of a handful of people I’ve shot with who have run through poses so effortlessly; it’s a blessing in that everything we shoot looks incredible, and a curse in that EVERYTHING we shoot looks incredible (so it’s difficult to narrow down in post): a struggle Megan and I gleefully lamented going through the photos following both our shoots together.

If you don’t already, you can follow Megan’s spooky and spectacular photography of storms, cemeteries, and astrophotography on Instagram.

Like all proper creatives with pent-up artistic energy, Megan and I continue to have shared, evolving ides for photoshoots, and hopefully the next time we see each other the stars will align to bring another passion project or two together.

Until next time,

The Queen of Halloween & The Duke of Spook bid you well in 2022!

Behind the Scenes

Because of the lighting setup on our fist shoot, I didn’t even attempt any Polaroid captures, but since this photoshoot was captured simply with the same run-and-gun fill-flash technique Polaroids traditionally lean on, it was seamless freezing a few moments in time on the classic instant format; all it required was pausing for each moment for the very mechanical image capturing process to work its analog magic.

This is only the second selfie I’ve taken with a Polaroid. Polaroid selfies are both easy because the camera is so light and the shutter release is in an easy spot, but more difficult because of the tighter framing and inherent time-delayed unknowns of film photography, even on an “instant” film - modern Polaroid chemistry takes 10min to display an image, and over 20min to fully develop. It’s a format I didn’t get the chance to play with until just as the Pandemic began, but I’ve fallen in love with its beautiful imperfection and mandatory physicality.

Megan: Steampunk Textile Mill

Megan and I have known each other for over half a decade at this point, and have always shared a kindred connection thanks to our mutual love of all things dark, spooky, and nerdy.  As a photographer with a knack for makeup and modeling, Megan and I share a creative brainwave. When she’s not shooting the Moon and capturing the Milky Way at night, you can find Megan chasing storms and freezing lightning bolts by day.

We’ve bounced photoshoot ideas back and forth for years, but the distance between DC and Rhode Island has hampered our opportunities.  On my last visit in 2018, we had planned a foggy graveyard shoot, but this never materialized.  This Summer we made more firm plans for photoshoots in advance of my trip to Rhode Island in July.  Unfortunately our foggy graveyard plans fell through yet again… but we were able to finally have our first photoshoot together after all these years, and it definitely isn’t our last!

Over the years I’ve come to love Rhode Island’s mix of oceanic leisure and venerable rural antiquity; the small New England state is rich in history and photogenic backdrops.  At a super-secret location, Megan and I held our finally-first-ever photoshoot in a former textile mill, incorporating our mutual love of steampunk to coordinate with some of the antique equipment surviving from the industrial revolution.  We used this first shoot as an opportunity to experiment - Megan had a wardrobe first, sporting a steampunk-styled corset, and ran through poses while I took advantage of the creative flexibility and added some dramatic color I don’t usually get to include in many of my other photoshoots.

This was a photoshoot we were excited for months, maybe even years in advance, but we ended up even more excited about it after seeing the results as they offloaded onto my computer - dark, bold, and dramatic.

So today, on “The Queen of Halloween’s” 30th birthday (born on lucky October 13th!), I hope you enjoy the first creative project my Rhode Island Muse and “The Duke of Spook” finally collaborated on together.

The Queen of Halloween & The Duke of Spook will return!

Behind the Scenes

Well, less behind-the-scenes, and more selfies during the shoot and afterwards at a cookout - have to keep our super-secret shoot location super-secret somehow!

Harpers Ferry: Maryland Heights Trail

Summer is unfortunately drawing to a close, and after several consecutive weekends of thunderstorms and blazing humidity, this past weekend offered temperatures in the low 70s, so local hiking staple, the Maryland Heights Trail in Harper’s Ferry was an obvious choice for a hiking fast fix. Unsurprisingly, it was an easy choice for everyone else in the region itching for some outdoors time after some Summer cabin-fever, making the summit, which I’ve visited when deserted on multiple occasions, the busiest I’ve ever seen it. It’s a beautiful, albeit locally stereotypical, overlook a bit over 300 feet above the Potomac River and Civil War era town beneath. Its steep climb means you reach the summit in ~40min at a moderate pace, making the 3.3mi round trip (skipping the 2.2mi Stone Fort Trail Loop) taxing for the distance covered, but quickly worth the extra uphill effort. This trip was the first time I’ve seen a train use the Southern CSX rail line, however I was on the summit, not the rail bridge like I’d have preferred (just to finally experience how sketchy standing on a rail bridge with a train rumbling alongside feels). Before heading over to the trailhead, I head up High Street to look for evidence of the 2015 fire, which engulfed shops I’ve visited, and impacted a restaurant I ate at just months before the mysterious fire broke out. Evidence of rebuilding is there if you look closely enough, but to the ordinary unaware passerby, you wouldn’t be able to tell a difference - they did good work restoring the historic area!

Bonus: Photos of me at the summit, and see 4K footage of trains and the over-friendly moth. The video footage was shot handheld at 720mm, so yeah, difficult to hold perfectly still at that focal length.