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I spent the last few days in New Mexico, a trip that involved a lengthy list of unexpected surprises.
The impetus for the trip was my long held desire to see White Sands. It was worth every obstacle (and there were many) to spend a couple hours in the gypsum.
When I was six years old I made a bet with my uncles that I would eventually win with no contest. They bet me $100 each that by the time I was sixteen I would be more interested in boys than horses. By the time I was sixteen I was at the barn more than I was home (and that includes sleeping hours), I had yet to even notice there was another gender wandering the earth that I would one day find attractive, and I was $200 richer. This obsession with horses – and obsession it was – started about as soon as I was able to formulate thoughts and was nurtured in those early years by a grandfather who was an excellent horseman, a friendship with Lauren who was equally infatuated, and the Thoroughbred series. Thanks to Joanna Campbell, author of A Horse Called Wonder, that fateful first book that hooked me, I decided early on that I would be a jockey. That dream was eventually slashed but not before I collected every Breyer my allowance would cover and spent months creating and documenting imaginary horses with imaginary bloodlines that I dutifully kept organized in an accordion file folder.
I spent last weekend in San Diego with the express purpose of shooting a wedding with the talented Justin, and the added bonus of a whole day at the Del Mar Racetrack. The six year old in me was in heaven.
I sometimes get tripped up by the professional-versus-personal blogging boundary, but this is a topic I most definitely want to share with you all. Sadly, I cannot divulge all the details. Some people have real jobs and real employers and real concerns about the public nature of the internet. I never have been particularly good at keeping secrets, but if there ever was a place to avoid barfing out secrets, it’s on the internet. Someday in the not-too-distant future I’ll be free to divulge whatever I please. In the meantime here’s what I can say: In the company of good friends, human and canine alike, Roux and I will be undertaking a journey. We will leave Denver in mid-September and return to these parts mid-December just in time for the Christmas rush, that frantic photo-taking that has become as much a part of my holiday tradition as spiked eggnog, or intensive one-on-one time with certain family members, or any other tradition that is both taxing and gratifying.
We will drive from Denver to Juneau, Alaska and then Southwards via the coast all the way into Mexico. In addition to a myriad of smaller towns we will be passing through the likes of Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Fransisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and various destination spots in Mexico. I am booking a select number of shoots along that route so if you or someone you know is interested have them contact me. If you are in Denver and want to get something set up before mid September, or in December, contact me soon as I have just a few spots left.
And if you are located somewhere are along that route and would like to meet for a drink or have an object you would like Roux to balance on her head, let’s make it happen. We would love any insider tips on places to see or to stay.
We will be blogging, an online diary that promises to be unabashedly more ridiculous than this blog could ever hope to be. I’ll be posting links.
In the meantime, Roux has been put in charge of route planning. Unlike me she has an admirable patience for logistics.
Yesterday marked Roux’s third birthday. It’s been 3 years and 1 day since she was born. And it’s been 2 years, 2 months and 2 days since I picked her up in Amarillo, Texas. Never once during those years and months and days have I regretted sharing my life or my paycheck or my bed with that dog. Not when she was small and demanded so much attention, or when she used to find it acceptable to chew on furniture, or when she used to regularly dislocate my shoulder when she was hot on the tail of a squirrel. Not even when my life was in complete upheaval and I didn’t know where I was going to live and Roux and I were like vagabonds, couch surfing at night and driving to photo shoots during the day. Not even even when finding a place that would allow a dog was a huge pain in the ass. Not even now, when I am reaping the joys of being single and 26, when sometimes having a dog at home means leaving killer parties to feed her and let her out.
Every day for 793 days I have been humbly grateful that Roux is my roommate, officemate, running partner, travel companion, muse — grateful, in short, that this dog is my dog.
My first and best idea for Roux’s July 4th photo involved fireworks. Or at the very least, sparklers. She isn’t one of those dogs that cowers when she hears them, and actually spent one 4th of July on a rooftop right underneath them quite happily. However, she is very picky about what sorts of objects get near to her person, and anything that is actively making a sound is usually out. Including, as I discovered taking these photographs, the sound of whipped cream coming out of the can.
Next to fireworks, one of the most iconic motifs of American Independence Day is pie. So I picked up an apple/cherry pie and a can of whipped cream, tied a blue ribbon around her neck and we walked over to the nearby high school to take these photos. It just so happened there was a crew of construction workers on their lunch break and I cannot even describe to you how insane they thought this whole procedure was. They gathered around in a crowd, their initial shock eventually dissolving into uncontrollable laughter. I tried to explain to them about dog photography, about Roux’s tradition with holidays, but it soon became very clear we weren’t going to reach common ground that way, so I agreed the whole undertaking qualified me for the loony bin but could they at least appreciate the the red in the pie, the blue on her neck, the white in the whipped cream? No? In that case, could they appreciate the undeniable talent of a dog who can balance pie on her head? They finally gave me that, a group-wide acknowledgment that Roux is very patient to put up with my batty ideas.
Originally I had the whole entire pie balanced on Roux’s head and she totally had it. Despite her audience of rowdy construction workers she was focused. But the pie cracked sooner than I’d expected and that’s how we ended up with these photos instead of a tidy one of a double decker pie atop her head.
Happy 4th of July!
