I found Mandy on Model Mayhem last month. Most of the time when I contact models through that site, it’s a few months of messaging back and forth, then another month to find a day we both can shoot and then when that day does arrive, I site there with fingers crossed hoping the model will show up. That was not the case with Mandy! She got back to me in a matter of days and about a week or two later (that was yesterday) we were shooting. I just love it when things turn out that way and that isn’t often.

Mandy was a dream to work with, she was exactly what I was looking for, EXACTLY what I was looking for. When I first started thinking about the feel I was going after with this shoot, I was thinking of a model just like Mandy. I am hoping to work with her again soon, but until then I hope you enjoy the images we produced yesterday.

I’ve always loved canvas, nothing says art like the look and texture of canvas. So when I got home and saw a nice big box waiting for me at the front door I couldn’t wait to get inside and rip it open, I actually felt like a kid at Christmas.

I get a real kick out of seeing my work, my clients right there large as life! The only problem now is that all the prints I have hanging on the wall just look weak in comparison.

I met Shawn on MySpace a few years ago. I had just started networking and trying to find people to shoot, when I saw Shawn’s hair and his expressions I knew I wanted to shoot him. It took a while, seeing that he is a teacher at a local elementary school he is extremely busy during the school year.

When we finally got together for a shoot it rained and I mean RAINED. We decided to wait out the storm at a near by McDonald’s and of coarse the power went out. But the rain did break for a while and we took our chances and got the images you see up top. Shawn was a great guy to work with, it has been a while since we did this shot and I have been thinking of giving him a call for another.

Shawn, if you read this and your wife is cool with it, drop me a line!

As I have always said, if you want to stay fresh and keep that feeling of satisfaction in your life as a photographer, you have to venture outside your comfort zone, challenge yourself…Even Fail some times.

I have many plans for the future and a lot of projects I have been thinking about, one of them is integrating my day job as a truck driver into my photography. I have been meaning to do this for a while, but I always came up with excuses not to. My dSLR was to big, I didn’t have the time…so on and so on.

So I finally decided that I would start the project, but to make it real interesting I added some twists, some guide lines to the project and those guide lines are:

1) All pictures must be taken during my actual run. No images for this project will be taken on my way to work, on my home from work or on the weekends. Part of the challenge of this project is looking for and finding interesting imagery while being hampered by a big 75 foot long vehicle.

2) All images are to be taken with either my iPhone or a P&S (Point and Shoot) camera. I am not going to say that it’s easier to take a good picture with a larger dSLR, but it does have advantages that give you an edge. Depth of field really helps and of coarse there is the larger, higher quality sensor which really helps with low light situations. With cheaper P&S and worse still my iPhone, I will have to work to turn these disadvantages into good pictures.

With those two guide lines, every day I will keep my eye open for great pictures and then try to use the limited equipment that I have allowed myself to capture those images.

So if you have a spare few minutes and you want to see some cool pictures, head on over to 18 Wheels and a Camera, I hope to keep you entertained enough to check it out daily…But don’t forget this site as well!