Albuquerque

Traveling to Albuquerque, NM was a chance to work with my dear friend Stephanie Anne on some art photography in a region of the southwest that I’ve not had the chance to work yet. The landscape in New Mexico is unique and along with the community of artists there, I knew I would be able to create some wonderful pieces. Everyone I met there was excited to share their wonderful work and ideas. The trip has spawned some new ideas which will hopefully allow me to enable other artists to explore creatively on regular basis. I’ll be talking more about this in the coming weeks as I solidify my plans.

The most unexpected joy that came out of the trip was having the chance to meet up with another model friend, Susie B. If you haven’t heard her story, she recently had a very bad accident while riding a horse. The accident resulted in her having a 9 inch branch embedded in her cheeck. It narrowly missed her eyeball and ran down, through her cheek, under the jaw muscle, and stopped just before her carotid artery. Yeah, no shit!! The accident resulted in a fairly serious infection and a lot of medical bills. Not unexpectedly, the fine art photography community came to her aid and helped to raise some of the money she needed to cover these bills. The generosity of everyone within the community was really touching to me (and certainly to Susie as well).

Susie walks around right now tethered to a fanny pack with an intravenous feed of antibiotics. But what really surprised me was Susie’s upbeat nature and unbounded positive energy. She was there at Stephanie’s home while we were working on some photos and after a few minutes of watching us, Susie asked me if I would care to make some photos with her. We decided that there wasn’t much hiding the I.V. And what emerged from our brief session were photos charged with emotion. Her strength and determination showed through clearly along with a bit of the weariness that comes with the ordeal of all she’s been through.

After we finished shooting, Susie was clearly tired, but truly full of pride for the work we’d done. Later that day I told Stephanie that I’d decided that even though I could, I wasn’t going to retouch the I.V. tubes out of any of the photographs. Stephanie told me that her and her boyfriend were just having a conversation recently about the “truth” in every photograph. And this conversation cemented the idea that these photos needed maintain the truth of everything that Susie is going through right now.

Later in the weekend when Susie and I were looking back on what we’d shot, I asked if she had shot with anyone else since the accident. And when she told me that I was the first, I was touched deeply and quite emotionally. Truly, we’re all here for together for a short time. So, any chance you have to share good times with friends, be sure to cherish and savor them.

Good always gets better.

scott