Turns out, biking 60 miles has it perks. It landed me a shoot with a pretty rad southern girl.
I don’t know why I didn’t do this earlier, but I finally started reaching out to some models in the LA area asking if anyone wanted to shoot. Abby Tyner responded and we chatted a bit. I dropped the fact that I didn’t mind biking to wherever she was because no distance was too far for me. She later told me that she was going to make it work because she knew I was dedicated. I’m def using that in the future.
She arrived at LMU with a huge smile on her face and waved wildly out the window of her car and I immediately thought “Oh yes, she is gonna be FUN!” I hop in the car and –
“Wait, what’s your name?”
“Justin,” I answer, “You Abby?”
“Yes!’
And there we go, we make sure we aren’t killers and head to Venice. We park a bit farther away than we wanted to (we realize this way after the fact) and start walking and talking, Jaquory Lunsford, one of my favorite photographers on Instagram comes up, and I’m obsessing over this guy. She knows him personally and has done shoots with him before and I’m fanboying like there’s no tomorrow. Long story short, she messages him a bunch of times and I’m slightly embarrassed by it all but he later follows me on Instagram and I die a little inside. Also, I met Cade Boyd too (blog to follow!) and, yeah.
All we’re trying to do is find some green grass and some palm trees. Quite hard when the ground is littered with trash and people lounging. Anyways we find a spot, shoot some shots, and move to the skate park. If you’re ever in the area, I’d suggest coming down to watch some of the skaters here. It’s quite the spectacle!
Now, the Vespa. We found this sick Vespa and decided to have a little fun with it. We started taking some shots and I wasn’t extremely happy with how they looked, so I said, “I just want to move it a little bit this way,” but Abby wouldn’t let me. It was a disappointing moment, for sure.
We had a decision to make – go to Santa Monica or call it quits. I think we’re both super happy we pushed on. These shots were simply incredible. The bluffs in Santa Monica might potentially be my favorite place to shoot. I’ve captured some incredible shots there, and that’s exactly what we did. We hopped over a fence that’s clearly meant to keep people out and wow…
The sun poking through the palm trees created a beautiful soft box with a beautiful background for a beautiful person. It’s just a whole lot of yes.
We finished oogling over these shots and headed down to the beach. I’m not sure it’s possible for us to not create magic. I’m rambling on, so I’ll shut up and just show you.
Oh, and by the way, her music choices for the car are bomb, even if her idea of country is Dan + Shay – Tequila (R3HAB Remix)…okay, it’s not really but that was the first ‘country’ song she played. Eventually we jammed out to Margaritaville because Jimmy Buffet is amazing. At the time of this writing, this is my most favorite shoot I’ve ever done.
Hands down.
Parting shot:
Next blog: same place, different person.
Justin Fague 