I spent all day yesterday trapped in a crowded photo studio shooting yet more oh-so-exciting product, this time a catalog spread for Crate and Barrel. My teacher claims he can shoot six or so setups in a day (in fact he is currently shooting the Crate and Barrel catalog), so he had us do a six shot spread in one day. Thing is, he has stylists and assistants and lunch delivery. I have... me. After three hours, I still didn't have my first shot (I quickly learned to be less picky). After 6 hours, I was calling Michael begging him to come play photo assistant (he couldn't). After 10, my feet had fallen asleep and my back was hurting (it still is). At 13, I was using the vodka pictured in the photo above to bribe the guys who run the photo stages at school to keep it open just 10 more minutes (they did). I started setting up at nine in the morning and finished breaking down (both the set and the nervous variety) at quarter after ten (at night). A good portion of that time was spent... ironing tablecloths.

Anyway, I learned I can shoot a lot faster than I thought I could (I did 8 setups in all, 6 plus a couple variations). I also shot this with HMI, which is a daylight balanced continuous light source they use in movies a lot. It was pretty spiffy.

Wish me luck when I attempt to return $400 worth of product to Crate and Barrel tomorrow.

I'll spare you the other shots. They're really (yawn) cataloguey.

The other day, driving through Burbank on another fruitless mission for still life props, I looked up and saw a sun dog.

I was dumbstruck when I realized that this is the first cloud I've really seen in six months. I don't mean the wispy cirrus clouds you always see in those fabulous LA sunsets, or the tops of the billowing thunderheads just visible from this side of the San Gabriel mountains in August, or the dark clouds of smoke or torrential rains that have consumed the sky for days. It was a little, tiny, fluffy cloud in the middle of a blue sky - a luminous, multicolored cloud, even.

I paused to wonder at this freak of nature for the few seconds it took for the light to change and the driver behind me to honk at me and flip me off, whizzing around me on the right with the reckless urgency I've come to expect from high-end BMW drivers.

Anyway.

I love LA in winter. Everything seems to regain a sort of clarity with the cooler temperature and shorter days. The mountains reappear from behind a curtain of smog, the sky turns blue, and the color comes back into my front yard, which has all summer been colored in varying shades of dirt. I regain my ability to think in sentences longer than "where is air conditioning" or "give me cold drink now". Everybody is nesting. People occasionally smile at me on the street, as the Christmas season has not yet turned into competitive shopping season.

Most people come to California in the summer. I always looked forward to my trips south for the holidays, weeks invariably spent lounging in 70 degree weather at the beach in January, a brief respite from the cold and the rain and the dark of northern cities. Christmas in Southern California is golden and breezy and warm.

You can have Los Angeles in June, July or August. I'll take the winters.

I finally got to use the 8x10 view camera. Much has been made of the amazing quality of the 8x10 and how fantastic it is and the transparency, oooh the detail...

To that I say whatthehellever. I can't see the whole frame at once on this beast, film costs 10 bucks a sheet, and I don't even want to talk about Polaroids. I didn't use any Polaroids, I didn't even want to think about that kind of money. I'm happy to stick with my 4x5, thanks.

My mom, strangely enough, really likes the Dutch still life I shot as an 8x10 transparency. She said it made her want to cry it was so great. I'm not sure what to make of this, since she's never really said much more than "hmm" while looking at anything I show her. All I know is this shot made me want to cry too, but only because I was so frustrated with the camera.

You may recall a couple weeks back I was bitching about a perfume bottle from hell. I finally got around to scanning it - it's actually a cologne bottle. There are more white cards and silver cards and black cards propped up around this thing than you will ever know, and each of them was accidentally knocked over at least twice during the shoot.

I also felt guilty going to Nordstrom to buy and return this. They're so nice and helpful and let me "sample" about 12 different bottles before I settled on this one, knowing that even though it smells lovely I can't afford to keep it. Returning stuff to a big bin at the return counter at Target where I have to take a number and stand in line to talk to a cracked-out bored employee who couldn't care less is one thing, but returning a $60 bottle of cologne to a nice man in a suit who thanked me and offered me even more free samples made me feel kinda weird.

So yeah, help me redeem my karma, go buy something at Nordies.

Johan the Mad Poet is a Santa Barbara icon. He's likely to be found just about anywhere you can find beer or coffee, holding his big journal and extemporaneously reciting spoken-word poems to anyone who will listen. He is, indeed, a little bit mad, but mostly he's just a person who manages to make his art a daily ritual, and that's something I've always appreciated.

He let me take his picture a few weeks back. Now I have photographic evidence of divine inspiration. If only I had the poem that resulted.

Ok, so it's not my kid. It's my boyfriend's little brother's kid. She's getting big really fast and is running around and talking now, so I did some more baby pictures for them.

I wouldn't normally try to shoot a 16-month-old with a 4x5, but she was such a ham I couldn't resist. It didn't hurt to have 5 family members standing behind me making funny faces, waving toys and promising happy food-things like "baba" and "peetah" and "nanah" if she would just stand still long enough for me to focus.

I did some backup shots with the little plastic Diana knockoff just in case.

She is really really cute though. (She's holding the Polaroids there, refusing to hand them back to me until I let her click the shutter release on the Crown Graphic again. It makes a big click. When asked, she correctly identified the baby in the pictures as "The Baby". I think I'm in love.) Even her drool is cute. A consummate model, she happily accepted payment for her services in the form of Lego Duplo bricks instead of cash and promptly passed out. What a sport.