Dachs Thoughts

Less than a week since my last photoshoot I again had a chance to work with French traveling model Sandrah who was on a long visit to the US bouncing between New York and California. We last shot together about 6 months ago. She is quite petite but very talented in posing. It became a very warm day outside, but before we went there she actually needed a little extra heat in the morning inside. I really enjoyed the shoot although my energy was flagging a bit, possibly because of some extra exercising I started yesterday.

I had another chance to shoot with North Carolina based model Keira Grant almost a year after the last time we worked together. The shoot was scheduled later in the day, which turned out to be lucky as my mind misremembered the date of the shoot until the evening before. I picked her up and we had a nice session. The weather was quite mild so we were able to work both inside and outside. She is very creative and artistic and we tried out several new setups and set designs.

I got another chance to work with extremely creative Kate Snig. She was one of the last models I worked with before my holiday break at the end of 2025. She traveled out from the city, and due to some logistics we ended up starting a bit later than originally planned. Nonetheless, we had a great shoot together. She again was drawn to working in my kitchen, a portion of which has been a mess for way too long, which motivated me to clean it out on the spot. We ended up trying a bunch of natural light shots with varying wardrobe. Afterwards we worked on a variety of looks in the front room. I think we got some interesting shots out of the session. Moreover, it provided me long needed kick in the pants to straighten up the kitchen, which is now in much better shape.

I had a nice first-time photoshoot with local model Shari Putra. I had an early morning as I had to get up and go get in line to get some free compost from the local waste management people. I then got back home in time for our shoot. Shari does a lot of work in the local art modeling community working with painters and local universities. While the morning was cool, the day warmed up nicely, but we ended up shooting only inside. As she is local I will try to work with her more in the future exploring other locations and styles.

I had my first photoshoot of the year with Auroraa Celeste (formerly known as Dasha U) in an Airbnb in Oakland. The day before a big trip outside the country I made my way up through early morning rush hour traffic to her place. This shoot had been delayed a month from our original plans as she had previously gotten stuck in a blizzard in the Sierra and wasn’t able to make it. Even though the Airbnb was small it has lots of interesting light and settings and we had a very nice shoot. It was good to work with her again.

I had my first ever photoshoot with Russian traveling model Julie Romanova. She had reached out to me and it was nice to get to meet and work with a new model. Following a several day period of warm weather, the day of our shoot was a bit cool and windy and we ended up not doing any shooting outside. She was quite talkative during our shoot, and it was interesting to learn some of the logistical challenges of traveling with her country under the current restrictions. Despite some longish conversations we still managed to take a good number of interesting photos.

For my fifth photoshoot of the year, in barely 3 weeks, I had the opportunity to again work with Texas based traveling model Liz Ashley. We first worked together here a little over a year ago. She is very talented and photogenic, and we always have a lot to chat about. It was Valentine’s Day, so we tried to incorporate some colors and flowers into some of the shots. Despite all the yacking we managed to make a nice variety of beautiful pictures.

In my fourth photoshoot in less than two weeks I worked with Czech model Denisa Strakova, with whom I’ve worked once before. She is extremely skiiled at posing. She brought a lot of nice dresses and we ended up exploring a number of fashion looks, which I don’t necessarily get a chance to do so much. The weather was a bit cooler after 2 warm days, so we didn’t shoot outside for very long. Denisa is a pleasure to work with and I will actually get a chance to work with her 2 more times this year at different Femme Nue events.