In mid-May, after I’d had about 3 1/2 months to settle into my retirement, I spent an amazing week in Utah with UTadventure, traveling to beautiful scenic sites with a team of very talented fine-art models. I finally got to see some of the amazing geography and geology of Utah that I’ve heard about for many years but had never seen in my commutes straight across the state, or in and out of Salt Lake City. I also got some wonderful opportunities to shoot lots of pictures, and to collaborate with some creative art inspired people.I shot more than 5000 pictures, so I’m going to have lots of fun work ahead of me going through them and fine tuning the results.
I flew in a day early to get settled, and Uber’ed myself into downtown Salt Lake City to have dinner at a restaurant I enjoyed when I used to visit SLC for work at the University. The first day of the tour started the next day with a get together lunch followed by a sunset shoot in the sand dunes of Little Sahara Recreation Area (BLM land). 
It was kind of amazing to see these sand dunes suddenly appear in the midst of what seemed like otherwise flat semi-green Utah desert. It was also my first chance to experience photographing art models nude in nature. This generally went quite smooth throughout the trip, with the tour leader Dmitriy keeping us pretty much away from the public and keeping models aware of members of the public that might be wandering near so that they could cover up. The models were great to work with, with seeming boundless energy and creativity. We shot till dark (or a little past into the blue hour). After that we had a little picnic with some sandwiches we’d grabbed a lunch, then we headed back to the hotel in SLC. This gave us our first hint of a lot of hours in the van each day, but it was a good first day.