I arrived back in Portland a couple of days ago with a large chunk of film to develop, a whole lot of mail to open, and a comfortable bed that feels oh so good after two weeks in California. It’s always the sign of a really good vacation when you are incredibly happy to be home at the end of it.
I did a couple of photoshoots while I was gone, mostly in the area where I grew up which is around Gilroy and Morgan Hill California. It felt a little odd to be doing photo sessions in the region of my childhood home. I was practicing photography during the time I lived there, my teenage years, but I certainly wasn’t doing nudes back then. Mostly pictures of fire hydrants and mail boxes. I never would have imagined back then that decades later I would be tromping through out of the way fields doing the work I do today but with the same camera I held in my hands back then - my trusty Minolta SRT-101.
This image was made somewhere in-between Morgan Hill and San Jose. There are a lot of walking paths between towns in the south bay area that nobody really seems to take advantage of. A few dog walkers here and there off in the distance but foot traffic was very much at a minimum. It was actually remarkably easy to photograph a nude outdoors in the area. Granted, it was the middle of the week and most people were probably working at the time.