Shots by Dan at GPS Studios.

Dan doesn't have a link for me to post here,  but he was so much fun to work with and I wanted to post the images anyway.

[  In other news, I just had a wisdom tooth pulled!!  ]

Attention:

I have been staying put a lot, but I some free time on some Mondays and Tuesdays coming up.  April 29th and 30th; March 6th and 7th.  I am willing to travel to LA, Reno, Sparks or Sacramento.  [Based on where the Megabus goes to!]  Let me know if you are in one of these areas and want to book me.

wyndmulysa at gmail.com

Shoot #1 with Phil/Wolfman

Last Monday, after spending a Sunday hiking to the black hole of Calcutta waterfall, I met up with Phil in Sacramento to shoot some tests for the erotica he is just breaking into.  It is obvious that we are going to work together wonderfully.  I can't wait to work with him again!

Redwood Regional Park Shoot.

Hi everyone!  So here is a promised update.

Last week, I went with Deal to Redwood Regional Park above Oakland for a shoot.  It was my first time there, and he was not very familiar with it either, so we got to wander around finding the spots we most liked.  It's placed high in the hills and provides fabulous views of the city and the bay on a clear day.  We were there on a clear day.  And the weather was terrific!  Sometimes I can get pretty nervous about outdoor nudes because my body hates being cold.  Recently I told someone that I would rather die than be cold.  I have sacrificed myself for photos often in this realm, but was happy to not have to do so this time.

Here are some of the photos we created.  It was such a good shoot and I'm really looking forward to working with Deal again.  He is in Monterey and if anyone reading this is a model in that area, I highly recommend him!

[http://gothsuptrees.net/]

Exhaustion.

Hello wonderful people who read my blog.  My past week has been crazy and I am so tired!  Please check my modelmayhem portfolio for new images.  I will post some updates and more images in here ASAP, but it might be a few days.  The craziness continues.

So, I moved out of my van temporarily..

...Couldn't be happier, but I'm pretty sure the mothman is patterned into this wood ceiling in my room.  Not the moth/fly-looking mothman like in the movies or in the statue, but the fuzzy owl-looking headless mothman.

So sleepy.

I love my job.  I love that I work when I want, with whom I want, for the pay that I want.  I love living in the bay area, too, and driving with people I just met through the hills, looking at a view of the bay, going to the redwoods and getting naked.  What a day, and it's not nearly over.  I am pretty pooped.

When it rains, it pours.

And I'm welcoming it right now!

I was consciously taking some time off from shooting for the past month or so to finish up a music album I was working on and just to nail down some other parts of my life that were flapping in the wind.  But now I'm back at it.  I had some cancellations last week, but I have a lot planned for the next few weeks.  I have a shoot tomorrow, hopefully another during the week, one on Saturday, and one next Monday in Sacramento. I am excited about each of these shoots for different reasons and I can't wait to be able to write about them for folks to read here.

Just an update, because I want to be posting here more often.

Shots by Cyber Zeds Photography

Cyber Zeds shot me at GPS studios, too.  I am in love with the shots he sent me:

What I Do Every Day.

Recently I had the pleasure of working with Light Writer  on some lifestyle stuff.  We met at my favorite frequented co-op cafe, stopped to say hello to my vanhome, and walked around for a few hours.  Light Writer sometimes would ask me what I thought of the displays in windows of shops, or poster advertisements in them.  I am an anti-capitalist and minimalist.  I think he knew this.  I soon found out that he was asking me questions at time specifically to get a reaction out of me and then photograph it.  He would take these photos and immediately have a deep meaning to explain to me.  A true artist, quicker than I'll ever be.

And here they are: My loving home.

Also, I read while walking around a lot.  This time it's Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren.

Tina from Goddess Photo Shoots

Another Glamour Bash attendee. It was so lovely to see a lady photographer there; Her energy really made the studio a better place. I hope that we'll work together again soon! Tina is so cool.

First photo back from the GPS Studio group shoot:

Not only am I now blonde, but I now am dead, soaking it up in a hot tub with sweet angels. Photo by Lon Lomba.

Believe it or not, I still exist!!

..Just not on the internet as much as is the norm these days.

Thank you for continuing to read my blog in this age of twitter, tumblr, instagram, facebook... etc. I am still here with just this page and my modelmayhem page. If you like me, or hate me but like my work, or think I look weird, or think I write weird stuff, please tell your friends.

Someone a few weeks ago read my blog and told me that since I had not updated since I wrote about Matthew Grogan, that I was "letting him win." I noted that and planned to update much sooner than I am doing now. It's so much easier to find importance and a good story in negative things than in positive things for some people. I am one of those people.

But let's rewind a little to a lovely shoot I did not post about in a timely manner. It was with Tim and was supposed to be a TFP shoot, but he ended up hiring me for additional time after we'd finished shooting what we'd planned for TFP. He was an utter joy to work with and I am so thankful. The day started with a storm and BART train failure and me being hella late and him not being able to find a spot to park by the station I had to exit at and ended with a sense of fulfillment and a new connection. [We are going to work together again in a few weekends.]

Another thing that came out of this shoot was a complete surprise to me.

Tim was renting studio space in a warehouse in which regular group shoots called "Glamour Bash"es happen. I had gone to one of them... gosh, probably almost three years ago. It had been okay, but weirdo art alternative model that I am, with a non-traditionally beautiful body and strange ink blots and doodles to adorn it, I felt pretty out of place there. I don't usually do glamour, you know. Or if I do it is definitely weirdly slanted. So, I had an alright time at the bash and I liked everyone, but I felt like it wasn't for me. Alan, who runs them, never really contacted me again afterwards and I felt pretty insecure.

Then, when I was walking through the glamour bash, following Tim to the studio we were to shoot in, Alan yelled "Wynd! Why have you been ignoring me for so long?" [He didn't really mean it. He's a goofball.] It took me by surprise. I look way different than I did the last time we saw each other, so I wasn't expecting him to recognize me, and also I didn't know he'd wanted me to contact him! [Which, actually, is how it works. Models contact him to get slots in the shoots.] Some of the photographers who attend the events regularly recognized me, too. The fact that I was that memorable and that Alan wanted me to come back was a huge self-esteem boost for me.

I went to my second glamour bash last weekend, now in a different studio, and I hope to go again soon. More on that later.

Here are some images from my shoot that day with Tim!

Okay, he really was lying to me.

A few posts back, I wrote about Matt. He was the photographer for whom I drove hours out of my way, who told me, upon my arrival, that he has been a victim of identity theft and someone had cleared his bank account out. The trip there had been stressful and I couldn't imagine this a made up malicious story, so of course I stayed and shot with him.

Matt had contacted me years ago, and occasionally between then and when I was planning winter trip, to ask me if I was planning on being in Pennsylvania any time soon. Usually I wasn't, or if I was, I was sticking to Western Pa--He is in Eastern Pa. I did a search in my email inbox for old correspondence photographers in Pennsylvania when I was planning my most recent tour, during which I was making a stop in Philly, and found him again. [I'm pretty bad at keeping track of these things, unfortunately.] When I emailed him, he responded quickly, telling me that he was excited to finally get to work with me, and that he had wanted to work with me for a long time. He asked me my rates, I gave him a loose quote, and he said, "I'll gladly pay you that and probably more."

There were some scheduling disruptions: I had to give myself some time to spend with my family in Pittsburgh, so I was anxious to drive west. He was just transferring jobs, as well as moving into a new house, so his time was limited. I initially only wanted to do a few hours long shoot, but he convinced me to stay overnight so that we could shoot when I got to his house in the evening and also in the morning.

When I arrived, I was feeling a little down because the route I took to get to Easton from Philly took several hours longer than I'd expected, and I'd gotten lost finding his house. This seemed like small potatoes compared to his bad news, which was that he'd just found out that his bank account information had been discovered by someone else, who had used his money online to buy various RPG items, until all of the money was drained. He told me that he would give me a little gas money and that he would send me the rest in the mail, after he got everything straightened out. He told me that it was going to take 3-5 business days.

So we shot anyway. Things went well. I had a lot of fun, actually. He was the type of photographer who seemed to be more interested in meeting people and getting their story than shooting, so we did a lot of that, too. But we also got some good shots, and I was excited to get them some day. Prior to shooting, I wrote to a few models he'd worked with to ask for references, information about their experience with him. The only person who got back to me was someone who said that she had a good time and found him to be respectful, but that he never gave her any of the photos. I hoped that this would not happen with our shoot, but as a traveling model living in a gas-guzzling van, my priority is always cash, not images.

I had never had an experience in which a photographer just refused to pay me, after saying that he would.

Matt gave me $40, which barely covered gas, the next morning. I felt like we had become close through conversation and were now friends. If anyone would have suggested that he was being dishonest about paying me and about his bank account situation at the time, I would have laughed and defended him. He offered to borrow some money from family to pay me, but I told him that it wasn't necessary and that I'd just wait. He did not have a model release for me to sign, but this was not a red flag for me like it may be for some.. A lot of photographers I work with don't have model releases because they are hobbyists and don't feel concerned about their work being used one way or the other.

When I got back to the bay area a month or so later, in March, there was nothing from Matt in my PO box. I waited a little longer. I looked at his Model Mayhem account and saw that he had logged on recently, so I sent him an email. Initially, in situations like this, I get worried about the person.. What if he was in the hospital or missing or something and that's why I hadn't heard from him? But he'd been on MM. I sent him an email asking him if he'd sent it and thinks it may have gotten lost, or if he'd had further account trouble, or if he knew what was up. This was not an angry or accusing email. He did not write back. But it was obvious that he was still present on the internet. Over a month after I sent this, having not heard from him, I sent the angry, accusing email. I reminded him that I have written evidence from him, discussing payment, and I demanded money or a response.

I have not gotten either.

http://www.modelmayhem.com/124

manhatten.

he is a commercial fashion photographer by profession and he is bored. not only is he bored, he is upset with how all of the models look the same--work to look the same--and if they don't look the same enough, how they will be edited to look the same. he is upset about perpetuating this terrible idea of beauty. he tells me about wimmin he has worked with who were literally geniuses but had to keep it secret and separate from their modeling lives. they carry an air of ditziness because, they tell him, no one would be able to see the intersection between beauty and brains. the people paying would not know how to react. in this day and age, it seems unreal to me, but here he is, a NYC commercial photographer, telling me his experience.

he's only interested in shooting nudes, personally. he'd tried to shoot nudes years ago, he tells me, and he was awful at it. he hadn't had a very conservative upbringing, but he'd break down at the shoots, unable to focus. making a photo, to him, means making the thing being photographed an object. i think this is a simple definition and i agree with it. i have struggled with loving photography, and enjoying modeling, and allowing myself to be objectified for this. i have kept it to this alone and i feel good about it still. but he'd put down his camera. he tells me that some model friends of his helped him through this, and now, years later, he is photographing nude ladies again, and he is so good at it.

"i refuse to shoot a model in a way that could be seen as submissive," he tells me. so we make strong, powerful images. but he won't look towards me as i undress.

he says that he thought that i, as a radical feminist, would not work with him. "because you're a man?" i ask. he doesn't know he is a feminist ally, so i tell him. he tells me that he expected me to be less pleasant. or something. and he gives me, as is his routine i gather, a nice thank you card in a nice blue envelope with his card and my payment as i am leaving.

shooting with matt!

when i arrived at matt's house, after driving for two hours longer than google said i would have to drive, and then after that getting lost trying to find his street, he told me that he actually couldn't pay me like we'd discussed because someone stole his identity and bought $2300 of world of warcraft goods, but he would give me some gas money.

but he let me bathe in his sink so that makes up for everything i guess.

on tour again with higher standards.

before i left oakland, i was approved for disability. i also took a semester of school. one of my classes was "wimmin in art history," and the class focused on the media and body image coincided with my getting on disability. i thought that now, since i do not need to rely on my modeling income to live, i could raise the bar a little. i decided to take a stand against being edited to perfection. i decided that i could no longer overlook the fakeness of those amazing images i would get back in which my skin was flawless, my stomach flat, my scars blended in with the rest of my skin. sadly i loved them all. they were an image of myself like no one looks. on the days i was in tune with the reality of my actual beauty, i would see fake plasticized images of others and i would imagine this being what they actually looked like. i would start to be down on myself. i would also imagine others looking at images of me, an oddly figured alternative model, still with an ageless beauty trying to conform to societal faux-norms, and being down on themselves.

so i changed my profile on the modeling website to say that i was not interested in perpetuating this unattainable ideal and contributing to stabs at the self-esteem of girls and wimmin who use the internet. in this subculture it is severely frowned upon for a model to be assertive in this way, to be contentious, opinionated, "difficult." i am supposed to be trying to sell myself and no one wants to buy a product with so many terms and so many boundaries. a move like i made is seen as career suicide. and i like modeling, so it was a little of a bummer. but i figured i could just work with my friends. the amount of work i had been offered had decreased over the last few years, anyway, since i had been aging at an unfortunate steady pace of one birthday a year, been getting more bad tattoos, and not been as active when it came to networking [ie. spending ten hours a day on the internet making mindless conversation (though sometimes fun!) with photographers and other models.] so i figured this was really it. say goodbye to ever working for a stranger who wanted to pay me to model for them ever again.

but i had planned a part-visit, part-tour [the music kind] trip, and i decided to post up some travel notices as a model. what the hell, it couldn't do any harm. and this weird thing happened. i got a fair amount of messages to set up work, for pay, when i was in different areas. not more than ever, but a fair amount. this is clearly what happens when no one reads profiles, i thought. but most of the messages mentioned things like "i like your attitude," and words which connected to the things i'd written or sympathized with them.

my first shoot this trip was just outside of atlanta with vic. we talked about zines, hometowns, punk scenes, body image issues, and how he has two young daughters and hopes things change soon. he used several cameras, including a panoramic pinhole one! i'm worried that i got my hopes up about the kind of people i'm going to be working with from now on.

beaks of eagles images!

see previous post for more information.

just got done with an awesome shoot!

hi everyone,

so i haven't been writing in here too often. i'm slipping up again. maybe i'm writing in here because chris, the photographer i worked with today, mentioned having looked at my blog. wowie! most people do not even take the time to read my modelmayhem bio [a few days ago someone asked: "have you shaved recently by chance?"] and this person even clicked on my link! how pleasant.

also i would like to use this small space to endorse the idea of finding gigs on craigslist. everyone always talks shit about craigslist and says that that's where the creeps hang out. well, my take is that the creeps hang out everywhere, but not everyone who hangs out everywhere is a creep. i set up a lot of work through craigslist. i often meet photographers on craigslist who have modelmayhem accounts [or their own websites, or...] but who just also use craigslist. just like me!

the person who posted the craigslist ad which led to today's shoot was larry from beaks of eagles and the shoot today was a fashion shoot! what a fun change. he's in monterey and asked if it were possible for me to make it down there. actually, he said, "alas, you are my second choice. only because you are in berkeley." and i said, "well, i just started school, but i have a few days off a week and it's only a few hour's hitch." but he ended up coming up here anyway. but he did not have a spot in mind to shoot. he was asking for a "post punk" fashion model and describing grungey environments that he'd like to shoot in. so i said, "alright, i live in a squat. we can't use the whole house, it would be impossible to get everyone to cooperate and some people would be against it anyway. but we can shoot in my room. there's lots of weird stuff all over and cool paintings on the wall and stuff. but it might not be big enough?"
it was big enough.

i was worried that larry and chris actually, once they got here, would not be comfortable and ask to go somewhere else or cancel the shoot or something. many people do not live the kind of lifestyle that would ever bring them to my house. but these two were very into it, and chris is even going to come here in a few weeks for a goth/hardcore/punk show i'm booking! and the images are going to have the background of my beautiful sanctuary of a room!

of course they're not available yet. but i'll post one or two when they are.





i've got some other goodies around the corner, too...

keep forgetting to update!

i am in oakland, living here for a few months again. it's been pretty nice weather for this area but yesterday it rained and i was outside all day. gross. but an alright day.

oh yeah, i cut my dreads off.



[above image by george
, below images by daryl.]