hooray!

since my last entry, i have had the pleasure of working with mark of magical images of pa, not only once, but twice, the shoots taking place less than a week apart. this was perfect because i had planned on giving myself a haircut/color a few days after our first shoot.

i'm having some blogger issues, so allow me to post these as links:
from shoot #1.
from shoot #2.

[now i have glasses! who wants to document this change in appearance?]

i want to work with mark again as soon as i come back to the pittsburgh area. who knows when that will be? well, mark will, as soon as i do. i am in a much better mood now! there are a lot of genuinely kind, respectful and skilled photographers out there. i want to work with you.




p.s. to follow up on the last entry, i received a good amount of support in blog comments here, as well as in person and on modelmayhem. thanks, everyone!

Another day at the beach.

It was the day after the one below.

It started at a lifeguard tower, just like the one with Sean.

But it was in the afternoon and the shadows were very dramatic.





And it costed $10 to get the lifeguard tower shots.

But it was fun. And not as cold.

This shoot was with James and it consisted mostly of running around in the ocean. Waves were reaching crotch level at times. It was pretty cold but I went numb quickly.

There were a fair amount of people nearby. I think some guys were watching with binoculars from the parking lot for a short while.


Just as we were getting into his car, we noticed a sheriff car pulling into the parking lot.

Phew.

The Things People Do For Art....

My fourth day in the LA area, I woke up at 3:30am and was picked up around 4:00am by a nice photographer named Sean. We had talked about shooting a lot before deciding we could actually do it. We were going to a beach N. of Malibu to shoot at sunrise. I took a step outside in downtown LA and realized that it would be freezing on the beach. My breathing was weird, I lost feeling in my fingers and toes, and I felt bad but I was definitely complaining a little. But I got to see dolphins and starfish clinging to rocks on shore and I got to help create amazing images and meet a great person.







I lost my earing while there. My friend, Michelle, who I worked with in Pittsburgh in 2003, gave it to me then. I haven't seen her in over three years and I had been wearing this earing for at least two years straight. It must have fallen out in my sleep. It's in pretty much every photo ever taken of me. Almost.

I need a break so bad.

So, last night I boarded a bus to Oakland, Ca. I found out that Megabus is discontinuing their services in California very soon, too, while waiting. And I just found out. :(.

So, bus to West Oakland BART. Got there at 6am. Great. Too bad I forgot that it's Sunday and BART doesn't run that early. Most buses don't start until 8 either, and I don't know the bus system anyway because I always ride a bike here. So I decided to walk for two and half hours to my old house. I had some mail waiting for me: A letter from my best friend Jonah, who is in an ICE detention center, my first passport!, and some photos I ordered prints of. It was so exciting!!... That I took a 45 minute nap. I woke up and got breakfast and then came back to the house to meet my friend Sarah, who lives here still, and catch a BART train to the city together.

We were going to an all-day Photozella shoot. Neither of us had done one yet, but were kind of interested. They go on outings to beaches and spend all day, it's just hanging out in groups of naked people and having photos taken. Everyone is naked, male and female, even the photographers. Cool.

We were going to the beach, but it was too cold, so we went to the redwood forest and a river that runs through it in Santa Cruz. There were about 15 people there, not including the 4 or 5 photographers. The setting was absolutely beautiful and it was warm there [inland.] We went swimming and sat in the sand and socialized. But I was admittedly slightly socially retarded due to lack of sleep and didn't do very well meeting new people. Haha. It was good to have my friend, Sarah, there, and not needing to try to be extra out-going and friendly all the time. I had never modeled in a large group before AND I had never modeled with a friend before. Everyone was super nice and it was a great day!!

Once the sun started to set, some of the more talented participants played with fire or musical instruments. The scene was a little more hippie burner than I generally put myself into, but it was comfortable and a great way to spend a day.

It's after midnight and Sarah and I are going to fall asleep watching Ab Fab.

No photo shoots planned until Portland. [But I did receive some e-mails about the potential of shoots here.... I'm thinking about it.]

P.S. Please forgive all spelling and grammatical errors, as well as displays of poor sentence structure. I have edited this like three times but I keep seeing more. I'm so tired. You have no idea. Ahhhhhhh.

laLAla

On Monday morning, I arrived at Union Station in downtown LA and I walked around for a half hour looking for a coffee shop to no avail until, finally, this homebum stopped me to say good morning. He asked me if I was a tourist. Oh god. :(. I asked him where there was a cafe and the only place nearby was this very strange restaurant with over-priced yucky food and 9cent cups of watery coffee. I hate coffee, but it was 6:30AM, I had just been on a bus overnight on which I was unfortunate enough to have someone sit next to me while others had empty seats next to them, and it was a little hard to sleep.. And I had two hours to kill before the Metrolink ran all the way to Lancaster. So I drank coffee. It was gross.

Then, a few hours later, I met up with ravens laughter and his friend, nevaehhlleh, who were at the Lancaster Metrolink station to pick me up!! Yay!! They are so nice. Later I got to meet the wife, Miya, who also rules.

The first day, Mr. raven and I created some pretty cool images. This is from the first few minutes. We had wanted to work together for like three years and I was nervous about not living up to any expectations. Silly, I know. Well...

Anyway, I stayed there for Monday and Tuesday and then I was off on my own, trekking all over the LA area, shooting. More later. Today is my last day here and I have a shoot in one hour.. But the photographer has not called me back yet. I wonder if he will.

P.S. If anyone who uses Blogger can help me with posting images, it would be greatly appreciated. Questions: 1. Why does it always appear at the top? This one was inserted after "This one is from the first few minutes." 2. Why is the text on the left like that in this post? When I "preview" it, it doesn't look like that. It's much more balanced.

As my personal relationships fizzle out,

I am having a lot of luck with business relationships!

A photographer I worked with recently wants to pay for me to have a VIP account on Modelmayhem. Which is great because I've been thinking about it but don't know if I want to pay the $10 a month. It's payment for a future shoot, which I feel pretty comfortable with. And appreciate more than many things. Now let's just see if it's possible...

Mariah is really fun to hang out with and her cats are nice except one of them didn't want me pickin' him up. :/. Our shoot today was great. I am still picking prickly things out of my socks. What else is new?

This image is from the beginning of our day, just trying to quickly capture some good expressions.

We did two Zivity sets today... Or three or something! I'm very happy with them and can't wait to have more up. My first set hasn't been doing as well as what the average is and I've kinda been down on myself for that.. But these are super awesome! So put them up, Zivity! I'm still trying to figure out that site and how to be seen because there isn't much in the way of networking. But I have some tricks up my sleeve.

[If any of my two blog readers would like to join, send me a message and I can probably help you out.]

Today was exhausting. Hell, so was.. Every day for the past four months. And many more to come. But soon I will be able to breathe.

I'll Meet You at the Cemetery Gates..

http://daryldarko.com/sets.php

Working with Daryl was really fun! He's very nice and easy to work with and has been doing a Cemetery Girl series that you can see at the above link. He's also photographed some awesome bands. And he had a crimethinc sticker on his car but I didn't ask about it...

I have done three shoots in this cemetery now and it never gets boring.

I even had my bachelorette party at the mausoleum. I told Daryl about how beautiful it is there, but we didn't go inside until it was just about to close. :(.

It was a very warm day with a breeze, just like it has been every day lately. I'm finding packing to be a very hard task....

Three Attractive Professional Female Models

The workshop's focus was body painting and I am still picking paint off of myself after a 30 minute shower. Oh well, I have given myself the next few days off.

I need a break. I think that's why I was getting irritated easily at the workshop. I hope it's okay to post about this without looking like someone who is ungrateful or rude.

But I noticed I was the only model who was painted twice and was shot with three [one when half done] different looks. At 6:55, when one model was almost out the door and another was showering, I was getting my paint touched up. The workshop was 2-7. At 7:15 I told them that I had something to do at 8:00 and needed to get washed up. I didn't get home until about 8:45 though.

Anyway, Rick was very kind. Dave was there and he's one of my favorite people to work with [and has already uploaded three images!] I also got to see some of the shoot he did was Shandra the day before, on camera. They are amazing! My friend Kristin, who I only learned recently is a model, was there, and it's always nice to see her. The other model was a girl named Emily and she was sweet. I didn't get to interact with anyone a great deal, but I liked everyone. And, of course, Suzanne was there body painting. The photo on the flyer is from a shoot I did with her in 2006 at her old studio apartment.

Today is a day I've set aside for personal progress! Wish me luck...

Busy busy busy.

Tomorrow I am modeling for a workshop at Edge Studios that I am excited about. Today I did a shoot with Kena that went great! I think we were equally impressed with each other. I want to talk more about our shoot in another blog, when I have images to share maybe.

Last Wednesday I shot with an amateur photographer named Dan. I had posted an ad on Craigslist looking for work because things were going kind of slow [and boy did they pick up!] We'd exchanged e-mails for a while. I think he felt pretty inferior to all of the photographers whose work is in my portfolio and I tried to make him feel better. I like working with amateurs a lot because I like to think that they will learn from our shoot [either from me or from themselves] and I work for money, anyway. Photos are just a plus, so if they're not usable, it's no big deal.

But I have been using a photo from my shoot with Dan in my portfolio. And I'm smiling in it. How about that?

They are not bad at all...

Little Did She Know...

David Wolff is a photographer from the DC area and I just happened to come across a last minute casting call from him on modelmayhem looking for a model on May 12th or 13th in Oakland. I came across it on the 12th, after I got home from another shoot, and asked if he'd found anyone yet because I was free the next night. I think I was looking at the castings in California for jobs while in LA and didn't feel like restricting the search to only LA when there are plenty of surrounding towns I can get to on Metrolink. I have been scheduling way too much and feeling very overwhelmed, but I find it hard to pass up a job opportunity..

He was still free and it was his last night in Oakland and he wanted to shoot! He provided references right away. I told him he could contact anyone in my "credits" section and he replied that he didn't need reference for me. "Your reputation precedes you." That was great to hear...

I called him in the afternoon [slept in a lot, my schedule has been bad] and we were supposed to shoot at around 7pm for some sunset shots on the Oakland Estuary. His phone never rang or told him he had a message so we both thought the other was flaking. A MM message exchange at about 6pm saved the shoot! I made it there at 7. He was impressed that I rode my bicycle to his hotel.

The sunset shots didn't work out as well as he'd wanted because there were too many people around for us to feel comfortable with nudes. he had another idea to photograph my inside his hotel room from outside the door, to look like a "Peeping Tom" or spy. It was fun because I got to use my own direction entirely since he was too far away to hear.

I can't wait to see the other images from that day.

Also, I gave myself a haircut on May 5, the last new moon. I have been feeling pretty down lately and it was part of a ritual for death/birth within myself. I have done five photo shoots since then and this is the first photo I have to show of it.

Getting Started Broken Hearted.

At 4:30 am or whatever unreasonable hour I started this blog, I was adding links to blogs of other models and photographers I love. I went to my absolute favorite and.. It has been all made private. It is on a site made just for the model and the entire site was gone. I went to her Modelmayhem site and it was gone. So, I sent her an e-mail. I was crushed. I'd been suffering from insomnia and was particularly emotional.

When a person works in a field that is not typical for them, they are surrounded by people who don't understand why they do the things they do* and vice versa. So, when I find someone who shares one of my strong opinions or ideals, they inspire me greatly and help me understand myself. Candy was the only model I knew with a feminist blog.. Now she has retired from modeling. I will always admire her.

There are some others who have made me feel more comfortable and I am thankful for them as well.

*" i gotta ask... i figure you can tell me to mind my own business.... Why have you chosen to not shave for over a year?"

"I stopped shaving at 20 when I went transient for the first time. I stopped wearing makeup at that point, too, because it would be too hard to put on every day and I wasn't washing my face very often while on the road anyway. It was very hard for me to look in the mirror without makeup on and be happy with who I actually was, without a mask of white powder and eyeliners [because I always wore goth makeup.] It was a gradual thing that took a while.. And it made me very frustrated with the societal "norms" and ideas put into young womens' heads about what is beautiful and what it not. Shaving goes with that, too. Why add so much or take away so much based on what someone tells you you should look like? ...

That's my story."

" two more questions... are you still married? and Are you transient still and what does that involve? where is home for you?"

"Yes, I am still married. Home is the bay area until the end of the month and then it is wherever I happen to be. But I'll be back here in 6-8 months. My trip to LA will be fancy in my opinion because I will bring a lot with me and I will be taking a bus to and from and staying at peoples' houses. Generally, as a transient [which I was taking a break from being until now], I travel by hitch-hiking or on freight trains and I sleep under bridges or in abandoned houses. Or just outside somewhere. And I only carry a backpack with maybe one change of clothes in it and some books."

" why?"

Testing, 1, 2, 3, 6, 6, 6.........

Oh hello there.

I am about to go on a trip. I have always leaned towards hoboisms. But this time I am going to incorporate modeling in every major city I can! Today I was working with a nice amateur photographer in the SF Bay Peninsula named Dan - Who replied to a Craigslist ad I posted and doesn't have a portfolio that I know of, or I would link to it. - and he asked me if I would be posting travel experiences and updates.

I have always done this personally to an extent but as adventures become my every day life I slack off more and more. This time it's different though as I'm traveling as part dirty street musician train hopper and part beautiful business woman! I have decided to start a blog for the first time for anyone interested in my work or what I have to say at all.

For anyone who doesn't know me...

I have been modeling for about three years. Alternative, art nude, fetish, alt. glamour, even commercial sometimes. One could even call me a "professional model," because it is my only source of income and I am able to make a living this way. When I do live indoors, I am able to pay my rent and utilities and all of that. I really only do paid work.

I am pretty active on a site called modelmayhem. [My portfolio there: http://www.modelmayhem.com/wyndmulysa.] I use the forums there to communicate with people and I don't know why because for the most part I don't care about anything posted there. But I have met some great people and it's good for networking. Maybe this will take some time away from that, though.

I am an anarchist, a feminist and activist. I am a vegan. I don't drink or do any drugs. I have tattoos and dreadlocks and I don't shave. I don't go shopping. I am a minimalist. Sometimes I sleep under bridges or in abandoned buildings. I am stronger than I look. And I am here to share experiences....