It was a surprise to find my photo made the center spread in Shots Magazine #171 Summer 2026 edition. I didn’t know until I received the magazine in the mail and opened it up to find it in the center spread.
Shots Magazine, established in 1986 is dedicated to black and white photography as they don’t publish color photos. I shot this as part of a fashion film titled, Like Rain with model Karen Bengo in the Palmdale area north of Los Angeles.
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It was quite a fun and more or less spontaneous shoot in the sense that I didn’t have any preconceived concepts or themes. I had scouted the area prior to our shoot so I had a couple spots picked out with abandoned shacks. We drove directly to one of them and it worked out perfectly. We shot at the abandoned cabin and the dirt road that leads to it.
What was different about this shoot was I just used one lens to film the whole thing, a Zeiss Contax 50mm f1.4. It was a creative choice as well as a necessity as we were fighting light towards the end of the day. Wanting to shoot in the late afternoon sun, we arrived at the location a little later than we should have. When the sun is going down, every second counts when you’re a one-man crew and not having to change lens helped to get the shots I wanted.
And of course, being a low – I’m being generous – a no budget shoot, we had to make use of what was available to us. We ended up using the partial shade of a Yucca tree as our makeup trailer that we shared with what I thought was a rattlesnake. It turned out to be a non-poisonous Gopher snake but it gave us a little excitement when it slithered past our feet.
What we shot inspired the theme of the shoot, that of rebirth and renewal. I used a song, Like Rain that seemed like it was made specifically for our film and used the title for the film as well. In post, I changed the opening of the film to day-for-night and added rain for a melancholic vibe. Then the rain vanishes bringing on the possibilities of revival and restoration.
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