2 days til Europe / Art competition / The Cave

One of my April resolutions is to update this site more often, which includes shooting more sets to have more pretty pictures with every new post. I've been busy creating novel covers and dipping my camera into cave water, so now I've finally had the time to sit down and write something.

Ok, first thing's first. My flight to England is on Tuesday and I haven't started packing my one red suitcase yet. I don't really own warm clothes so I'm hoping that "layering" will work. The following Monday I'm leaving the UK and heading to Madeira for a little more than a week. This is the part that has me most excited. Last time I was there was over 10 years ago, and I remember so much (remembering things is what Laura does not do best). Before I get poetic about the cobblestone roads and cute triangle houses surrounded by flowers up in the hills of Santana....ok....I'll move on to my next destination which is Lisbon. Will be there for about 4 days then back to England for a few more before returning home. All in all I'll be gone for 3 weeks, and I'm trying my best not to think about being so far from my son for almost a month. He's 2 and I always have this fear that he'll forget who I am if I'm gone for more than a week :/ Stupid I know, but thank God for web cams.

In other news, I entered an art competition earlier this year and recently discovered that my painting won. So from what the details said, I get $2500 and my painting blown up and pasted onto the wall around The Oval (stadium in Trinidad). That was pretty cool considering the fact that I rushed it the day before the deadline and actually completed it at the very last moment. I also was in some sort of top 10...or....12? hmm...top list of "young people to watch in the Caribbean" on tv. That was also pretty awesome. I feel like there was something else I was supposed to write about, but I guess it'll come to me in due time!

I've been working on two fantasy novel covers for author Alaya Johnson and her Spirit Binders trilogy, that was probably the smoothest job I've ever done. I also did a shoot earlier this week in Gasparee Caves. Basically Gasparee is an island right off of Trinidad, like 10 minutes away, and they have this beautiful cave that I haven't been to since I took my class there when I was 14 (I remember some of the girls called me McGuyver cause I was helping my father tie up the boat, and apparently that's something only ppl do on tv?). So quite randomly, the idea to do a fashion set there popped into my head. When I get great ideas I get a complete rush of adrenalin and start dialing numbers and organising. Within 2 days we were hiking up to the cave.

I brought a single strobe with me but my power pack was a bit of fail, so most of the shots coming up were with natural light only. One or two were natural light mixed with the coloured ambient lights that eventually turned on when tour guides discovered us :D I ended up stripping down a bit and wading in the crystal clear but extremely salty water. I was up to my neck for the first shot that you'll see here, and accidentally lowered the camera into the water. Not much, just like a few millimetres. I gasped, stood up, and sort of shook it around like a real professional would do. Anyway, it's not dead, just covered in cave scum. I think it's one of my favourite sets ever. I have some more interesting concepts in mind, but they'll have to wait til I come back. So now, here are some of the shots from my new set "The Cave"