Moorea Moonbeam // Valley of Fire

'We took a journey into the Valley of Fire and found an Alien of Discovery and Wisdom.'

I had always wanted to shoot in the Valley of Fire, the epically beautiful vast red landscape of rolling rock in the desert near Las Vegas, Nevada. It's one of my favorite State Parks because it is home, and literally lights a magical fire in my soul while I'm there. I was beyond excited to set up this shoot with Moorea, she vibrates on a higher level, and she was completely stoked with my Alien theme. We both mix 'n matched our wardrobe selection to concoct the most pastel candy alien arrangement ever. Almost every item and every piece of this shoot has a story. The blue space alien shirt is my own, it used to be white at one point, and then I caught it on fire making dinner one night (literally: long story) and so to fix it and make it awesome again, I tie dyed it blue. Then the lush baby pink faux fur coat was gifted to me at Burning Man by one of the "Dads" the designer of Tart Collections himself. When he gave it to me, I knew I had to theme a shoot off of it, it's like the most amazing coat on or off the planet!  

The only thing that actually went according to plan was the wardrobe and the makeup artist, Mia, slaying the eyeshadow! But, basically everything else, not so much, yet somehow the results were still unreal. I learned a lot of lessons from this shoot. 1: Always change your file-size settings to full-res if you ever for some stupid odd reason had them set otherwise. 2: Don't leave your Prada sunglasses on the bumper. 3: There was a moment during shooting that I miss step, tripped, flew backwards, and sent my brand new 5D Mark III almost careening off of a giant cliff (literally bouncing down a mega boulder and burning a hole in my heart with every thud.) But miraculously, because Canon's are SO SOLID, it survived completely intact and unharmed!! It was a huge lesson and insane miracle all wrapped up into one: pay attention and take each step with awareness and purpose. After the shakes, the show went on, the vibes resonated strong and beautiful, and we continued to shoot until the sun fell behind the giant rocky backdrop.