Taylor at Sunset (Patreon)

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Taylor was supposed to be assisting me in a little fashion shoot for a friend's clothing line. We had gone down to my favorite tidepool spot to catch the golden light at sunset. We had already done a couple hours shooting in and out of clothes in the pool, and we wanted to get at least one or two more looks shot that day. I got to shooting with the model, but Taylor had disappeared suddenly. I was focused on waves crashing around the model, but once a the set of waves passed I looked around for Taylor only to find she had stripped naked and was crawling around the tidepools looking for animals.  

My attention was diverted and I tried to shoot back and forth between the model and Taylor, but eventually Taylor won out. This isn't because she was naked exactly, although that is part of it. To be more precise though Taylor had BECOME that character in my mind that I am always chasing - that tropical islander, living naturally (lacking clothes simply because the weather doesn't call for them, who has grown up in the sea, and is fearless in it. I always wished I had grown up that way rather than in the suburbs, landlocked. I wished I was riding the backs of turtles at 7 years old, and surfing at 9, hair bleached by the sun, and skin darkened by it. This isn't some realistic kind of desire, but a part of me feels deprived not having had that childhood. 

In those moments before the sunset, Taylor had become that longing materialized into reality. I have no idea if the individual joys we both felt in those moments (she was her own trip certainly) come across in the images, but at the very least I hope they are attractive images of a genuine soul in a beautiful setting.