BLEND

Dude.

So tired. I'll be honest. I was more than a little psyched to be spending some me time in Santa Fe at this swanky resort, making snow angels (sheet angels?) in my ginormous king size bed of one when not shooting with legends of the wedding photo industry.

The bed was lovely - the altitude not so much as I awoke each night every 15 minutes or so, gasping for air, running for the bathroom and generally just feeling delirious at 7000 feet. Santa Fe, you flat plateau-eyness castle up in the sky. Just concentrating left me breathless.

But the workshop. Blend. The coming together of 3 different photographers with very different styles and business models. I learned a lot. And I don't want this to sound too harsh, but I learned that I need to know more details before I commit a serious amount of time and money to something. I'm glad I came. But I am seriously bummed that I lugged a ton of camera equipment across the country when I wasn't allowed to shoot anything.

Weird, right?

The last (and my first) workshop I attended set the precedent for me - half the day is classroom. Second half is watching the photographer's technique with models and THEN applying what we had learned with models of our own. That's how I if not most people learn, right? By doing? So I didn't think that was out of the question to take pictures on a photography workshop. That's cool if the photographers have a different approach, just please, TELL US UP FRONT. Some people are totally cool to just watch. It's just not my thing.

So I have to say a special thank you to the lovely, just absolutely inspiring Jose Villa. (How can you not be when you are given a name that just sounds like a revolutionary?) I truly enjoyed everyone I had the opportunity to work with - Nate and Jaclyn Kaiser's talent and just general awesomeness blew my MIND - but I was humbled by Jose's utter lack of ego. I don't mean a lack of confidence. I mean his complete willingness to share everything he had learned, and doing so with the confidence that - armed to the teeth with every ounce of his history - there will be no photographer like Jose Villa. He literally placed his medium format camera into my hand and showed me how he works. And after watching him work with his clients, he let us have our mini session. I was mostly terrified and got some eh photos, but I was so grateful just to have the camera in my hand, working and learning. You rock, Jose. And it is sad that Pentax is out of business as they can completely credit you for my new supersweet purchase!

And to the stunning, cartwheeling Carrie, the sweet, soulful Des, Blake Lively twin Lacie, the incomparable Punam, raunchy as hell Tara, the adorable Snelsons, You-You-You- YouKON! , Mr. Wizard Kenny, and my fellow mama posse, I will miss y'all most of all.

Hell, I miss all of you.

And now I'm in Albuquerque, up since 4:30, hoping that the blizzard that hit us in Santa Fe won't delay me one second longer from breathing in my sweet baby girl. I need me some baby girl, bad.