Latina pride w/ Lupé!

Hope everyone is doing well tonight in the Hivesphere. I just finished Hellraiser: Hellseeker with @guthrie. The sixth movie in the franchise. Not the worst so far, but c’mon with these titles! “Hellseeker”? Seriously?! After I got @guthrie to school, I managed to nap for a while then make it to a doctor’s appointment for what was diagnosed today as a frozen shoulder. Something likely caused by kickboxing but seems to be genetic as my mom had the same condition. We did the imaging but was recommended at cortisol shot. I wasn’t mentally prepared for that but it ended with a 9” needle in my shoulder. Fortunately, as its set in, I am starting to feel better so let’s hope.

Again, I’m revisiting older shoots. This was 2019 in Los Angeles with my friend Lupé. She and I go way — way back. I used to host this huge event called, NOIR. It was held in multiple cities; New York, Minneapolis and LA. During the second year on the west coast, I booked a massive penthouse suite in a historic hotel in download LA. We did a content drawing for a free session for reposting the ad on Instagram and Lupé won. That was when I met her. She was 19 years old. The shoot was a life changing moment for her and we’ve remained friends ever since. Years later, we were reunited for this session.

I always love coming back to a dark pinup shoot with a client I’ve worked with before. Naturally, there is the obvious fact that you’re worthy of a repeat client, but also the friendships that remain in tact over the years. In addition to being a model, she’s also a comic illustrator that does these amazing punk drawings so we’re aligned in many ways. She’s also fiercely proud of her Mexican heritage and we were able to capture that with one look at Pasadena City Hall. We managed to get in both looks within about two hours for a wide range of aesthetics and overall mood.

These shots eluded me the first time I went through the images and sadly, that is a common theme for a lot of my work. I’ve written about the breakneck pace I had to keep up with, especially from about 2014 - 2019. Those five years I was getting nonstop opportunities and as a freelance artist and a single dad, I couldn’t turn anything down. I was always behind and under stress to return edits to clients, which meant I wasn’t able to spend as much time with the session as I’d like. Now that things are calming down in my life, I’m able to revisit and find these hidden gems again.