For the majority of my time behind the camera, I pretty much exclusively worked with natural light. Although this could be challenging at times, especially as the sun went down, I loved the overall simplicity of it. Learning to use strobes over the past handful of years has definitely broadened my style of photography, but this was one of the best photo shoots I've ever had.

I shot this back in 2011 with a model named Damianne. We went out to the high desert in L.A. County and found this stone wall that was broken in several places. This was one of the shots where everything fell together perfectly. Not only was Daminanne naturally beautiful without makeup. she was also amazing at posing, highly intelligent, and super easy to talk to the entire day. I didn't have to direct her at all; she would hear the click of the shutter and move to a whole new pose. I felt like I was working with a muse.

This was shot on a Nikon D7000 DSLR with a 50mm f/1.8 AIS manual focus lens. Exposure was 1/8000 of a second at f/2.8 and ISO 400. I debated posting the color version, which has a beautiful blue sky behind her and warm, late afternoon sun lighting her, but I'm always drawn to the black & white version when it comes right down to which image I post. Guess I'll see how the votes go and post the color version if they say otherwise.