I'm sitting here in Ohio in front of my good friend Dave Levingston's computer. Dave has been a very gracious host during my visit here and he has logged many hours and hundreds of miles behind the wheel of his truck to take me around to various places.

I last wrote about Saturday's trip to Detroit and my photo session with Iris Dassault. As it turns out, I needed to contact Iris again on Sunday to ask for help. I was scheduled to photograph a couple of models on a farm owned by a woman I know (a friend of a friend of my mom's) and one of the models needed to cancel due to personal reasons. I didn't find this out until that very morning, so Dave L and I were wondering if we could find a substitute on such short notice.

I thought of Vassanta, a beautiful model based in Ohio with whom I'd had a short correspondence. Iris also seemed to know her pretty well, so I called Iris on the way out to the farm to ask for Vassanta's number. I left a message but Iris did call back with the number. I called Vassanta and as luck would have it she was available that afternoon, so after dropping me off at the farm, Dave L went back to collect her and bring her on over.

The other model who was able to be with us most of the day was the ever beautiful Sarah Ellis.
After wanting to work with her for some time, I was finally able to do so in late April when I made my first visit of the year to Ohio and Dave L. It was great to work with Sarah then and of course I could not wait to do so again, so I'm happy that she was available this time, too.

Sarah is definitely an above average person. She possesses great beauty but speaks with a delightful little girl's voice and has a wonderful persona (and is a fan of "Doctor Who," as well!). As it happens, she also has a first rate intellect and is something of a genius. (I need to ask her if she belongs to Mensa, the genius organization.) Still, she can be goofy like everybody else, as seen in the photo at the top with Vassanta sitting on the left. However, I'm also posting another photo of her to show how beautiful she really is.
Next is a photo of the lovely Vassanta, who is an active participant in the creative process with definite ideas of her own. I look forward to working with her again, too.

As I am the visitor and Dave L has photographed at this farm numerous times, he allowed me to do most of the photography, but he did get in some photo time of his own. Here's a photo of him setting up a shot with Vassanta on the left and Sarah Ellis on the right.
Monday was an off day from photographing, but photography was discussed when Dave L took me to a local gallery owner who is interested in showing my work. I'd met him on my last visit here when Dave L took me over to meet him and to see some of his own photos on display, so we'll see what happnens with it. We spent most of the day, though, over at the Air Force Museum in Dayton with it's fantastic collection of military airplanes. Here's a photo of a World War II era B-17 bomber, though over favorites were the B-36 bomber with its six propellers and four jet engines, plus the very sci-fi looking Stealth Bomber.
Today was a day back to photographing beauty. The beauty of the day was Jacqueline Chantelle, who I had also photographed on my last trip here in April. Jackie was a lot of fun to work with then and she was again today, but that fun was tempered for all of us by other factors. Dave L drove us all out to the Hocking Hills region of Ohio, and while we visited some extremely beautiful spots, there were just too many other people around to do much nude photography. Most of the time was spent standing around waiting for other people to leave and move on - like waiting for 20 minutes to get in one minute of picture taking! Of course, that's when we were able to get in a minute. At a number of spots
we couldn't do anything at all.
Dave L and Jackie's boyfriend Michael acted as lookouts for other people who would have us in their sights, with Dave L calling out "Blue Heron" if other people were coming by to give us a cue to cover Jackie up. Unfortunately, as I've said, that happened much too often. Even people who were far away had Jackie in their lines of site, thus preventing her from taking off her duds and doing modeling for me most of the time.
The girl with the goofy looking face seen here is Jackie, but she does usually look normal and is quite beautiful at that, as seen in the two other photos of her.
Anyway, tomorrow I head off to California for a few days, so my time in Ohio is coming to an end. My thanks again go out to Dave L and his wife Emily for their hospitality. (Now if only the two cats that they have wouldn't cause me to keep on sneezing..........)

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