It’s been a while since my last posting – more than a week. Quite honestly, I’ve just been tired. I’ve been told that I have a stomach problem, and my doctor told me to sleep on my left side to help fix the problem. I’ve never slept on my side before, but I’ve gone ahead and laid down on my left side every night for over a week.

The problem is that while I’ve laid down, I haven’t really slept. It’s just been too uncomfortable, and at times downright painful, with my left leg and hip really hurting me. I’ve even gone out and purchased a memory foam mattress topper, and while I do feel better lying on my side with it, I still haven’t been able to get a good night’s sleep. I managed to get some sleep two nights ago by lying down in a semi-sitting position, propped up on pillows, but it didn’t work last night – and neither did lying on my side.

So, I’ve just been too tired to do a lot of things, including scanning negatives to post here or even sitting down to write.

I did have enough energy today, on the other hand, to go ahead with the photo session today that I’d planned with Jessamyne from Australia. I would have liked to have worked outdoors with her now that the weather is good for outdoor figure work, but last week I told her that we’d better off in my studio setup. The extended weather forecast for today called for rain, and I didn’t want to commit to a long drive to an outdoor location not feeling well.

Well, the forecast was wrong. Today was a beautiful day in the New York area, as the revised forecast from a few days predicted, and while I could have opted to go outdoors, my lack of sleep told me otherwise.

And what about Jessamyne? She was fun to work with, petite in size but with brilliant red hair and beautiful eyes. Of course, the red hair won’t show up as such in my black & white photos (as was the case with Clara Bow in the BW silent film era), but you can see it here in some of the snapshots I made with my little digital camera.

Working in a studio setting has always been rather difficult for me. Without the allure of beautiful surroundings given by an interesting indoor or outdoor location, it’s just a backdrop to work with. I guess someone really needs to think out ahead of time what to do, but I had no plan today. I just got out my fabrics and had Jessamyne work with some of them. Later I got out some of the masks that I have but haven’t used for a while.

Overall, I think I got some good results from today’s session. Still, I think this will be my last studio session until the weather starts to turn cold again. (I expect to spend most of the fall once again developing film, however, as I now have about 60 rolls of film to develop, with more photo sessions coming up over the summer.)

As for short term plans, I just hope I can get some sleep tonight!