What You Wish For

I have a lovely little apartment. Well, I have a little apartment that I have lived in for about a decade now and has to deal with the destruction that is my life.

Anyhow...the floor of my apartment isn't well insulated from the basement. So my floor is often a little cold, not a lot, but just a little, just enough that I'm a little cold much of the time. My wool socks get plenty of use. Hmmm...I see a trip to Campmor.com when I'm done with this post. So for the last few weeks, I keep thinking, "I just want to be warm, I just want to be warm."

I should have termed that better. "I just want to be warm in my living room." I was not planning on being in a 110-140 degree heat (amazing how much the temperature can change in a few feet) with a 100% or so humidity and 5-10 naked men. Ahh...bathhouses, such fun.

So a couple of problems here. It's cold outside, it's hot inside. I'm mostly outside, and dressed for such. This means I'm uncomfortable inside, at least when inside is 110 and up. I could wear a towel for the shoot, but I have equipment that must be kept on me, flashes, lens cleaning clothes, etc, so that means I keep the pants. Heavy pants and no shirt just looks silly, plus, I don't really have time to change for the shoot as, is always the case it seems, this is very last minute and I haven't had the time to devote to this shoot that it needs.

That raises another problem. When shooting swimming one of the recurring problems is that when you go into an 80 degree room from the cold, water condenses on everything, especially the glass. This means you can't see, or shoot, squat for 10 minutes in some cases. In this case, it means the glass fogs up after 3 seconds, for the first 30 minutes. Wipe with lens cloth, shoot really quick, wipe, repeat ad infinitum.

Add to this, everything has to be shot from low, you know, like I'm looking up towels, because at a normal sitting height, it's about a 100-110 degrees. At the same height as standing on a chair, it's about 40 degrees warmer. Hmmm...things I forgot about bathhouses. (yeah, numbers change due to guessing and the fish being thissss big.)

Oh yeah, it was dark too, not the Leslie like black hole dark, but definitely dark. For the photographers amongst us, f2.8, iso 3200, 1/4 of a second. Fun.

It is an environment with a lot of potential, if I can create the time to spend there, and do it right. And if nothing else, the guys were plenty nice, understanding and accommodating of what I needed to do.

Suffice it to say, I was warm, plenty warm. Wasn't quite the plan otherwise. It's sort of like I have my own personal Genie, with that classic Genie sense of humor, and not in that "I Dream of Jeannie" kind of way. Bummer on that last part.