Good Morning from the Sunshine Shine state! I writing you from the Florida highways where I am on a two-week photo safari, the first real extended road trip of 2016.
The two-week excursion began with a two-day stay in Perdido Key visiting with my dear friend and exceptional model, Marina Semenova. Our days our generally spent on catching up, shooting and ending the day eating sushi at our favorite sushi bar, Jellyfish. Jellyfish is so much a favorite that we ate there three nights in a row. Can you say, I love Sushi?
From there it was off to St. Petersburg, FL. where I was doing a commercial photo shoot over the weekend with my good friend and spokes-model, Natalie Shugars, for the Pittsburg Dental Spa and Ms. Elaine Rolison. The spa is looking to develop a new campaign that is lifestyle oriented and the theme was having fun and enjoying life on a travel excursion. I was able to engage an exceptional makeup artist in the area, Ms. Valentina Hiestand and for the two-day shoot as Natalie played the part and looked fabulous with “V’s” makeup. We stayed on St. Pete beach and shot all around the area. Many thanks to Daniel Helou for all of his help and the hook up with an exceptional house on the bay to shoot in, as well as, all of the fabulous recommendations for dining after the shoots. We stayed on the south end of the island and every morning I stood on my balcony and looked at the near famous resort, the Don Cesar. Although the Don does not quite have the notoriety of the Hotel Del, on Coronado Island, it is very well known to travelers on the east coast (west coast of Florida). As you can see with its “Caribbean colors” it kind of stands out on the beach.
On one of the two days shooting we decided to head downtown to shoot in and round the city. St. Pete has taken on an air of a “little south beach” with all of the restaurants with there out door seating and the plethora of marinas that surround the cities bay front. As we hopped around from location to location (what we call guerilla style shooting) we came across a rather large yacht docked on one of the larger private areas. Much to our surprise we were informed that it was the “Tatoosh”, one of Paul Allen’s (the co-founder of Microsoft) super yachts. The Tatoosh is the smaller of his two yachts measuring in at a mere 303 ft. ($160 million) while his new super-yacht, the “Octopus” measures in (45th in the world) at 414 feet for the mere cost of $250 million. The Tatoosh is for sale at the price of $125 million. Of course we had to turn down the offer to have dinner due to our shooting schedule (can you say – Dream On?)
All and all it has been a great start to the Florida road trip and I am now looking forward to heading over to the east coast and spending time with my dear friend and model, Ms. Lauren Suzanne. Always fun to see hear and get to work together. With a lot of catching up to do it will be hard to fit it all in. A couple of days there and then I head north for the Memorial Day weekend.
The good news while in St. Pete, I was able to spend time with one of college classmates, Marie Izzo where we shared the distinct honor of being photo lab assistants together in the College of Arts and Letters, in the Communication department at the University of South Florida. As always, it was late night dinners in the city enjoying the sights and the sounds of all that the city of St. Petersburg has to offer! Enjoy!!!
Keep us in mind for any of your upcoming photographic adventures. Have Camera – Will Travel … Corporate, Advertising, Editorial and Art.
Best Regards …..
~ dennis keim
