Cautious optimism and new work w/ Violet June!

Good evening, Steemit! It’s an unusual time for me to be sitting down for a blog post. I can still hear @guthrie murmuring “Alexa. Alexa, play my bed time playlist…” as he’s trying to fall asleep. Typically, I’m posting at 2:30a.m. Some rare occasions, first thing in the morning if I go straight to @caffetto and have done my edits the night before. This is as close to “in the middle” of my day as it gets. @vermillionfox and I both made it to the gym this morning. From there, we worked at @caffetto, and took the first steps to right the ship that has been our awful sleep habits and disrupted routine throughout the holidays.

You know how after the last year of this bear market, we’ve become conditioned to be skeptical and cautiously optimistic about a big jump in STEEM? You see it jump up $0.12 and it’s become a subliminal reaction to expect a huge loss to follow shortly thereafter. These first couple of days of the New Year is becoming life imitating crypto. I wrote an entire post about how I’m going in to 2019 without any expectations and little optimism, but I have to say, so far, not so bad. I’ve been getting caught up on work that’s been hanging over my head and even today, played MTG for the first time in weeks.

I have some new work from an old shoot. This goes back to Viva Las Vegas in April. These edits are part of a commitment I made to finish all my Viva edits by the New Year. I missed that goal, but there has been a few circumstances that kept them out of reach, until today. The rest of this week, I’ll be focusing on finishing these last few [patient] clients up. These photos are of Colorado pinup, Violet June. Violet booked with me some time after Viva Las Vegas 2017 and ended up being one of my favorite shoots of this year. Between 32 other shoots and the Dark Pinup book release part, we made magic.

Firstly, Violet is a beautiful, windy talented model. She had that presence from the moment I met her. We were allowed to shoot in my friend Ralph’s speakeasy in Paradise Palms, a notorious midcentury modern home in the coolest part of town. Violet knew her body, she brought incredible Dita Von Teese lingerie, and the hair and make-up team was world class. I remember feeling calm during this shoot with Violet, which is remarkable considering what that time of the trip actually looked like. Editing these today, totally brought me back to how special of a shoot this was.

Thanks for reading! It’s great to find my routine again, and for Steemit to be a daily part of that. I’ll try to stop being a curmudgeon about the New Year and continue taking steps to make it as good as possible. There’s a lot of stress to manage at the moment, but there’s something to be said for actually managing it well. I have some great posts lined up including an interview with James Butler of Figurosity for Trail by Comics: Exposé in the next day or two. Thanks for reading and supporting. For more photography, art, illustration and the stories behind the work, follow me here @kommienezuspadt!