This is an actual fact.

At first, it was kinda funny… until it wasn’t. A lot of people thought I was just joking… until they realized that I wasn’t. The fact is the weather gods do not like me and always rain on my photo shoots. Did you book an outdoor photo shoot with me? Sorry, but it might rain. Bring an umbrella.

For this particular photo shoot, I had planned it for weeks and weeks prior to flying out to Los Angeles to shoot. My friend Renée tagged along even though she was just there a fews weeks prior for her own photo shoot. She said on the day of her photo shoot in January it was such a beautiful and sunny day as it is on any given day in Southern California. And according to Tony! Toni! Toné!, it never rains there. Until I came along.

It was raining and high winds of 60 mph, breaking rooftops off homes here and there. It was insane!

As we were getting everything ready, plus hair and makeup by Hikari Murakami, we watched news about the chaos that swept the city within minutes. No warning. I drove out to our shoot location on the beach to see if we could still make it work; checked a bike shop about renting a vintage bike for props. It wasn’t going to work, there was just no way we could safely shoot there.

So we headed away from the crazy weather… to Mission San Juan Capistrano. But, they wouldn’t let us shoot inside. Seriously!?

Time was ticking and the weather was barely holding up. What do I do now?! We traveled all this way to create art, but everything is working against us! So, I decided to drop everything— literally! We put everything down on the sidewalk and just started shooting right along the walls of Mission San Juan Capistrano, with oncoming cars, and we just made it work. These are the images I photographed in this narrow spot in, like, 15 minutes. This is what I mean when I look for SPOTS, not an entire location.