Nau speak: Behind the Scenes: Tie-dye photo shoot at Mount Charleston (part two)

A necessary evil of running any sort of online business (like, say, our Etsy shop full of tie-dye) is that eventually, you're going to need to provide photographic evidence of the items you are trying to sell. Not only do these photos need to clearly showcase the item itself in a clear and well-lit manner for people to judge the merit of this thing you're trying to sell them, but the photograph needs to be interesting enough to distinguish them from all the rest out there. There's no shortage of places to shop online, after all, and we're definitely not the first or last duo to ever make a tie-dye t-shirt. The trick is to find what sets us and our creations apart, and to try to capture some of that in the photographs. I don't know if we really accomplish that, at least as well as I really aim to, and I'm certainly not at the point where I would hang up my hat and consider myself a smashing success, but it's all part of the process. With each new photoshoot, and every photograph I go through and edit, refine, and polish I'm learning. If we can have some fun along the way, I think we're on the right path.

Part of what makes us who we are, in my estimation of such, is our love of travel. I can not long live without some form of travel, lest I become bogged down with pervasive cabin fever and start to go a little nutty. Getting outdoors and into nature is absolutely necessary for our well-being, along with being a known boon to human health. Given as much, we try to get as many of our shoots done outdoors among nature now as we possibly can. More often than not, this gives us an excuse to go camping, though for this shoot we ended up making it a single day excursion rather than staying overnight. This was more a practicality, as camping locations at Charleston are mainly pay-to-play, and we're trying to be judicious in our spending as we prepare to take off for a new location. That's right, kids, this summer might be our very last in Las Vegas for awhile, because we're sick and freaking tired of all these motherf**king snakes on our motherf**king train! Haha, I kid... more so we're just sick and tired of the heat out here, of it, of how it saps the life from our pets, our plants, and us, not to mention all the additional vehicular stresses it adds. I've been driving the same car since college, and I've had to replace the radiator more than three times in the last decade. That seems....excessive...to say the least. My previous car suffered from a water-pump malfunction that left me overheated and stranded on the side of the road on my way to work (at the mall) on Black Friday, of all days. Suffice to say, it's hot, and I'm tired of being hot the majority of the time. Mount Charleston, while a nice respite from the heat of the city, is still not far enough away to break the umbilical. We must go further! And we will. Soon.