Rainforest Nostalgia

 Puerto Rico became my home after my parents moved us to the island when I was a teenager. Getting used to the island and its nuances with my own country, Dominican Republic was rocky at first, but it got better with time. Because my parents still live there, Puerto Rico is home. My friends from college still live there and where I want to go whenever I have time off. 

It’s called the Enchanted Island for a reason, it has everything you can imagine, from mountains, to forests, to beaches, and some of my friends describe it as “what they think Eden was like before everything went down.” 

The last time I went, I collaborated with Actress and Dancer Mariana Quiles. We went to El Yunque Rainforest, and of course, it was heavily raining, harder than usual, but we made the best out of the situation and created images in the rain.

Hurricane Maria made a mess of El Yunque, the rainforest has few trees standing right now, and it will take a time for it to look as luscious as it was when I made these pictures, so I wanted to work on them to remember how green, beautiful, and magical this place is. 

Sand Dunes Sunrise { Denver Fashion Photographer }

Sunrise is definitely the best time to photograph. It is for this very reason I had been dreaming of a creative photoshoot with the first morning light up at the Sand Dunes. Bernie Rausseo, the hair and makeup artist behind the grand majority of the shoots I put together, had a model set up for this shoot, we discussed the ideas and the date and time, and on the date of the shoot, she said she wouldn't do it. We freaked out of course, I had been working on the concept, had paid for the hotel room, and Bernie, who has a toddler, had arranged for her mother in law to stay with the baby. Needless to say we were sorely dissapointed and were very close to cancelling everything, but when something is meant to happen, everything falls into place. You see, Bernie was working when we found out about the model backing out, and told her client how the model canceled last minute, and her client said that she had a friend who was a model and that was probably available. Well, I called and left a voicemail, she called me within 30 minutes and said that she would do it! Enter Belén, thanks to her  we were back on!

I called Bernie and told her the good news. Now we just needed to wait for her to finished with all of her clients and leave at 7pm, yes, that's right, we started driving to the Sand Dunes at 7:30pm and my GPS gave me the panoramic route...at night, it took us 5 hours to get there and the hotel we booked was an HOUR away from the park...

By the time we got there, which was already 1am when we got to the room, we sat our heads down to sleep and woke up an hour later because our amazing and fabulous model Belén arrived and we needed to start with the hair and makeup. Before we left I decided that I wanted to add a flower crown to the shoot, I bought the stuff and took it with me to make it at the hotel and while Bernie worked on Belén I was making the crown.

And people, it was daaark and cooold when we got there...Which we then decided to take advantage of the lights we brought and do a some shots with that light. 

 

After that we started walking so we could be in the dunes by the time the sun was out...

 And Belén, had to get undressed/dressed in 30 degrees, total champion!

We shot for about 3 hours, and have 4 wardrobe changes. I also love so many images that to avoid overwhelm you with images, I decided to share these in three posts.

Here are our favorites of the yellow and gold outfit.

 

Stay tuned for more outfits in my next blog post.

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