05/14/2024
Models: Riss -model -mua / Riss Ruin and stratus (I'll have to come back and tag her again once FB is done being stupid about pages tagging people)
Here's a blessing for your eyes and an update! If you don't care about what's been going on the past year plus, don't bother reading on.
Haven't been shooting much since shutting down the studio. This is not to say I've put away my camera or that shutting down the studio was a "defeat" or anything. I have since paid off the house I bought in 2005 and purchased another house cash that I've been renovating into a really high end high tech space that will for sure get a lot of photoshoot action, so instead of a studio space I'm working on a studio house. I shut down the studio because it and I and Riss was/were getting taken advantage of. It was costing me $3000-$4000 a month plus there was a lot of theft and damages plus it was giving people the idea that, since I could afford thousands of dollars a month for a space, that they could just take thousands of dollars a month from other streams as well. People were stealing hundreds of dollars in cash from the donations, abusing Riss's makeup to the tune of hundreds or thousands of dollars, leaving lights and air conditioning on after using the space for days in the middle of summer leaving the electricity bill at over $1000/month for 6 months straight, drinking $1000+ of alcohol a month with no restocking, thousands of dollars of equipment was stolen, tens of thousands of dollars in damages to props, sets, furnishings and the space, and of the thousands of dollars people said they were going to contribute there was about $1800 contributed by three people over the span of 12 months.
I was also negligent in that I was checked out from dealing with my house fire and everything else and people took advantage of me not being on top of my game. That's on me letting it happen that long, I should have shut it down after a month or two instead of over a year but the problem was still sh*tty people being sh*tty. It didn't help that the property management refused to do anything about the crack heads causing thousands and thousands of dollars in damages to our fleet vehicles too but that's a whole other set of issues which, at least let us walk away without paying like $50k to break the lease.
So, I SHUT. THAT. S**T. DOWN. Figuratively and literally. I fired my entire staff, shut down the studio, downsized my business, and took a year off to really take inventory (again figuratively and literally) and really decide what sort of things I wanted to be doing and who I wanted to be doing them with.
That being said, I am absolutely in love with these two and working with them is effortless so we were able to make this magic without it making me feel like it was making my life keep moving in the direction of simply being lived for the sake of everyone but me.
Thank you both for being such lovely creatures.
