Last month I wrote about my first Glamour Shots experience. I used one of my Glamour Shot photos as my entry photograph for Miss TGF '97 and I made it to the finals! The rules of the contest that year (they seem to evolve a little each year) were that I needed two more photos for my final entry: a formal or social picture and a bathing suit picture. Of course I had neither picture and only one weekend before the deadline. I set up a professional beach shoot for my bathing suit shot. My wife, Brenda, and I started scouting places to shoot the social picture.

Because I had two outfits selected, we picked two separate locations for the pictures, a local restaurant and the lobby of an office building. Brenda and I woke up early on Saturday morning and I got ready for our morning photo shoot. I put on one of Brenda's dresses, (blue velvet, street length, with spaghetti straps), and a pair of four and a half inch heels. We went to a local restaurant that is situated on a lake to shoot several pictures outdoors using the wooden deck and lake as a backdrop. The restaurant was closed but other businesses in the adjoining area were open and several people were out and about. I'm 5'10" so I would have thought that wearing those heels and an evening dress in the early morning would have been definitely noticeable. To make things worse, Brenda was in shorts and sneakers and about a foot shorter than me! Oddly enough though, we really didn't seem to attract very much attention. After finishing off a roll of film, we came back home so that I could change into my red dress for the rest of the pictures. Our next stop was an office building near where I worked that has a beautiful lobby with a winding staircase. After getting permission from the guard we shot another roll. Next came a trip to the one hour photo place and we headed home.

When we were almost home, Brenda suggested that maybe I should use the "natural", rocky, water fall (fountain) at the entrance of our development to take pictures. It was a brilliant idea and very surprising coming from my conservative wife! We woke up early on Sunday morning and I made myself up and put on my bathing suit. (You can't do evening wear in a water fountain! ;-) This water fountain is actually three fairly large waterfalls so we selected the one with the best lighting and went over to it. I climbed up into the fountain with Brenda taking pictures from the base. We actually had a blast taking the pictures, in part because of the absurdity of it all! I am still not sure how we got away without anybody catching us! Within ten minutes we had shot another roll of film and went back home. Since I wasn't really pleased with any of the pictures taken the day before, I changed back into my red dress and we took even more pictures. Of course we made another trip to the one hour photo place! (Unfortunately, I simply didn't get the picture I wanted for the social half of the contest, but the waterfall shots came out really well and made my final decision quite difficult!)

Now it was time for more bathing suit pictures. My friend Kristina is a semi-professional photographer and I hired her to take some pictures for the contest. Kristina had suggested late afternoon as the best time to do our beach session, so around two o'clock I had to get ready, again. (This was the third time that weekend that I put the same red nail polish on my fingers!) We met Kristina and headed for the beach. We spent about an hour and a half shooting pictures. It was quite cool! Brenda was holding a diffuser so that the sun would be more even. Kristina was directing me on posing and even demonstrating certain things. I climbed on rocks, sat in the sand, let waves crash around me and even went waist deep into the water. All the while, this time, people were noticing! I saw many people staring, but I truly think that they thought they were watching a model-type shoot on the beach and were trying to figure out if I was "somebody". Other than getting yelled at by the lifeguard for climbing up on some rocks, nothing was said and people quickly lost interest. I have many, many pictures of myself, but I think that this shoot is still the most fun that I have had yet taking them!

One thing that amazed me throughout that entire weekend was the sense that I could get away with just about anything as long as there was someone there with a camera taking pictures! We took one hundred and eight pictures that weekend alone! I put together my finals entry for Miss TGF and waited. I didn't win the contest (I came in third), but you know what, I still won! I had a lot of fun putting everything together and had an unforgettable weekend. And that is my point, when Miss TGF happens this year, I hope all of you decide to enter, but even more than that, I hope you all have a blast doing it! And if you do enter, GOOD LUCK!