Jenn LeBlanc's Blog, page 8

A bid for points.

Come play on twitter and you will understand…maybe.

Filed under: BDSM, Contemporary, erotica, Illustration, Images Tagged: beauty, color, Derek Hutchins, illustrate, illustrated, illustration, Jenn LeBlanc, model, photography, portrait, red, red rope, rope, studio, tied up, torso

Happy birthday Jamie!!

Ah, I have been remiss in my birthday wishes.

I did give her something rather special last night though so…

 

Here is your birthday gift from me.

 

Filed under: Illustration, Images Tagged: beauty, Derek Hutchins, illustrate, illustration, Jenn LeBlanc, male, man, men, model, photography, portrait, portraits

Happy Birthday Brandy!

Filed under: historical romance, Illustration Tagged: Derek Hutchins, great kilt, highlander, historical, historical romance, illustrate, illustrated, illustration, Jenn LeBlanc, photography, romance, sexy, studio, torso

Day two into three.

The second day of shooting we went into the city to get some clothes, which necessitated a stop at the mall.

Berry and Derek with their super serious shopper faces on.

The crazy giant inny-outy escalator staircase

So I was a little bored. We moved on. We ended up going over to the Gate then around Fort Point and up to The Presidio and finally moving on to Haight Street. On the way to Haight we met the greatest man at a gas station who thought I was amazing and that Berry was beautiful and I needed to make more babies. As he went out the door to, as he put it, tell my husband to put more babies in me (Damn I Love San Francisco) I yelled “That’s not my husband!!” As if the rest of it wasn’t embarrassing enough. The whole spectacle was a bunch of hilarious fun.

We got to Haight in time for the light, which made me extremely happy.

We were quite the crowd pleasers, made some new friends:

Haight Street was a bunch of fun. We decided to chase the light back over to the Gate but didn’t quite make it in time. Wah wah wah. So we were off to find dinner. We ended up down on the pier.

We had a good dinner and wandered a bit before heading further downtown to do some night photography in the city.

After a few hours downtown we decided it would be easier to stay up all night than to go back to the hotel and sleep for a couple hours then get up for the sunrise at the Gate. So. We wandered the city a bit before stopping at an all night diner for breakfast and heading up to the top of Fort Point where Derek played Angry Birds the rest of the night while I snored and Berry stretched out across the back seat of the Charger. Good times.

The best part was the sunrise being fogged in.

We went back to the hotel and slept for a few hours before we did some shots in the pretty window light in the room and headed out.

We were going to the Muir Wood, to shoot in the redwood forest, on the way the light was so nice I put a bounce in Ds lap and shot some images on the über-windey road.

The woods were packed so we went on to the beach which was beautiful.

After the beach we zoomed back to the city for some awesome sushi and then Haight Street for the tattoo I’ve been waiting to get. D ended up with one as well. From Mom’s Tattoo Parlor. Awesome.

We had one last stop before taking D home and that was the milkshake I promised him a couple moths ago.

We went to Mel’s dine (of course) and he got a chocolate, peanut butter, caramel milkshake. It was pretty good. D on sugar was about ten times worse than D on food. It was pretty damn funny.

We dropped him off, found our hotel and passed out cold.

Tagged: beauty, Canon, color, Derek Hutchins, illustrate, images, Jenn LeBlanc, model, photography, portfolio, portraits, sexy

For Kim

and all the ladies of the SOS Aloha! Derek Hutchins Hawai'ian style.

Filed under: Illustration, News Tagged: Derek Hutchins, lei, man, Sarong, sex, SOS Aloha, torso

Scouting shoots

I have had an insane August. The first week was spent being a romance author with RomCon, a romance reader convention in Denver. I’d like to say a quick note about the media here, since I happen to be a member. The treatment was ridiculous. Not a SINGLE outlet brought the story home beyond “It happens in Denver!” and all the tongue in cheek gags were over the top. You have no IDEA what the romance community is really about or what romance novels are, you all succeeded in making a spectacle of yourselves to hundreds of out of state visitors. I know any exposure is good exposure but for once it would be nice if someone would take the genre a little more seriously instead of simply making fun of the readers and authors for being passionate about something. You guys aren’t even scratching the surface. I wasn’t the only Colorado native author attending this event, there were lots of us.

OK off my soap box. *glares* Back to our regularly scheduled blog:

I brought Derek Hutchins out, the model who portrayed the hero in my illustrated novel, and we had a great time entertaining readers and making everyone happy in general. If you are interested in that chaos you can read my writer blog here.

I had one day to recover from that mess to do laundry, check my gear and get on a plane to California to shoot some portfolio images for Derek. I flew out Wednesday morning with Berry who came with me as key grip / lighting assistant. After the rental car fiasco (read: eff you Budget rent-a-car; National you are my HERO) we were cruising in a Charger toward Danville to meet Derek for lunch and get a game plan.

It had been a whole two days since I’d dropped him off at the airport in Colorado, good grief. After lunch Berry and I headed for San Francisco to scout a bit and to exchange our prissy white Charger with the radio static issue (no bueno for all the driving we were in for) for a mean looking black Charger. It made Berry *squee* with happiness. Worth it. Then we headed straight for the top of the PCH and headed for Rockaway Beach.

I love Rockaway because it is always covered in surfers and the sand is ashtray soft in places and like sandpaper in most others while being a range of black to white in tone. It adds a great texture to images. We took a couple shots and headed on our way. We stopped again in Half Moon Bay to book a room for the night in Salinas, then headed for Santa Cruz. I really wanted to shoot some youthful fun here at the boardwalk, and I’m already familiar with Santa Cruz after spending a couple days here last year hunting down…stuff. That trip was probably the start of my want to shoot a model around the Cabrillo Highway.

It was dark as sin on the beach of course, which is creepy because you can hear the surf coming but can’t see it coming. Also makes for focusing a bit difficult. Meh.

We had $10 lobsters and walked the boardwalk before heading out to Salinas for the night. The next morning we had breakfast and went straight to McWay Falls in Big Sur. Beautiful, stunning, inaccessible with gear. I’m not going to break my neck for this particular shot. The recent mudslides have carried away the easier access points, so it was nice to look at, but we had to move on.

Next we hit my number one. Garrapata Beach. The history here really pulls at my heart, and shooting in this area means many things to me. The last time I was here a big storm had come through and the beach was completely gone, there was maybe 30 feet below the cliffs to the waters edge. The stairs had been destroyed so you had to access the beach from the north side of Doud Creek which hits the beach. None of the recognizable rock formations I was familiar with were there, I thought they had been damaged or destroyed in the storm. What I learned this year was the beach was gone, but the rock formations were still there, they were just so much farther up you couldn’t see them. The beach this year was actually so high and deep that my favorite formation was not just viewable but easily accessible. When I shot it before I had to climb or hail mary to get the camera angle, now the footprint was at waist level. I was extremely happy to see something I thought to never see again. Learning how the coastline can change so drastically from year to year was a great bonus. (I’m a Colorado girl, I don’t know this stuff!)

They built a beautiful new staircase to access the main beach, and we walked it all the way to the Doud Creek outlet. Here I was not so happy. The creek was so incredibly overgrown it was hardly accessible and the water running down the canyon couldn’t even be seen. We hiked in to the staircases, and up the south case to get back to the car but it was obvious we wouldn’t be shooting the creek as I had been thinking about for the past two years. This is what scouting is for. So we found one location I thought was gone, and two I thought would be great but wouldn’t work at all.

Doud Creek Before and today:

The thing is it was so overgrown I couldn’t even get very far back into the valley, and it was not just overgrown by lilies and other wildflowers but by poison oak, which I did run into at some point. Not too badly. But I had to see how far we could get. Anyway it was obvious the creek was basically out for the style I wanted to shoot there, so we moved on, it was about time to head to Oakland and grab Derek do we could drive back to Monterey for a sunrise near Garrapata.

More on that later.

The importance of scouting, particularly in the natural world should be evident here. I gained one site but lost two.

Tagged: beach, beauty, Big Sur, California, Canon, color, Doud Creek, Footprints, Footprints in the sand, Garrapata Beach, Horizon, Jenn LeBlanc, McWay Falls, photography, Pier, rock formations, Rockaway Beach, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz Pier

Day one – PCH

A note about this project. Once again, I’m not saying much, we’re just calling this some portfolio work for now. But Derek and I have become good friends over the last couple years of working on my book, and we decided to do something new. More on that later. For now…behind the scenes. You can find the scouting trip here.

We picked up Derek and went over his wardrobe then headed for Monterey. The plan was to stay there and get up early to shoot the Garrapata area. Now, when I go out on assignment I use Hotwire, Priceline and other such websites for late bookings relatively cheap. I am usually happy with where we end up. This night, however, was not so bueno. We basically stayed at what I dubbed “The Murder Hotel” and everyone was upset with me from that moment on. The room I booked was no longer available (of course) there were no non smoking rooms left (of course) and there was only one room with a queen bed (!). I gave him the face. Those of you who know me, know the face. Well this was the face after midnight and a full day of scouting, driving and wanting sleep.

What we ended up with were two rooms, each with a queen bed. In the Murder Hotel. One was room number ONE. Right by the soda machine, easy access, first room by a noisy scream-covering machine. The Murder Room in the Murder Hotel. Derek got it. Now in all my life I have never wished I had a camera more at this moment. We moved everything into my room, that I would share with Berry, and D walked in first, saw this giant red stain on the floor and just hovered there staring at it.

“Someone was killed here.”

*Stares*

*Stares harder*

*Looks up*

“You have a giant blood stain on your floor.”

*Stares some more.*

*pouts*

“Oh my Gosh.” (maybe, perhaps not those exact words.) “This really is the murder hotel!” That was Berry.

Then all eyes on me. GAH!!

I threw my suitcase over the giant stain and D continued to stare as Berry laughed and we left everything to walk D to his room. Buddy system you know. At least the number wasn’t swinging from just one nail. Just saying. We left D, and I texted him once back at the room.

We woke in the morning to find we had survived, so we showered, bagged our pjs in hermetically sealed bags so the smoke smell wouldn’t infect the rest of our suitcases and got the heck out of there. I won’t say where it is, I won’t tell you which one. Because that is what adventure is all about. But if you end up in room 14 with a giant blood stain, you let me know.

We ended up at a little victorian place for breakfast then headed down the 17 mile drive. Beautiful scenery.

The first place we stopped to shoot was a little rocky shoreline covered with moss and seaweed. D didn’t see what I was going for, the land looked gross, but that’s ok. We got him in some nice Armani briefs and climbed down to the water and I sent him in.

It.

Was.

Cold.

Not just a little bit, but REALLY. Now, I wouldn’t make D do anything I would not do myself, for the most part, so I followed. I was straddling a rock shooting him in the frigid surf, while onlookers began to line up on the surrounding outcroppings. One woman shot some video and some other people took cell phone pics, I mean who wouldn’t? Sexy guy in briefs in the frigid water.

Well, that’s such a flattering pic of me isn’t it? My pants were soaked. D’s weren’t That’s how that went. It was fun. One guy, who had an Italian accent, followed us up to the car and asked if we were shooting for the new Armani catalog, and said he was going to go out and buy some Armani right then because D looked so good. He was very excited about having witnessed our little photo shoot.

That was the first time we stopped some traffic, but it wouldn’t be the last.

D wrapped up in a nice fluffy towel and we headed out. Next stop was the nice sweeping beach I love.

Cora isn’t the only one who crawls around on the ground. Just Saying.

We headed for the Doud Creek even though I knew it wouldn’t shoot well, die hard. It happens.

Then came back out to the beach to shoot a bit more. More Armani, more freezing surf, more fun.

D got a bit cold out there in that wicked surf with no body fat, so I wrapped him up in my sweater.

Sad Panda.

Then we moved on.

Next up was the jetty at  Moss Landing.

And a few more clothes.

We skipped Santa Cruz, and headed for San Francisco.

Tagged: beach, beauty, California, Canon, coast, color, Derek Hutchins, Garrapata, Horizon, illustrate, images, Jenn LeBlanc, location, model, Pacific Coast Highway, PCH, photography, portrait, portraits, sexy

But Sunday, Sunday was killer.

I woke up Sunday ready for the banquet at 10a.m. only to find I had to be checked out of the Crowne Plaza by 11a.m. and they couldn't extend it because everyone else had. You know, that's like 3, 4, no like 10 strikes against this place so far in 4 days. I wasn't too excited about them any more. But I digress. So I packed up and moved out and we missed the banquet, ah well, I heard it was good. Good for them.

Heather tracked me down to get her signed poster from Derek (yay) and we got ready for the rumble at noon. It was fun, interesting, it was set up speed dating style so they rang a bell and the tables moved, but most people just kinda did whatever they wanted. I did meet a few new people and Derek's fans got the last of the posters, so it was fun. I love watching his fans swarm him, and smile at me like, oh sorry we're here for him. As if I didn't know that, why do you think I brought him? I brought him for the fans, that was the WHOLE point, so I LOVED it.

We stuffed the car, Rita, Kati and Jamie in the back and Derek riding shotgun (no he wasn't going to squeeze between the girls) and headed for the mall. Yeah I said it. The mall. LOL Derek wanted some aviators like the ones he borrowed from Kati for the studio the day before. He was rocking' the aviators. So we went to get some. There was a firetruck parked outside the mall which really made me jumpy because no telling' where they would be INSIDE the mall. Not a good scene. My heart was racing. I shot some video of D cruising the mall. First time for video, it was…interesting, there seem to be a lot of butt shots, and not because D has a nice butt, which we all know he does, but because I was trying to figure out the focus…well…anyway.

After the mall we headed for Rita's fairy tale destination, The Cherry Cricket. Now I have been eating at the Cricket for EVER. It was a dive bar in Cherry Creek before it was considered posh. Like dive as in trapped between sketchy and don't go there. But it held on through the years and it's got the BEST burger in Denver hands down. The Cricket burger can be done any way you want. I either get it with white cheddar or cream cheese and mushrooms. MMMMM.

Anywhoo, after Cricket we were all dragging, I needed some WiFi and I had seen that Ink! moved in so we went over there for some java. Ink! is the BEST coffee in Denver. So that was a win all around. We hung out there for awhile and then it dawned on me what I wanted to shoot. We were going to go downtown, but there is a wall in Cherry Creek that I am smitten with. Cora and I discovered it last year while shooting a wedding (I DON'T DO WEDDINGS) and it was perfect for some hot portfolio shots, so we walked over there. In the meantime D invited his friend Billy to meet us, and he did with his other friend, whose name escapes me now, but since they said they had been joined at the hip since preschool I will just call him Billy II the redux. We shot the wall, in wicked hot direct streaking sunlight and the lot of us got hot and sweaty.

Not attractive. A woman behind us was bummed that she had left her camera in the car so I told her we would be there for a bit so she should run and get it. She ran. She got her picture 'for her daughter' and was happy.

We shot the hell out of that wall it was awesome in ways I can't even begin to explain. That wall makes me über happy. Kati handled my bounce while Jamie handled my social media and Rita handled the giggles.

Then we moved on to the fancy bedroom store, I wasn't to happy about that one. Then his buddies showed up and we walked on, I tried a couple other locations I wasn't too thrilled with:

Then we found another wall, which I made D climb. This wall was also very worth it, though placing him while surrounded by a giant green garbage can and a bunch of light poles was wicked awful, I did manage a few good shots here.

Way to work the bounce on this one Kati.

We were losing the light so we screamed downtown in time to lose it completely, I did shoot a pic for Pamela Clare though:

That is the Glass House aka The Glass Tower she used in her novel Breaking Point. (read it. seriously)

Then we headed downtown to dump images and get some food. We found a great little place with a rooftop terrace, had some pizza and drinks then headed back to the hotel without D.

All in all this day was not as ridiculous as the rest, but the images were the best. I really had a great time at RomCon getting to know everybody and I can't wait to come back next year and have even more fun. Derek was awesome, had fun with all his fans, survived a hellish bug, and managed to pull out the abs when it counted.

Filed under: Illustration, Images, News Tagged: #RomCOn11, beauty, book, Cherry Creek, color, Derek Hutchins, illustrate, illustrated, illustration, images, Jenn LeBlanc, male, man, model, photography, portrait, romance, RomCon, sexy, torso

For Tiffany Reisz

I promised Miss Tiffany I would tie Derek up for her during RomCon.

So here it is.

Final day of RomCon to come…

Filed under: BDSM, erotica, Illustration, Images Tagged: BDSM, illustration, rope

Then there was Saturday…

7 a.m. That's where I left off right?

Yes.

OKAY.

So I was awake again at 7 a.m. and I have no idea what I did. I might have edited some of the images from the day before, we had some highlander, and some luau pics that I wanted to post for everyone. My first thing on Saturday was to go see Pamela Clare talk about her I-Team series which is a new love of mine, starting with Breaking Point. Pamela came to read at the Denver Lady Jane's Salon when it was released and I had purchased and downloaded it before she was finished reading the snippet. It was FABOO. Then I found out we had another connection.

Anywhoo, that was great, Derek slept, then his friend Will showed up, he drove down from Greeley to hang out with D for awhile, we had just returned from a run to Chipotle for fuel, where my flip flop blew out and I then had to run in to Walmart to buy and emergency pair. We were sitting in the bar eating when I spotted Julie James.

This is where I kinda went nuts. I stared for awhile. I whispered to everyone a bit. Then I convinced myself to go say hello. I did. I spoke with Julie James and from my side we had a nice conversation, but I'm pretty sure from her side it seemed a bit sketchy. HOWEVER. I spoke rather lucidly (opinion again) and I did NOT throw up on her shoes. So I consider it a win. While speaking with her I helped her find Pamela Clare, who she had a lunch date with, and then was mistaken for Pamela Clare, who has a massive head of blonde hair like me. Then I walked away as calmly as possible. Freaked out with some of my Colorado author buddies, Lori Corsentino, Hillary Seidl, Mary Guida and I'm sure there were others there, but I don't remember. I just remember that I DID NOT throw up on Julie James' shoes and that made me ecstatically happy.

After lunch we were going to shoot, but Kim snatched D up to participate in the Strip-a-hero workshop with Brooks Johnson and the lot of the Hot Damn crew which was fun, because Will went with us to watch as D got undressed by Mary Wine while Jade Lee went after Brooks.

Photo by The Hot Damn Crew

After the strip-off we headed for the makeshift studio. We shot some leather pants and swords, some more kilt, some other stuff, then Guy arrived for his shoot with Kim and we put Derek in the great kilt and took him out to the giant waterfall in the lobby. This is where hotel management spoke with us about lawsuits. I am REALLY hoping the video and images (I saw you Delilah Marvelle) that readers and authors shot during this little shoot start surfacing. If you shot something let me know!! I would love to link to it!!

I love this smile.

Final images from this shoot later.

After the waterfall fiasco we…um…something, then we did something else. I think we passed out in the room for awhile and later on we went in search of food again.

While we were out following Will's errant GPS to a non-existaant Sushi joint Levi showed up. Now you guys know who Levi is if you follow my blog. We finally found the Sushi joint and went with Kati and Jamie, after Levi gave Jamie a nice show in his car. The sushi was awful. Tasted like rubber. But I was so hungry at that point I didn't care because after meeting Julie James (JULIE JAMES) I could not eat my Chipotle without actually casting up my accounts. On the way back to the hotel I asked Will if he was planning on staying with us for the night, he put his arm around my shoulders and said, in a saucy voice, "Well that's the plan." wink wink, schmooze. I glanced at D who looked away and shook my head. Third call to my husband. Sorry honey, I will be sleeping in a room with my 24 year old model and his cute friend from Greeley. No worries. Insert googlie eyes here.

That night we went downtown. D was feeing better and originally we had planned to dress Brooks and Derek in Kilts and regalia and take them down to the Tilted Kilt, but we lost Kim after awhile and decided to go down on our own. We had dinner at Wazee Supper Club which was awesome, love that place, they had live jazz for their 30th birthday party or something. Will finished everybody's food. And I mean he yelled at people and snatched their leftovers. (He was headed steadily toward happy drunkness)

He was fun though. After dinner and music we headed for The Tilted Kilt and hung out on the balcony chatting for awhile. It was really nice. Will danced with a bride and won a boa.

But before that happened, someone said something about fisting, and Will decided he needed to know more about it. I think we were talking about Tiffany Reisz' book Seven Day Loan, which is FABULOUS, and that happened. I believe I tweeted Tiffany. He wanted to know what you do once you get up there.

Yeah.

Drunk boys at romance conventions.

Wow.

He told Jamie she had too much cleavage (?) and was upset that Kati was married, and didn't say anything until the end of the night (?) and really was just fun to watch. Ah I miss being a young college student.

We walked back the the car and he accosted yet another future bride, told her she better be sure because it's forever, then gave her his boa.

All in all a pretty crazy night. Derek and I just hung back and drank water and watched.

We got to the hotel and I, well, just tried to edit images while two boys got into their skivvies and went to sleep. My high school self wanted to take pictures, but my adult self said that's Edward-Cullen-in-the-corner-while-you-sleep-creepy cut it out. So there you go.

Will left early on Sunday, he had a date with the beerfest. Really, he is sounding like a lush and I don't think he is, he was a really nice guy, he is in college, and came down for some fun, which he had. And we witnessed.

So Sunday. AI. The BIG BIG shoot…

That day did NOT require a call to my husband, but two more of Derek's friends did show up.

Filed under: News Tagged: beauty, color, Delilah Marvelle, Derek Hutchins, historical, historical romance, illustrate, illustrated, illustration, images, Jenn LeBlanc, Julie James, kilt, lights, love story, male, man, men, model, novel, Pamela Clare, photography, portrait, romance, sexy, studio, tilted kilt, Victorian