Wherein I spend 6 hours acting like a fitness model

So my 30th birthday present from my amazing and supportive husband was a photo session with the lovely and talented Amanda Waltman of Art of Subtlety Photography. Nick's idea was that I've worked so hard on my fitness that documenting it for the big 3-0 seemed appropriate. I have to admit that, though I am not a girly girl and have never in adult life had photos professionally taken, I approached this opportunity with my trademark obsessiveness and just went for it.

I have known Amanda for a while, so I was already excited about the shoot, but she far surpassed my wildest expectations in terms of creating a fun, supportive, creative and dynamic environment. This whole "posing for the camera" thing is pretty new to me, but Amanda gave awesome direction to help me look my best, and had great ideas for setting up a huge range of shots. We took catalog shots, we took high-art shots, we took muscle definition shots, we took "this one's for Nick" come hither shots...it was great.

So the whole experience started off at my house. My friend Shemai came over, did my hair and helped me with styling. She was invaluable...I am pretty hopeless with hair but Shemai managed to give me a soft, fun, tousled look that was really well-styled without looking overdone or making me feel like I was wearing someone else's hair.

Amanda arrived with a mobile studio. She had all kinds of lighting, backdrops and meters to get the full studio experience in my living room. It took her about 15 minutes to get everything set up and adjusted and then we started shooting.

After several hours and wardrobe changes, we took a break and packed everything up for a venue change. We headed down to a section of the Edmonds beach where there was sand, water, rocks and seawall to work with, and did another session that lasted 90 minutes or so. I was in the water, out of the water, doing yoga, swinging kettlebells, overhead squating driftwood, climbing up on rocks, hunching back against concrete...all while having a blast.

I think the single downside was that I got a bit of a burn over my fake-o tan. Not sure why I'm surprised...I was at the beach in the middle of the day in 80 degree weather wearing no sunscreen and covered in sweet almond oil to give my muscles a nice sheer...the only worse thing I might have done was lay down for a three or four hour nap on a reflective blanket.

I am super excited to see the proofs. Amanda took tons of shots, and she said it would take her a few days to get through all of them and get them posted to the client section of her website. I'm hoping in the next few days I'll get a preview of how everything turned out and can start finalizing my order.

I figure if a few of these pictures are as good as I hope, I'm going to send them in to Oxygen Magazines "fitness/body transformation" section. I think I would make a pretty darn good "fitness transformation" subject, if I do say so myself. I also figure it can't hurt to send the kettlebell stuff over to Crossfit.com, since they post pics up on the mainsite and I would consider it a tremendous honor to be Crossfit eyecandy for a day. If nothing comes of either I won't be too bummed, though...this photo thing was really for me.