Hilton Head

I'm back from the magical island of consumer paradise... Hilton Head. Actually, Hilton Head is one of the prettier places I have been, and the people there have always been incredibly nice. It's the people leading up to my stay at Hilton Head that make the trip fall a little flat. My first time ever there was around 1998 or '99. I was sent there for hurricane relief be Wal-Mart. I was expecting to go into a store that was covered in broken glass and water damage. Instead, we get there and find a pretty clean, but very packed store. It seems there is an ordinance on the island that says tractor trailers cannot stay on the island more then 24 hours. So when the island was evacuated, the people left, but the Wal-Mart trucks kept on going, and they ended up with roughly 8 trailers of merchandise that needed to be stocked or dealt with. So what I thought would be a tough week of cleaning, turned out to be a tough week of stocking. Anyway, when our week was up, we realized they needed us for one more night, so we went back for another night, except for one person in our group, who decided he was not going, bought himself a 6-pack and stayed at the hotel. He is now a co-manager and making about 4-times what I make.
Second bad experience was a really bad hotel room, I don't remember the exact details anymore.
This is my third stay to the island, even though I have made day trips to it since my second stay. I booked a room at the Metropolitan on the beach. I get the confirmation, the money is taken from my account and off we go....
The rain was incredibly rough, which made using a phone in a car difficult. But I called to let hotel know I was running a couple hours late. "Um... are you sure you're spelling your name right? You are not in our system." So I call Orbitz (never EVER use Orbitz) And this is no joke... I talked to EIGHT people before they finally managed to get me a new room. The biggest issue with Orbitz, they outsource their call-center to India. I love India, I love their accent, but in a rain pounded car, it can be very difficult to understand them. So the four of them that spoke very clearly were customer service people, and could only listen to my problem, they couldn't actually book a new room. They four that spoke the worst, and couldn't understand me, were the sales people. They would get frustrated and transfer me.
Anyway, don't use Orbitz. They also gave me a $50 credit for their error. They didn't use it I am now finding out.
Ok. So we pick Shelter Cove Harbor as our location. I talk to the harbor master and I even get a charter for free for a model and myself as long as I give copy of photos to them. So I call the models... not a single one of them is available to go at that time. So I prep for first model. A no show. Today is Wednesday, so it has been 5 days and still no call or text or email as to why she didn't bother to show.
So on to a new location for the band Prologic13. I picked a revolutionary war era graveyard for them. I set up my lights, toured the area and got my ideas. They showed up and I went through the various poses I had and then asked them what else they wanted, and that's when the fun started. Each one had an idea of what they wanted, so I ended up with a lot of photos.
Back to Shelter Cove for Ashley. A very pretty young lady who dreams of being a supermodel. The wind had picked up, and was blowing west, so when she was facing the sun for lighting, the wind was blowing the hair into her face. But we got through, with two outfits. Her little sister was with her, and was a little diva. So I got a release for her and shot her too. She was all over the place. We'd set up a shot and just before I could snap it she'd be running off saying "I got an idea. You'll like it."
So then I had Crystal, a gorgeous woman with plenty of ideas, and expressions that reminded me so much of an early Cindy Crawford. We worked our way around the harbor, and then the sun fell behind some trees and we couldn't get back into it, but she said the harbor by her house was a clear view of the sunset. So we all jumped into our cars and drove like maniacs through the island. We set up and hit a pretty nice sunset.
You are probably dieing to see the pics, so I'll post one here, and you will have to visit http://wmiphotography.smugmug.com to see more.