The 58-Degree Shiver

The boat lurches and my models grip their seats and railings. Its like February but it’s somewhat warm in the air depending where you’re standing. I check my camera settings and call out "Can you, pass me a glass!". It's about 62 degrees in Newport Beach and they are getting ready into their bikinis. My phone light up with a video from Boston, the streets buried under two feet of snow, cars transformed into anonymous white lumps.

"The sun is so bright here!" One of the models announced. Feeling carefree, windblown, like enjoying this leisurely day on the water before feeling frozen by the cold breeze at sea.

Here's what nobody tells you about creating "aspirational content," it requires being uncomfortable so that one can feel desire. Every image of effortless beauty costs effort, just not from the people who'll eventually see it. Every casual moment is choreographed by me, performed by her, and sold to them. Every sun-kissed glow comes with goosebumps, just off-camera.

But the absurdity runs deeper than just the gap between image and reality. It's February 1st, and I'm orchestrating a Summer fantasy while America freezes. While I'm directing her to pretend the Pacific is warm enough to jump into, people in Buffalo are genuinely trapped in their homes in a winter storm. We occupy the same country, the same moment in time, but I'm manufacturing a different planet entirely. Isn’t that crazy?

This is the strange work of image-making in California, I get paid to sell sunshine, but there's a guilt economy running underneath. The creative tax isn't just the cost of gear, it's the low-grade awareness that I'm trading in desire while others deal with disaster. That my "perfect" lighting setup happens the same week atmospheric rivers flood someone's home three hours north. That I'm asking another human to be cold for my vision. Funny thing is, she from a state that suffers the consequence of Winter.

I check my camera. The light's fading. "I think we got it," I tell her as she rushes over with pure joy. I save it. Later, my models will post our boat photos. Both will be real. Both will be performance. Both will be February in America, a country too large for any single story, but small enough that I'm creating one version while others live another.

Maybe that's the real editorial, not the contrast between our winters, but what it means to direct leisure while others endure necessity. To manufacture warmth for profit while others simply survive cold.

To hold the camera while someone else holds the pose, both of us complicit in selling a California that exists only in the frame.