If you remember from our #RRExotic Instagrams, this past January our team headed out west to sunny Palm Springs to shoot Rachel Roy‘s Spring / Summer 2013 Campaign. We spent the first couple of days location scouting with our amazing producer in areas all around southern California. We danced on boulders in Cougar Buttes, walked the sands of Joshua Tree, found a desert oasis at the Salton Sea and felt the colors of the earth at Painted Canyon.

When we are location scouting for a story, we look for the scenes that have been playing out in our imagination to come to life. We look at the light, we imagine the scene and we take test shots. When we get back to our hotel, we go through the images and match them up with the looks our stylist has sent stills of from the fitting the previous day back in NYC, plan out routes and timing and make lists for the next day of what we are still looking for. I love location scouting; all the possibilities are ahead of you, you just have to see it.

Here are some snapshots of our journey to and around California taken with an old point and shoot Olympus camera, a Polaroid Spectra with ImpossibleUSA film, Fuji Instax and a Canon 1DX.

Also, this place in Palm Springs was AWESOME.