Muscle Beach at Venice Beach Final Bikini Contest of 2014 - the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

OK - there was no ugly, I just always liked that phrase ever since Clint Eastwood's movie by that name came out - just watched it the other day.  BTW - don't know if hashtags make a difference in these posts, but just in case:  #MuscleBeach #BikiniContest #VeniceBeach .

The good, of course, was all the great contestants, the judges (who pretty much agreed with my picks), the organizers, the crowd that watched and participated, and the photographers for capturing it all for all time (I'm in this last group, obviously).  And all the free T-shirts they gave to everyone in the audience.  Also for the contestants, the prizes were pretty nice, too!

So what was the bad - the late start.  Official start time was 2:00pm, but actual start time was close to 3:00pm.  I think there may have been some loss of audience participation and some people left before the competition was over.  If I had brought my paddle tennis paddle, I might have left to play some PT.  They did apologize for the late start, but no reason was given.

Now that the good, the bad, and the ugly are out of the way - if you were a Bikini Contestant, and you would like to see any of the photos I will be posting here or on FB, in their full size, please don't hesitate to contact me.  There is no charge for this at this time, as long as it is for your personal use.  If you really like the photos, and would like to do a photo shoot with me, let me know that, too.  Also, at this time, for anyone in the bikini contest, there will be no charge for a photo shoot.  I always meet before a shoot to go over ideas, etc.  If you are interested, you can often find me just south of Muscle Beach in Venice at the Paddle Tennis courts.  There is a link to my website on the right margin of this blog.

Now, a word about the photos - they were shot in RAW, edited in Lightroom, and then converted to JPG images, both full size and small for FB and this blog.  Many were cropped, but no individual retouching was done, because, well, you all looked great, so it wasn't needed.  In a future post, I'll talk about why I shoot mostly in RAW, as opposed to JPG (although I get good results with both).

I currently have 274 photos - many are similar to others, but expressions and poses changed, so kept more than I normally would have if I was shooting only one person.

Here are the first 20, starting with an overview:

For a bird's eye view, you either have to be a bird........or a drone.

More to follow in the coming days.  Hope you are all having a great weekend.