Starting off the new year with a new model at last. Getting a model when you can’t afford to pay anything till you sell is a real pain, it really cut down on your options. I had to wait for this lady for months while her life played out. However the wait was more than worth it as I think you will agree.
We had our first shoot some weeks ago, and she surpassed all my expectations. After some initial jitters she warmed up, we got some great stuff. I can’t imagine what it must feel like for a young woman to go to some man’s apartment, and get completely naked. How vulnerable you must feel, we had only talked about the shoot, and now here she was no matter that I knew a good friend of hers that had posed for me.
Of course one of the selling points is that I shoot film. As she has an interest in photography I explained what I was doing, how the meter worked. What information the meter was telling me, and how I was interpreting it to get what I wanted from that information. We then started with her poses, what I wanted to accomplish with them. We started off with her completely nude, so we’d get that out of her system.
I love working with older models, they are much more relaxed, and being nude gives them no place to hide. It’s a jolt to the system, facing any fears they may have, and overcoming them. Explaining what I am doing, how I am working on a particular look or feel, and why. That takes their minds off being nude for no reason. Treating their bodies with respect, and at the same time working with them to make them look their best. They are here to do a job, not for entertainment…, soon as they realize that we are both on the same page they can relax any fear that they may have.
So some of the poses we had worked, and some did not. Some we can revisit another time, we have already done another session to test some ideas. I expect the next shoot to be even better as we know each other better now. We have formed a creative unit to collaborate on ideas I have with the reality of what is possible. We can now work on the creativity of our projects with none of the fears. We are now a team working on the same goals…, creating art.