Day 13 - Hell Yeah

Today, as promised, I believe I have made up for the bad photos of the last few days. For on this day, Day 13 (wooohhooooo, scary) I have shot a friend of mine and it was great!

Completely unexperienced and nervous, but willing to try, she went along for the ride, and next to turning out brilliant, the shoot was a lot of fun.


Read on about it all after the jump.....

Fucking Up

The days coming up to the day of the shoot were what I would, in retrospect, call, rather perculiar. Rosemijn, which is my friend's name, and I only met not even two weeks ago when I asked her to model for me. Døh! *Facepalm* Although she immediately said yes, she had some, well we'll call them 'reservations' about the whole ordeal. She actually had spent an entire morning (and the night before) feeling anxious. Bigger Døh. And that is the part I completely f*cked up big time. Normally, when I ask someone to model for me, I make absolutely sure that they are at ease with me before asking them (or they have to be (semi) professionals)).
Well if I can tell you one thing, you don't want to give your model any nightmares you can spare her. Luckily she just told me about it and we decided it was best to have a talk so I could explain a little bit and hopefully comfort her somewhat. This absolutely was for the best, and we set the date: Tomorrow!

Still fucking up, although a bit less

Of course, as usual, I had to fuck up at least one more thing, and for once this turned out to be the equipment/technical bit. I have never shot anyone with glasses before, and totally forgot about the specular highlights (the reflections in shiny bits, remember?) of the umbrella in her glasses. They looked fine on the back of the camera, but of course they did less so on the screen. Ah, well most of them still really worked out fine, and as for the photo to the right, that is how it's supposed to be done, with regard to specular highlights.

I'm not a model

This was what she said to me, and I didn't really expect her to have modelled before nor to have any skills. I just saw so many different great natural looks on her face in the last few weeks, and it were those that made me want to photograph her. I of course told her not to worry, and that I would talk her through it. I am still learning and had to keep being reminded (either by myself or sometimes by Rosemijn) to give her enough input on how to look, stand and all those modelling things. Last two shoots I did this wasn't a problem, but I think I was still hitting myself in the head over the whole thing of fucking up the days before. Silly me *looks as innocent as possible*.

"I'm not a  model", yeah right!

By the end of the shoot though, she had completely 'taken over' and she didn't need any directions from me anymore. She was posing, and simply just modelling as if it had already become second nature to her. In my opinion she actually did a much better job than the 1 or 2 actual professional models I have shot before. Just take a quick look at photo 3 in this post and you will see what I mean, because that was just her and she had had no direction of me except for an occasional change of stance/seating. Fab eh?

Fun

I think photographers sometimes forget (and models too, for that matter) that it should be fun as well. Especially when you're not shooting for any commercial reasons whatsoever. At the end of the shoot I put on some music I brought along and since Rosemijn had just completely warmed up to me, we started goofing aroung. I had already positioned the lights in a different way for the last series of photos when she, well she started dancing. The only thing I could do was, aim, squeeze the shutter, and have a lot of fun. We changed the music around, and she just possed and danced and just impressed the heck out of me with being so photogenic. I shot those in BnW and purposefully left the background in because I absolutely loved the whole spontaneity of it.
This is just one photo of the series which is coming online on my site soon (I will post about it of course) and I think it's great.


All in all, I had a fantastic day, and luckily for me, Rosemijn has agreed to model for me again in a later stage. I will certainly be posting about it again when the time comes.
Until then, enjoy the photos, and drop us (Rosemijn and me) a line in the comment section below to let us know what you think of the photos.

Cheers :D