When in Rome!

Yesterday we left our new family in Salerno to stay a few days in Rome. The day was hot, but I looked forward to visiting one of my all-time favorite cities. We checked into our kickass Air B&B and got ourselves situated, then I noticed my ankles had swollen to +50% their normal size. I assumed it was brought on by heat, the bug bites I’d been collecting for days, and all the walking I’d been doing, but this has ever happened to me before. My mom, being a mom, made us go to a local pharmacy, where a kind physician let me buy some prescription grade antibiotic cream to put on twice a day. 

By morning, the swelling had gone down considerably, especially since I had slept with my leg elevated. By 10am I was up and ready to start my first shoot in Rome, but of course, the model was late. My aunt and mom, knowing they needed to leave our flat for the shoot, waited until the last moment to leave to avoid the day’s heat. Thankfully, since traffic was so bad today in Rome, the model was an hour late, allowing them to have a reprieve. 

Finally Simona Scalia arrived, with a sore throat so bad she could hardly talk, and when she did it was with a harsh, raspy voice out of some weird surreal cartoon. Still, no matter how she sounded, she still looked perfect. Her body was simply incredible, and her overall proportions were out of this world. Her face wasn’t as delicate as I would have liked, but that’s like complaining about an A+ that isn’t an A++.

With only an hour to shoot (I had arranged to visit many tourist locations with my mom and aunt at noon), she said in her broken English: 

“You…ah….wanta….me-ah….to…uh….start with ze nudes?”

Sure, go for it. 

And with that, she stripped down to nothing right there in the living room and we began. You could tell right away she was a pro, posing and moving, dancing around gracefully, needing no music or direction. She was long and lean, elegant and sexy, and though I was sure she was probably a troublesome person to be in a relationship with, she was definitely fun to shoot. 

She didn’t seem to care too much what I was shooting, but when I started to finally show her the back of the camera, she stopped her posing and hugged me, realizing that I was actually a good photographer and not just some shrub that had hit her up and offered her a few Euros for her troubles. That’s when her mood changed. Now she was more engaged with me, offering ideas, realizing that I wanted shots themed around classic art and dark, mood images. She loved that aesthetic, and soon we had shot over 1200 images and several video clips.

She hugged me profusely every few minutes when I’d show her what we were capturing, and we talked about shitty fake models and shitty fake photographers, how conservative young Italian women are and how rare it is to find local nude models in Europe. She complained about people in Italy and I complained about people in LA, and we definitely connected on a deep, professional level. I was sorry to hear my timer go off, which I had set for the time I knew I’d have to get ready for my mom and aunt to return. I total we only shot for 48 minutes, but we shot so many set-ups that we have several sets to share when I return, as well as plenty for her turn in the book.

Let me know what you think, sorry for the poor cell phone quality images! Thank you for making this trip possible for my mom and aunt, this is your Patreon dollars at work!