Trial & Error, pt. 3

Here’s the link to the images: 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7MlCEoEDaftZUVqcW5QNjFSRlk

TRIAL & ERROR

By special request, someone found a few of these images rummaging through the nether regions of my Patreon archives and asked for more, so I’m happy to oblige!

Madison contacted me early last year and asked to do a test shoot with me. I’d never met her, but I had a pending project where I needed a nude model to walk like a zombie or with her arms outstretched as if asking for help (I occasionally get hired by artists doing body studies for paintings). She agreed to the idea, and I suggested we play with fire while we were at it. Two days later there we were in the dark of night lit only by my headlights and fire.

She was friendly and polite, but there wasn’t a lot of passion or personality there, which is often what happens. I’ve often said that being a model requires more than just a desire to take one’s clothes off, but apparently she didn’t get that memo.

She thought she needed to hit specific poses as if they were mannequin requirements, and since she had only ever worked with GWCs (pervy Guys-With-Cameras, not real photographers) and had only posed for cheesy bikini or nude shots, she didn’t get the artistic desire to move around fluidly, capturing more than just a static body shape.

Again, this is all fine for the most part. I didn’t need her to define Pi or reinvent the wheel. Still, it would have been nice to not have to direct every angle, movement, and head-tilt, which I basically had to do because she kept doing the same thing over and over. When you do a test shoot, you never know what you’re going to get. Some days you meet a Marilyn Monroe, other days you meet a Joan Rivers.

Eventually I gave up and started focusing on body details, requiring the least amount of effort on her part. “Just stand there and arch your back a bit,” I suggested, hoping I’d get enough useable shots as to make the evening go by as quickly as possible. 

The next half hour stretched out for an eternity, but eventually I knew I had enough and called it quits. I had to make polite small talk on the 15 minute drive back home, and I feel bad saying that I was relieved when she got in her own vehicle and left. I have nothing against her personally, she was just a bit dull, a tad dry; there was no “THERE” there.

Later when I reviewed the images, I was so dissatisfied with the lack of variety that I only picked out the best 2-3 images and shared them. She of course loved them, but they felt stilted and tainted to me, and so almost all of the images in the attached folder have never been seen by anyone but myself.   

What did you think? Was I too hard on her? Did you like this simple series of Madison? Please send feedback, positive or negative or simply constructive, by leaving comments in the box below or in my DMs! And thank you as always for your continued support!!

Here’s that link again: 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7MlCEoEDaftZUVqcW5QNjFSRlk