Fashion Practice

One thing about Steph, she is not into her looks, in fact when I met her she had great self confidence but had this overall acceptance that she was not very beautiful. I think part of that was her time in the military, and before that growing up on a farm. She wore uniforms on duty and jeans with a tank top off duty. Every now and then she'd try to look nice, but I could tell she was out of place. She did not put a lot of time into her make up or looks like her civilian friends would. We'd go out on occasion with her friends and they would have all the make up on and nice looks or dresses. I could tell Steph felt left out but lacked the energy to put the money and effort into all of that. 

She would ask me..."do you think my friends are pretty/hot" I never lie to her and made it clear when we got into a relationship that I would sugar coat anything, even if it made me look really bad. But I told her honestly. "I think you have attractive friends, but I don't think you need make up or some dress to make you feel amazing. I think you are really pretty in your own way." Part of why I thought she was pretty was just how she acted, kind and always smiling. Plus clothes have never done her justice... not even the most expensive dress would show how she looks in her natural state. 

I struggled with saying the right thing for years starting out in our relationship. (This was also around the time she was getting into running marathons and crossfit.) which helps immensely with body positivity, not necessarily for looks but being confident in your self and having good feels.  

I mentioned I started out my photography journey photographing her while she was pregnant. Although I loved photographing her, to me it was just personal in nature. I was photographing my wife and saw it as that. As I grew in my photography business working with designers and models, I would neglect to include Steph in the projects, thinking she would not want to be involved or the client would not want to use her.  It would be 2 years later it dawned on me I should start including her in the business.

I was doing a photoshoot one night, we had 4 models over, 2 make up artists, a designer and 2 assistants. A full house with a full night of photo-shooting.  I was nervous and so focused on getting it right I did not even notice Steph looking on and trying to be involved. Later that night she asked if one day she could be in a shoot, not just a practice shoot. 

I had an upcoming gig for a local designer, she was looking for models and I recommended Steph along with 2 other models I had worked with. The designer agreed.  

Steph was excited I could tell, again not because she thought she was this beautiful model, but more so just to be involved with something that I was passionate about I think. From a technical standpoint, Steph does not have a model look so much as just a down to earth nice girl who has a nice smile. (thats what I love about her when photographing her) 

So to get a little more comfortable in front of the camera we planned a multi look shoot. Besides the maternity shoots, and a couple practice shoots where I was testing the lighting, or some candid looks this was one of our first planned shoots and the first one that I named which would launch the project Memoirs of Steph. "Fashion Practice" we did in April of 2018. I started photographing people in 2017 and Steph was pregnant most of 2017 of which I documented fully. She gave birth in Jan of 2018, and took a couple months to recover. So looking back this would be one of the first shoots we did to kick things off. 

Clearly we were all over the place with looks and themes. We had a lot of fun taking a night to do different looks. It was my idea to photograph some nude looks which like I said , in my opinion is her best look. You can see when we did the nude looks there was more consistency in the style. 

Later that week we did the Designer shoot, we did some "standard or safe looks" as I call them, for her portfolio, then we did some creative looks, one of which I included.