These three images are from a shoot fairly early in my so-called career. Just to recap, I took up a camera after having corrective surgery on both eyes -- I had struggled through a lot of adventures lugging a set of giant coke-bottle glasses (contact lenses were incredibly painful if they were to carry enough oomph to do the job). My initial inspiration, and a continuing one, was to lose people in patterning. Then I realized it was more fun to FIND them.
I landed in Charleston during that magical November window where the weather is reminiscent of my own Pacific NW -- cooler, fresher-feeling. It was a return of sorts as I had spent a ridiculous week in the city more than a decade earlier and had very fond memories of the hospitality and possibility of the place. And, for once, it was a story that didn't carry any thought of outstanding warrants to justify the long absence.
Like my first visit, I had managed to rent a unique boat moored at one of the little docks just out of downtown, this one a century-old wooden vessel that had been turned into a BnB and later in the week I'd cover it with glitter, powdered sugar and paint in various shoots. As a side bar -- never play with glitter in a space that isn't your own. I scrubbed those wooden planks a dozen times and I'm pretty sure I just managed to get a slurry of sweetly glittered paint into the bilge. Someone will be puzzled someday.
Talking to my cabbie from the airport, he volunteered that he knew a model and showed me Meredith's instagram. I promptly hit her up to see if she'd be interested in shooting and before I pulled my bags out of the trunk I had my first shoot set up for the following day...and almost missed out.
Meredith is many things but decisive about her outfit is apparently not one of them. We agreed to meet at a little Spanish place on my end of town and she called just after our meetup time to tell me she was still staring at her closet. The food and drink were good....
She called again an hour later saying she had just parked. I had moved through lunch and, tbh, my irritation was vastly tempered by having been fed. I remind myself regularly of this moment because had I told her to "forget it" in a fit of pique I would have missed a pivotal meeting and a wonderful human.
When she finally arrived, having used her "usual" parking spot on the other side of town and walked, we took some time to chill and get acquainted. First off, none of these pictures do her justice -- Meredith is stunningly beautiful and engaging, obviously a smartypants and just flat-out awesome. It was early afternoon when we finally got going and she led me on a romp through the city, unlocking little back alleys and showing me things "just around the corner" that I'd never have found on my own.
At the time, and still a minor obsession, I was mostly interested in finding the limits of the camera sensor. Can I wash someone out with light or shadow or pattern or fabric? How much can I fuck up and still find a way to pull something suggestive out of the morass? This was, a friend pointed out, a habit I had evidenced with guitar, as well. I don't RECOMMEND it to anyone but a headlong rush to the furthest physical point on the map has worked well for me more than once.
Meredith, on the other hand, had done some Victoria's Secret, some bikini looks and was primarily a wedding-dress model around Charleston. She joked that her Puerto Rican derriere was getting the best of her Chinese shoulders and if THAT isn't what makes America great I don't know what is. Throw in that she's Vermont-raised and South Carolina-livin' and I start humming the Battle Hymn of the Republic and saluting. Anyway, her aesthetic was more Vogue and less vague. We made an unlikely pairing. She wasn't the first really great model I'd worked with but the locational-nature of our meander put us more on her turf than previous models had found in my studio.
If I have any real talent in photography, I think it's in dropping my own ideas and chasing what actually works in the moment. We moved through some playful lifestyle-feeling stuff and had a great time on the college campus using window reflections on the open porches. The shot here, in an otherwise-locked alleyway, gave some silhouettes that put us back on familiar ground for me and remain some of my favorite shots. We eventually wound up on the steps of the Customs Building at sunset and luckily there was a restaurant right across Market Street. We had worked up an appetite and Meredith had done the whole day in heels. I was a little under-dressed for Burwell's, which turned out to be one of the low-key best joints in the city, but Meredith looked right at home. While our waiter was explaining that he was sent to France regularly to build relationships with the wineries on offer, I asked M if she might have anything special she'd like to shoot while I was in town. I have to give serious credit to the waiter for not missing a drop when she responded that she'd "really be happiest naked and covered in doughnuts", which is exactly where she found herself a few days later.
This lesson has really stuck with me over the last few years. A strong model is the foundation of a great shoot. My job is to steer us a particular direction and of course I'm making lens and setting decisions that will interpret the moment. But keeping the model in mind and playing to their strengths will do more in unexpected ways than whatever I was initially considering. I try to have a framework or two (dramatic, whimsical, colorful, subdued) and there's a tote in the truck with a few costume pieces and props but a strong model will pull things her direction.
I was so taken with Meredith that as soon as I got home I called her and asked what she was doing for Christmas and we met up in Key West for a short week. The highlight was certainly getting out into the immensity of the Gulf and playing on a sand shoal. Honestly, I need to meet a Meredith in every city -- I could quite happily while away the rest of my days with a camera in hand and a witty dinner companion.
By this time I had already met some models in Oregon who had become great friends and whose rambling road-trip discourses were shaping my thinking about model photography. I had started with a reflexively male-gaze erotica idea but found that it didn't really resonate with me. I leaned more into figurative art and while embracing the nude I've kept it more in a space that felt universal, more the Sally Mann-style nudity than than MetArt. I've shot a few private things for couples and for OF and one for an older gal who "wanted some hot pictures for the boyfriends". LOL. Maternity work turns out to be really fun and I've even tried my hand at weddings, which I also enjoy. Commercial work carries with it the challenge of pleasing the client and I do love the freedom to fuck it up to please myself. In any case, I struggle between the urge to make a conventionally "pretty" image and the thought that we KNOW the model is pretty so let's find something unexpected to give the viewer something to chew on. I'm unabashedly a fan of smaller breasts and great nipples but also of curves and lines that shout femininity from the rooftops. There's a never-ending cornucopia of new ways to capture an image and I find myself using fewer props, becoming simpler in pursuit of a message of truth.
I still have opportunities to smile at Meredith every so often. She runs a business now and I have given up trying to talk her into a desert getaway. But I owe her a huge debt of gratitude because I review these files and relearn these lessons every so often. Thanks, M.
I'd be curious to hear others takes on their evolution as photographers. More in the alt-text. #tutorial #mentorship #collaboration #artmodel #stylevsstyle #giveandtake #pdxphotographer #travelingphotographer #muse #inspiration