In June 2008 I had just turned 19 and I still was a kid at heart. I would spend a lot of my free time unicycling at the skate park with friends. Practicing jumping off ramps, riding along rails, and so on. This one day I was at the skate park and I saw a middle aged dude with a camera show up. He didn’t look like the type of person to hang out at a skatepark, but he happened to have 2 people with him. They were two models and they were dressed up (or down) making all these almost silly poses, though it was somehow sexy. I remember they walked around and played on the ramps, posed with a couple of the skaters and continued on as the guy snapped dozens of pictures of them on every angle imaginable. I was intrigued.
It was the a couple months later now, still 2008. I had eagerly been researching shooting glamour for some time now. It was kind of like photographing a portrait of someone, though instead of getting to know who they are through the image it was purely meant to be beautiful and pretty. Being a teenager who grew up with an internet connection, I was no stranger to the joys of viewing glamorous images. I was sick of seeing how other people shot them, and I wanted the opportunity to shoot some myself! I was ready so I started browsing sites like OneModelPlace.com & ModelMayhem.com to look for a model to collaborate with. While looking around at models profiles from the area I came across Tina. She actually happened to be one of the models who I had seen at the skate park.
I planned on reaching out to her to see if she would collaborate on a shoot with me. First I had to come up with a concept though. I know the city of Stratford like the back of my hand and there was this one spot that stood out to me and looked very picturesque. It was a lone tire swing under a tree. It was between a street and a farmers field at the edge of town, and didn’t seem to be on any person’s actual property. I drew out a couple poses and reached out to Tina.
We ended up scheduling a video chat to discuss the concept a bit further as well as clothes. Clothes and makeup were things I actually hadn’t thought of yet, I was nervous and didn’t realize all the work that went into a shoot as well as all the decisions I’d have to make. She put together a couple outfits and ran them by me. I was easy going and so went with the first option she showed. We planned a date to shoot and met up.
I biked out to the location, feeling so nervous my mouth had gone dry. I paced back and forth feeling awkward and anxious. She ended up showing up, being dropped off by her roommate who helped out with a few things while we shot. We walked over to the tire swing, did a couple pictures standing by the tire, a couple on it. And then there I was, 5 minutes in, panicked and out of ideas! Photography was so new to me that I didn’t know how to set my settings properly. My ISO was too high, I was using on camera flash, and likely shooting on ‘Program’ mode. Tina was easy going and made some suggestions of her own for pose ideas. I ended up getting more comfortable and we shot for almost an hour.
There was just one weird thing. After showing up and doing a couple photos we looked down the street beside us, and saw a kid looking out their front door at us. We weren’t near their property, but he was obviously curious about what we were doing where he would often play. We kept on shooting minding our own business, but then we looked back and saw 3 kids at different houses staring at us and we started to hear giggling. Now this wasn’t helping my anxiety, it just added to it. Before too long we heard a whistle followed by some giggles. We turned and saw all the kids from the neighbourhood standing together at a ‘Safe’ distance. Tina and I looked at eachother, kind of embarrassed. I was thinking about stopping and leaving so they could play, when Tina yelled, ‘Come on over!’. My stomach churned. Then all the kids ran over and she gracefully invited them in for a group photo. They came right up and I snapped this image.
We then decided to call it a day and wrap it up. All the kids ran to the swing and carried on with their fun. In hindsight, this is actually one of the funniest shoot experiences that I have ever had. The excitement of it happening on my first real shoot almost gave me a heart attack, thank goodness I was young and healthy.
Tina and I shot again a couple years later (without the kids), stay tuned to the #PhotoBio series to see those later!
What was your first shoot? Was it organized? Did everything go as expected, or did life have a different plan for your experience too?
