I've had this basket for the longest time. I remember paying some naira for the rafia carpenter to build a customised one for me. As at the time I paid for it, I wasn't sure of what I was going to create with it but the zeal to invest in my photography pushed me to do it. It was in the early stage of my photography journey and I just wanted to explore. I preserved it and it wasn't until a year later when the need for this basket came up.
Delight is the beautiful lady in the pictures. She is a friend who lives in my vicinity. I reached out to her after doing lots of research on what I wanted to create. For this shoot, I wanted to portray a happy African. I wanted to show the joy of being an African. We discussed extensively on outfits, location, and date. We agreed to shoot on a Saturday evening.
Life doesn't always go as planned and so did the shoot. She called on that Saturday morning for a shift in the date as something urgent came up. It disrupted my personal plans but we agreed to move it to the next day.
On that Sunday afternoon after church service, we met at a designated point from where we headed to the shoot location.
The location was supposed to be a football field but getting there, we met two teams playing soccer. They normally don't play on Sunday afternoons. We opted for an empty space nearby where we finally did the shoot.
Delight was good with the poses and I was able to create images portraying what I had in mind: AFRICAN GLEE.
By the way, my friend Treasure ( I mentioned him in a previous blog post) was my assistant for this photoshoot.