Dear Steamit friends, i will be sharing a lot of my experiences with you as a person, writer and as a fine-art photographer.
I got a mail notification on my phone one day letting me know someone wanted to connect on a site I’ve recently been accessing to find models and co-creatives. I opened it up to find a message from an aspiring model who said she loved my work and would like me to photograph her.
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We continued sending messages, feeling each other out. As I perused her photos, I got a sense that she was “my sister” from the African continent. I felt Ghana, to be exact.
I wasn’t going to be rude and ask though. When she finally gave me her email address and I saw her real name, I said to myself, “I knew it!” When I mentioned it to her, she also confessed she has been wondering if I was from Nigeria.
She dropped words like “gele” (head gear) in our mails to see if I’d question the term; when I made no mention of it, she also got the lightbulb moment. Instantly the walls of proper behavior and language that comes with meeting someone for the first time came tumbling down. We started using terms, phrases and slangs that both our countries share.
The day of our photo shoot was like the visit from a relative you haven’t seen in a long while. We hugged for an age at the parking lot and started talking nineteen to the dozen before we got into my apartment.
Needless to say, the whole photo shoot was one filled with stories, laughter and fun. Eugenia stayed after the shoot and we continued to talk about life, dreams and getting up to do what needs to be done to “make it”. Not only did I find someone that I will be working with professionally for a long time to come, but I made a new friend and sister.