Sunday morning I’m woken up to the news that my friend Jen is sick, really sick. Not “about to die” or some exotic disease, but sick enough that she can’t come over to the house to shoot.
As some of you know, my wife Dave (UK pop culture reference for Ida) and Jen do pin-up photography under the name “CatFight“. They had a shoot booked for the day and, well, no photographer. The girl is suppesedly very busy and hard to get booked, and she was driving an hour and a half to get to the house.
“I can do it.”
You see, I’m a giving kind of person who feels that self-sacrifice is the highest good. I offered to set aside my selfish interests for the day and give my time to others…
I’d just bought a pretty decent new camera. I have a retarded number of friends and acquaintances that are good photographers. I also have a retarded number of books, magazines, etc. of photos and illustrative depictions of scantily or not-at-all clad females. None of those mean I can actually take a damn worthwhile photo myself. Do I have any natural talent?… maybe… do I have technical knowledge?… well… not really so much.
Okay, bullshit aside, I took some pictures on Sunday and I think they came out pretty good. Ida and I picked a new name for our work, as 1/2 of CatFight is not a fight at all. Since I didn’t dare speculate who, between Jen and Ida, was the Cat and who was the Fight, we came up first with “Slaughter Family Photography” and at the last minute changed it to “Slaughter House”… and no, I won’t be making a myspace profile for it anytime soon.
The shoot, including make-up and hair, setting up the backdrop, the modeling, changing lights, etc. lasted from about 2 to 7pm. I edited the photos until about 11pm.
Ida and I settled on 4 images to work with, and I edited them all differently. I didn’t do too much digital plastic surgery, and I think the model isn’t thrilled that I left curves where she doesn’t want them. Specifically the bump made by the elastic band of her underwear. I like that myself, that’s why I left it.
We forgot to have her sign a model release…that was stupid.
The model’s name is Mona deLux.
Ida and I may do some more shoots, but as of right now I’ve got too many things doing on to dedicate too much time to the pursuit. Either way, it was a novel way to pass the day and I did something I’ve never really done in a serious manner before.
There is an awful lot to learn and study, and I have hada great respect for photography for quite some time. I chalk up most anything I did get right to beginners luck, and anything I got wrong to bad equiptment (hey, if I ain’t gonna take credit for the good stuff, why take blame for the bad? it’s only fair…)
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