Models getting ready for a shoot are sometimes more interesting and fun to photograph than the shoot itself.
The Application
She had been running around off-set wondering where her lip gloss was, so when she found it I followed her into the kitchen at the auto repair shop/photography studio and took some shots as she put it on.
We were having a photo shoot in an auto repair garage that adjoins the photography studio. We had someone in who was giving a tutorial on studio lighting. At one point he asked this model to do some poses on a divan/couch with her shirt pulled up, exposing her abs and belly button. I could tell she was a bit uncomfortable with that and was worried about what her parents would think, especially her father. The poses weren’t exploitive as such, but they were on the cheesy side and I could tell she was a bit awkward about it.
Turns out she has the same name as one of my daughters and graduated from the same high school, a few years later. We talked a bit about her going to college and what she wanted to do. She seemed to like the photos I took off-set. I will have to ask her what she thought about the ones I mentioned above.
Another image from my recent auto repair garage shoot. I found the scaffold to be much more fun than the set up studio situation they had put together so I had a model climb up on it and took some shots. I knew her dress was short, but I had no idea how short until she was up there. I actually had to make her move her legs a number of times so I didn’t see her panties in the shot.
‘Long’
I manipulated this image quite a bit, just experimenting and playing with some perspective and warping tools to accentuate the legs that were already so obviously the center of the image.
Our photo club was having a photo shoot in the auto repair garage that is attached to the photography studio where we meet. They had brought out all the lights and back drops into the garage to do a tutorial on studio lighting.
It was a bit too crowded to really hear what they were saying so I stole a few of the models and went to another part of the garage where I found a scaffold for them to get up on. I went up a ladder and got this shot, among others.
I had the camera on manual settings for a long exposure and then added the flash at the end to get the effect.
From a shoot over the summer in a auto repair shop. I didn’t particularly like this in color and didn’t revisit it until November. I like the view from above in this one. It gives a combination of sexiness and dirty work that has the underlying question of what sort of work is dirty, is she the dirty one because of her outfit, or is the photo dirty, is the place dirty?
Day two of my week-long series on American colors in celebration of the 4th of July.
I Found this American scene while photographing near the railroad tracks and Arkansas River in Tulsa back in 2006. I think it was part of a run down garage next to a run down house. But that really didn’t matter. What mattered was the undesigned, unanticipated beauty of the American colors in such an unlikely spot.
