Hello! Well a short while ago I embarked on a long but productive shoot with the lovely Ecce! (The exclamation mark is not for emphasis, that’s part of her modelling name), and although this entry will be fairly brief I just wanted to touch on how people should be more bold in asking for what they want. This shoot Ecce! and I started on a little location stuff, a little studio stuff and then onto the erotica/nude location shoot.

I have a day job. Photography is an hobby for me, and although I would love to do it for a living, I simply don’t make any money from it (apart from the rare sale of a print or something). But anyway in my job I do get to know some of the customers who I interact with, and one in particular I knew owns a company that deals in looking after, security wise, empty buildings. Well one day I was walking through my town when I saw an old pub, boarded up and looking in a bit of a sorry state, but on the front was a sign that this building was being secured by the very company the customer I know owns.

So when I saw him next I asked if it was possible to go in and use it. “Sure, but not until July as I am about to go away for a bit and won’t be back until then”. Result! We exchanged contact details and I wished him a very good time away.

Then a few minutes later a colleague came up to me and said “Oh, the woman I was speaking to overheard what you were saying and told me that she has a derelict agricultural building on her land that you’re welcome to use. Here’s her number.”

FANTASTIC!

So this was the building I used on the shoot with Ecce! A few years ago I would never have dreamed of asking someone to use their property for a shoot. Nor would I have just walked into a bar/restaurant/anywhere and said “Could I just come in right now with a model and take some pictures of her?”. But now I do it all the time. Confidence in what you are doing is paramount, as well as politeness, and never fear being turned down. It’s not the end of the world, and you also never know when someone might say yes…

“I have part of a plan…”

To pretty much all the models I have worked with, that sentence above will be alien to them. I don’t plan. I don’t have a notepad with ideas for poses and styles. I wing it entirely. A model will turn up, I say ‘what you got?’ and it pretty much goes from there. Why? Well whenever I have planned anything it pretty much never goes to that plan. Or something will come up that inevitably ruins doing the plan.

So when I said to Isobela recently that I want to go to London, assuming that I had no plan is an incredibly scary prospect! But I had done a little research! I had scouted previously locations and thought a little about setups for shoots. The only issue was the date – Sunday of the May bank holiday. It was going to be mentally packed in places!

But for me, the first part of the shoot relied on that! Y’see… planning! It was in Camden market and I wanted loads of people around. It wasn’t like it was nude work or lingerie, just fashion and casual stuff, but you can never know how people will react to someone suddenly kinda just standing there in an odd pose, to then see a guy with a camera a little distance away snapping her. But to the Londoners’ credit, they just ignored it for the most part and carried on!

Camden market is a fascinating place, and it’s quite easy to be in there for hours, slowly looking at the multitude of stalls and shops, and moving very slowly with the flow of people also doing the same. I advise anyone who has never been there before to at least go there once in their lives!

Anyway, after around an hour or so we decided to move onto our next location, but not before we had a cheeky Nandos! And who wouldn’t???

After that we then headed to the London Underground.

When I was last in London I had noticed that certain train routes had different trains, and the ones located on the Circle line (named because simply all day it circles around central London) had carriages that wasn’t split into individual carriages and you could right from one end to the other when the train was in a straight line. I loved that so we got on the next Circle train that arrived. Again I have to tip my hat to the other passengers who simply let us get on with it.

Then afterwards we got off at a station which was darker than the usual platforms and did some shots there, including a cheeky one which I almost didn’t get featuring a couple of fellas who had their day brightened up by our antics!

I think in total Isobela and I had spend the better part of an hour and a half, in the middle of the day, underground shooting there. Was surprised me a little was how relatively quiet that platform was we used, and I must remember to go back there one day to explore more styles.

After again stopping for a brief time for a drink and a change of outfit it was off to the City of London for the final couple of setups.

I had found online an old church that was slap bang in the middle of the city, surrounded by office buildings but looking like it should be in something like Narnia. Most bizarre. When we got there, sure enough there it was, but considerably smaller than I had imagined and also had a constant stream of tourists with cameras fluttering about. But we found a good part on the outside of the church and snapped a few pictures there. I was only a relatively quick stop there as the clock was ticking away and we wanted to get the last part of the shoot done in the city.

So finally we set up for our last part of the shoot. Isobela was dressed up in her snazzy suit and we shot a few images out and about, near the fairly new office building on Fenchurch street that simply looks like it’s going to topple over and throws your sense of balance whenever you look up at it.

One advantage of it being a Sunday, despite it being a bank holiday weekend, is that all the offices were closed. That meant the streets were pretty much dead! And so when Isobela and I wanted to do the slightly erotic ending of the shoot in an alleyway, there was simply no-one around to disturb us!

And that was pretty much it! I hope you enjoyed the photos!

Okay, so twice (read that, twice!) now I have had models turn up for a shoot totally unprepared for the day. In both my cases it was turning up for a lingerie level shoot with no lingerie.

Seriously.

I mean, I cannot comprehend that. What model would do such a thing. The staple addition to any models travel bag when going to a lingerie shoot is a rather large collection of matching lingerie of all shapes and designs. Sometimes I’ve even thought to myself ‘hell, that’s a lot of lingerie’. But to turn up with none? Inconceivable!

The first model in question, to be fair, had a couple of bras, it was just the everything else that was missing. But at least she was happy to nip out to the nearest Primarni and pick up a couple of sets. And the shoot ended up being quite an awesome setup.

The second model though, yeah. Whole different story.

Turns up, all cheerly like, and pulls out all the gear she has. Good ideas, three setups she’d like to try (this was a collaboration shoot), and then a couple of other mixtures of outfits. But no lingerie. “Where is the lingerie?” I ask. “I haven’t got any, but all of this should be fine for the shoot.” while she again pointed at all the stuff she brought. “Erm… but this is a lingerie level shoot. You kinda need to have lingerie to do a lingerie level shoot.” I replied. “I have a bikini, that’ll do.”

I gave her two options. Go to Primark and get a couple of sets of lingerie or the shoot ends before it even starts. “Nah, I’m not going to get more stuff, I’ve already spent £200 on clothes today already.”

Shoot over.

Models, here’s a simple bit of advice – when agreeing to a shoot, make sure that you actually have the required clothing that meets that basic requirement. It’s never nice to be turned away from a shoot, and photographers don’t like doing it as all, so please make sure you are properly prepared for what is required of you!