As much as I would love to rattle on about this and that and seduce you into reading my carefully worded and somewhat condescending bullshit, there is a point to this post. Read on.
What is at stake when you ask a stranger if you can shoot pictures of them? I think I should refine this a tad. What is at stake when you ask a beautiful young woman if she is comfortable in front of the camera in her underwear? Everything and nothing. I have the "no dignity, no shame" approach to this. If my game is right on the day I can walk into almost any situation and make something interesting happen. Especially if you involve people. I love people, and taking pictures of people is by far the ace up my sleeve. On the other hand though, if my game is off on the day, I can blow it big time, and I have before.
I sit down for lunch at a swish cafe in downtown Reykjavik. In between the insane days of shooting for my friends at Elite Model Iceland, the last thing I can think of is doing personal work in my precious, sleep deprived spare time. I see her immediately, she glides through the room like a figure skater on ice. She is tall, strawberry blonde, with glacial blue like eyes. I think its the eyes that did it. This is a headshot waiting to happen, a flick of the hair that needs to be captured. Natural beauty that is staring me right in the face. My mind starts racing to figure out how to "document" this. Concepts, colours, tones and textures are vivid and not the primary focus of what I want here. I lost track of this thought process as soon as my food arrived. Anything with meat and mushroom sauce will stop me dead in my tracks. A few mastication cycles later I finish my steak sandwich and double thick chocolate milkshake.
On my way out I ask the girl that ruined all hope of focusing on doing anything productive that day if I can shoot pictures of her. She smiles, laughs and asks me if I'm serious. An brief exchange of telephone numbers and a few text messages later we have a date.
I wanted to shoot this outside of the studio, somewhere easy, chilled and "contrasty". After much thought and unnecessary stress, I did something I usually never do. I walk in to a situation basically blindfolded. We shot this around my subjects house, a place I have seen or been to before. I had no idea what I was getting into. After surveying my current surroundings for a few minutes, I had my plan. Out come the umbrella's, the speedlights, radio triggers and whats that thing called again? Uhm, that clicky-button wotsit... CAMERA! Yes! that came out.
About halfway into the shoot, me hustling gear back and forth and chopping and changing things out, she says: "I think my brother is looking for me". Completely oblivious to the fact that I am standing in a small forest with a woman in her underwear, this blew straight over my head. A few seconds later I wake up to the potential danger I am now in. Best figure out who might be chasing me through woods in a few moments. "How old is he and what does he do?" I ask with a tone that hopefully doesn't reveal my true fear of getting pounded by the over protective Icelandic big brother. "He's 31 and he's a hardcore electro DJ..." Fuck. Great. Sounds like a nice guy.
I'll cut to the chase. He turns out to actually be the most chilled and well travelled, well read Icelander I have met to date. You know who you are man! I hope you read this and remember that the offer still stands to drop in when I'm in Cape Town, both of you are most welcome. I must squeeze a quick thank you in here to both my model for the day, who is absolutely STUNNING! and to "big brother". Thanks for not remixing my face. I know your names, for anonymity's sake, I won't drop them here.
Here are some pictures, much love, N.
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