Continued from How I Became A Glamour Photographer: An Art I Can Do

I want to impress you. Just like most photographers I want to show you my best work so you will go “Wow you are really good.” Ultimately I do this because I want you to let me teach you about photographing models.

Right now I’m going to show you some bad images.

Why would I do this? Because you need to know I was there. I was where maybe you are right now. I was just starting out. I made lots of mistakes. I learned and got better.

What was I thinking?

I come back from Rolando’s workshop and I’m gung ho. I want to shoot. I go on One Model Place and start looking for models willing to shoot TFP. (If you don’t know what TFP is, sign up for the mini-course in the sidebar.) And I end up with 3. In my first shoot. And I find an MUA willing to do TFP.

Of course everything went wrong.

First, three models for one shoot is a challenge anyway. Heather was 17 at the time. Brought her mom and Dad. She was “experienced” with some actual agency work. The MUA suggested the second model, Carolyn, who was a med student. The last model was a former Hooters girl named Kristin, and this was her second shoot.

Second, the MUA got turned around. She went south on Highway 59 for 30 minutes. I live about an hour north on 59 from where she started. So she was a good 2 hours late.

Third, it was my first shoot in my “studio”. I didn’t know what I needed for a shooting area. So there was no place for them to change. I had to leave the room to let them use it to change. There was no place for makeup, so they used my master bathroom. I’ll talk about my first studio in another post.

I can tell you lots of way to do this better. 🙂 But I did the most important thing right.

I shot the shoot.

There were challenges, but I found models. I communicated with them. I shot them. I gave them images.

Below are 6 images from the shoot. I really cringe to look at them. But they were where I started. Where I found out I could make images outside of a workshop. And where I learned it really was an art I could do.

Did I mention one of the models left a breast behind?

Models leave stuff behind all the time. This being my first shoot, what got left was interesting and good funny story.

After the shoot I found this clear half circle of gel wrapped in plastic in the studio. If you’ve ever seen what a breast implant looks like outside the body, this looked like half of one of those.

I didn’t even know what it was. Kristin, the former Hooters girl, had kind of ended up being the last one there so I figured it was hers. I emailed her and asked. She told me lots of Hooters girls wear them to give themselves a little boost.

See the kind of thing you learn shooting models.

Since that time I’ve shot over 120 models and I’ve gotten a lot better than this. Next time I’m going to talk about how I got classified as a Goth photographer.