And on the 7th day I did not rest, lol. Instead, I worked even harder :)
Sunday was a pretty crazy day. First thing that happened wasn't anything related to painting or drawing. But, since this is my creative journey I wanted to talk about it for a minute. It's all about the journey, right? The lessons learned, triumphs and failures, hehe.
I had my first agency photo shoot in something like 9 months. Something that I had sworn I would never do again if it wasn't paid. The fashion industry and modeling agencies have left a super sour taste in my mouth for many, many reasons. I won't get too deep into them because that's dwelling on a past that doesn't need to be dwelled upon. It was out of left field and an email from a small but super high class boutique agency hit me up and asked if I was interested in testing.
Testing is the thing that killed it for me in the industry. It used to be a way to get to know an agency, to build a relationship, to test ideas you had in mind and models you might want to do an editorial or complex concept with. But, since I got started that idea of testing has shifted to, full production, full crew shoot. And, if you're not getting paid, and you're not sure if the models you're asking for will be able to give you what you need, then it's a pretty quick way to piss off your production team (hair, makeup, styling) if things go south. And I had it happen enough to be like, why am I putting together full crew shoots for models who've never modeled before for an agency who just needs free portfolio work done but are hiding it in the category, test?
I could write pages and pages on this, but, I'm not going to. Basically, most agencies just started playing the numbers game using photographers and hoping for the best. How much will they give us for free? was the total mindset of the agencies I was working with. And these were the major ones here in LA, not some small crappy ones. So, they could get away with it because everyone wants to work with them... And relationships never happen because the agents flip between agencies so fast and are usually 20-something know-nothing privileged little kids who are on a power trip and enjoy playing favorite and being utter idiots.
But, I decided to take a chance and pitched them an idea off of the models they offered. They bit, but then did something no other agency has ever done. They offered to put together a crew for me. Which has never happened before...or at least never been offered. I have to admit, it still took a force of will for me to follow through. That sourness in my mouth was still strong, even after 9 months of not shooting that kind of stuff. And the stress of everything else in my life honestly made the idea of doing more free work like this unbearable.
The concept I pitched, though, made me want to follow through. I decided to try something I'd never done before, a tandem shoot. A tandem shoot means shooting with two models at once. Up until now I've only shot 1 person at a time, which in many ways, I now understand, is hella limiting. As I found it hard to shoot either of the models by themselves after having had them work together. I guess it's like how I feel about white backgrounds. If the model doesn't have anything to interact with, it makes it 10 times harder to get them into the right energy zone to get what I'm looking for...unless they're really good. It's opened up my mind. Not that I want to jump into more unpaid shoots...but I've thought of some ways I can use the results to potentially get some more work in a very direct way.
I wanted to share this group shot because it's one of the few moments I've been truly happy in recent times. Like I said, I hadn't shot agencies models in 9 months. And it had been even longer since I'd worked with a full crew...probably over a year, and I'd never done a tandem shoot before...yet, I fucking knocked the shoot out of the park...in my humble opinion. I managed a 3 person styling team, 2 models, and worked through a full concept that I had worked out in my head, and powered through 5 hours of exerting a high energy positive vibe that kept everyone smiling like this through the whole day. And then, after, I went home and painted...which I'll get into in my next post.
I'm gonna cut this post off here because there's a crap-ton of text and not a lot of photos...and I know how people need images to be interested in things nowadays, hehe.
Stay tuned for the results of this shoot. :) Thanks for stopping by!
Wessel