Sunday, August 9, 2009

My first model mayhem experience!

A few months ago I started myself a model mayhem account! It was confusing at first but once I got a handle on it, I fell in love! For the next couple weeks I was constantly looking up models and photographers who were close at hand. I have already met so many amazing people through it.
Meet Andrea! [the other Andrea]. I was a little nervous meeting up with someone from online but I had spoken to her a lot through model mayhem and she seemed like a stand up gal. Before meeting we discussed what both of our styles were, and I asked her about what kind of shoot she was interested in doing. Andrea had not done any shoots with a similar style that I shoot with so she really wanted to go all out with this one. She was prepared to get down and dirty! [in a very clean way]
We talked about how most of her shoots to date were in a more modern style, like magazine cover kind of deal. I mentioned how I loved working with vintage looks and found objects and she was super psyched. She said that she originally got into modeling because she wanted to do pin-up style shots. So we ended up collaborating very well. :)
This location was introduced to me by my good friend Alex. He has lived in Lawrence all his life and I asked him to show me all the sweet spots. This was one of them. The first part of the shoot was taken on some train tracks and some in front of an older train station type thing. You pass the tracks then go into this wooded area and follow this winding path. Then suddenly you come into this clearing and there is this gigantic hole in the ground filled with slabs of concrete. As you crawl down into the hole there are a couple tunnels. One can be seen in the picture above. This one is most likely a city drainage tunnel. It goes impossibly far back and I would love to explore it some day! But the darkness that was in it, even in the middle of the day, contrasted amazingly with the white in Andrea's dress. The other tunnel had a shallow pool of water covering it and then spilled into the concrete graveyard. There is a shocking amount of graffiti in this area considering the difficulty it takes to get to it.
It seemed like Andrea was really nervous, but she did a fantastic job! She seems to be quite the natural at modeling! Her husband is in the army and she was telling me about how they got married really young but they are completely happy. It just really touched my heart. Things like that give me hope that the world isn't as bad as I think it is.
We did a lot of experimenting with motion, and capturing a very specific moment in time. Catching an action in the middle. I like a lot of the results! She had amazing control of her face. I think its so easy to forget about posing your face when your flailing around the rest of your body. Truly impressive!
My first experience working with anyone from model mayhem was a good one! I'm excited to work with more people, and I hope to get the pleasure of working with Andrea again! She was just a really cool girl. I got a ton of awesome images from this shoot.

To check out the entirety of the shoot, check out my flickr!

HERE!

<3

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