Ana, a Ukrainian Beauty

My second professional model shoot was full of firsts.

This shoot with Ana was one of many ‘firsts’ for me... The first time the model contacted me rather than the other way around, the first time I didn’t choose the venue and had to figure it out on the spot, the first time I shot until we ran out of light. I also told Ana she’s the first Ukrainian I’ve ever met, though she didn’t believe me. Maybe she’s right, but I swear I can’t think of any others!

I’m always uneasy and apprehensive before a shoot, because I’m still very new to this and am very much an amateur dealing with professionals. Or so I tell myself, anyway – imposter syndrome looms large. My two main sources of unease for Ana’s shoot were the aforementioned lack of choice of venue (or time slot, actually – we didn’t start until 4:30, later than I’d have preferred as a natural-light-only-shooter) and Ana herself. She comes across as very serious, focused, and intense in the images in her portfolio, and I feared an encounter with a seasoned veteran who would have little patience for someone who couldn’t keep up with her.

What actually happened? We got along seamlessly from the second she greeted me, had a productive, fun, engaging shoot together, and I left so utterly euphoric that I scarcely remember my commute back home.

We started to get to know each other in the elevator on the way up to the hotel room she’d booked for her visit, which is also our shooting location. The usual pleasantries to begin with, of course, interspersed with business talk (model release, removing distractions, choosing outfits, which was an easy decision as you can see from the photos). Only a few minutes in and she’s excitedly showing me Polaroids of her four dogs (her kids, she calls them). The only thing she’s wearing at this point is her proud dog-mom smile. This is a wild new world I’ve stepped into.

A tale of two Anas, then, but both of them are very real! She absolutely is that serious, focused, intense woman I saw in the pictures. A consummate professional, she moves and poses with quiet confidence and laser-focus on finding the light, the angle, the pose. I put her somewhere in the room, she offers up a starting position, and we work it: click, she slides one hand under her hair, click, she shifts her gaze upwards and arches her back, click, she turns and grasps her breasts. Now I really am trying to keep up, to compose the shot, to check the exposure, to keep her leading eye in focus.

And then she asks me a question, and we relax. She’s the dog mom again, and we chat about everything. I barely spent two hours with this woman, yet this was enough to form as clear a picture of Ana the human being as Ana the beautiful traveling model: She’s an introvert (could have fooled me!). And a photographer. And a toymaker. Values peace over happiness. Hates fake people who post selfies on Instagram and stab each other in the back.

And then back to business! Like I hinted before, I shot the whole session only using the available light from the one large window on the far wall of the room. In January in Hong Kong, the sun is already quite low in the sky at 4:30 PM, and by 6:15 there wasn’t enough light left for us to continue. The good news is that the light that we did have was quite warm and diffuse, sufficiently illuminating and perfectly flattering for our captures.

Gear talk digression: I shot everything with “the twins”, two Panasonic Leica zoom lenses that each open to f/1.7 and together cover focal lengths between 20 and 100mm (in full frame terms). Each stays attached to its own OM-System body, so there’s no faffing about with lens changes. I was also much more disciplined about white balance readings (using a proper 18% neutral gray target) throughout the shoot, which I’ll begrudgingly admit is indispensable for shooting with available light. The temperature of the daylight was around 5000K when we began shooting and warmed its way beyond 7000K as the sun set. Not having to do color corrections in post is a great gift from my conscientious past self.

We closed the outside curtains for a round of more moody, silhouetted shots towards the end, which necessitated the first considerable ISO bump of the day. A lot of these shots will look good in black and white anyway, so I’m not too worried about the noise that will inevitably creep into the RAW files in these conditions. “Some grain adds character anyway,” we smaller format shooters tell ourselves. “Fits the mood!” How dark did it get by the end? I think the last frame I shot was at ISO 6400, f/1.7, 1/30 sec. Something like that. Dark. I put the cameras down, satisfied with what we’d been able to capture, and we chatted the last bit of daylight away.

I can always find things I’m not happy with after these shoots: careless framing that cuts off a hand or foot, missed focus on what would have been a keeper, not enough depth of field on a tighter shot… If I were to do this same shoot over again though, the only thing I’d really change is some better direction for Ana. Her serious, sensual poses are wonderful, but I’d also like to have captured more direct engagement with the lens. Maybe some happy smiles, too, so you can all meet the charming dog mom.

Seasoned photographers will tell you that, when a woman takes off her clothes, she puts on several masks. Your job as the photographer is to get her to take those off too. I’m not sure if I accomplished that, honestly. I surely met the clothes-off, mask-off Ana, but I’m not sure if you will through these shots.

I’m not going to waste a moment navel-gazing about that, though, because in truth I had a wonderful time doing the best I could on this shoot. The only question that mattered when I was walking home, head in the clouds, is why I didn’t start doing this sooner.

If you like Ana, you can keep up with her work on IG, and make sure you’re subscribed to this newsletter – she and I are working together again very soon!