At the Speakeasy with MiMi...

One of the most unique shoots I've done with one of the most unique models I've met

This is a special one. I don’t remember whether I first saw MiMi on Model Mayhem or Instagram, but wherever it was, I immediately knew that I had to try to get her. I don’t love tattoos, actually; I haven’t got any myself, and I generally find them distracting and out of place on nude female forms. I don’t refuse to work with tattooed models, as you’ll know if you’ve been keeping up with my work here, but they’re not my fave, let’s say.

MiMi, though, has elevated her aesthetic with the sheer boundlessness of her body art. I’d never seen anyone like her before, and for that reason alone I had to shoot with her. I reached out all the way back in February, knowing that I wouldn’t be in her area until July or August. She immediately got back to me, and we started to chat about setting something up.

We kept chatting throughout the intervening months, actually, and I had to do some tough negotiating to come to an agreement on what we’d shoot. MiMi insisted very early on that any nudes we shoot must be behind a paywall, and up to this point I hadn’t had any paywall enabled on the site at all. That was problem number one. Problem number two came a few months later when she messaged to let me know that she was no longer shooting nudes at all, so she could only offer me lingerie/fashion and/or boudoir styles. No matter how lovely and unique she is, I don’t have much use for those kinds of images here at Naked Prose. Not ready to give up on this opportunity, I pitched the idea of a half/half shoot of lingerie and nude, with only the lingerie photos appearing in the writeup. Any nudes would be behind a paywall, and this would be written into the commercial model release that we both sign.

She agreed! I had secured two hours of shooting time with this amazing woman. Next was sorting out the venue. She suggested a few studios in the Philadelphia area, but as an available-light-only shooter, I don’t really thrive in those kinds of artificial environments. We were at a temporary impasse, until she agreed to come out this way and shoot here in the apartment I had rented.

And that was the plan until the week before the shoot, when I had an idea. I was browsing the area on Google Maps when I was reminded of a venue nearby that would be an interesting location. It’s an underground speakeasy, lavishly decorated in silk and leather, and almost never open. Their website says they can host events, so I emailed the manager. She was happy to arrange for us to use the space, even after I said that it was a commercial art nude photoshoot, so I booked the place for us.

This post continues over at my Patreon page. You can read the rest of the writeup there, as well as see many more photos from my session with MiMi, available for high resolution download. You can get two posts just like this one per month by subscribing there, plus lots of other perks.