Bangkok shooting weekend madness continues with Donna, the only model I worked with on this trip who isn’t from Thailand. She’s from the Philippines but relocated to Bangkok recently for more modeling opportunities (among other reasons).
I’m doing all of these writeups in very quick succession (because I’m afraid I’ll forget all the details if I wait too long) and finding it difficult to make them all unique and interesting because, well, I shot five models in five days in the same room, so there wasn’t a whole heck of a lot of variety in the experiences. I can tell you the two things that I’ll remember most about Donna, though. Maybe three things, yes – I’ll add in a bonus thing.
First of all, she prioritized the shoot and was hyper-respectful of our time agreement. Just to unpack that a little – I almost always book 2-hour shoots when I work with professional models. Mostly because they’re expensive and I can’t afford more than that, but also because when you work with a professional, you get shit done quick. If I don’t get what I need in two hours, that’s on me.
It’s fascinating, though, to see how each model understands those two hours. Some arrive well ahead of the scheduled start time so that they can be made-up and ready at the contracted start time, while others arrive at the start time and use the first 10-15 minutes to get themselves ready, eating into our shooting time. I don’t currently specify my expectation, so I get a variety of outcomes. Donna arrived at our start time, but she didn’t count any of our initial conversation (including her lingerie show-and-tell, a typical feature of these shoots) or her preparation time. When she came out of the bathroom ready to go, that’s when she started our two hours. I thought that was very conscientious and professional of her. She also wanted no part of signing the model release or collecting her payment at the beginning, even though that’s usually when I sort those things out (even if only because the contract says that’s what I’ll do). She held up her end of the bargain as well as any model could.
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 Donna, available for high resolution download. You can get two posts just like this one per month by subscribing there, plus lots of other perks.







I love that she has so many creative ideas and that you allowed her to guide the shoot. She’s absolutely stunning.
Love those balcony shots! Great work 👏