This was a fun one! Nastya in Yellow 💛👀

The vibrant colors of the studio space were a perfect match for Nastya's youthful energy.

I guess I’m just shooting Ukrainian models now. 🤷‍♂️ Meet Nastya (IG: @aargus), model number three from the great Eastern European nation. (I’ve long considered this part of the world to have the most beautiful women, so I’m not complaining even slightly about this.) Traveling and modeling on her own, Nastya happened to pass through Hong Kong as a part of her southeast Asian tour, so I grabbed the yellow studio room for us and we got to work for a couple hours.

This was my first time in the yellow room, although I’ve had my eye on it for a while. The colors and décor are well chosen, and the spacious layout offered even more shooting opportunities than we could cover in just a couple hours. Nastya loved it immediately; I could see the creative ideas swimming around her head as she surveyed the space.

I inspected the light in various corners of the place while she did her hair and makeup. Like the black room that I shot Amelia in, this one is generously illuminated by a window spanning most of the length of one wall and softened with a movable sheer curtain. It was a sunny and cloudless day; dappled light streamed in even through the sheer material. The bright conditions were great news for my cameras’ sensors, though – I shot this entire session with my usual two OM-System bodies and the twin zooms with Glimmerglass (especially appropriate for the room’s golden tones); base ISO (200) was more than sufficient.

Nastya joined me at the L-shaped couch and launched into a full presentation of her arsenal of lingerie and saucy accoutrements. I’ve had enough experience with models now to realize that my usual style of only shooting nude sessions start to finish is apparently atypical; the expectation always seems to be starting with some coverings and working buffward. This makes a certain kind of sense, but from my perspective as a photographer, shooting in the opposite order (nude to clothed) saves me from having to clone out the lines and indentations that tight-fitting garments leave on the model’s skin.

Anyway, Nastya barely took a breath as she unpacked and explained all of her scanty vestments, so I let her spiel proceed uninterrupted. After all of that, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that I just wanted to do nudes, so I picked out a couple things that I thought would play nice with the room’s palette. You’ll have already seen the tan dress; the black straps and white socks were her choice. As with Merylin’s prominent hoop earrings before, I’m erring on the side of letting the models’ instincts and choices rule the day.

That decision paid particularly big dividends today, as Nastya was full of ideas for poses and styles as we worked our way around the room. I gave her control of the music (another thing I make sure to do every time); she queued up a playlist of 80’s radio hits and cranked the volume. This caused an immediate problem, as she was no longer able to hear my camera’s shutter actuation (an aural cue to the model that she can change poses). Stifling Annie Lennox et al. was not on the table, so I told her that as long as she holds her pose for a moment, she can trust me to grab the shot before she moves on.

A quick reflection on the differences between commercial and casual photography, if I may. I’ve done the occasional paid photo assignment over the years, so I wouldn’t say that it’s an entirely new dynamic, but for all of that other work, people have been paying me to provide the service, and there generally wasn’t a strict time constraint. These model shoots are a completely different animal; I’ve paid the model to be with me for a relatively short and non-extendable period of time, during which I need to see to it that the model is comfortable and happy, we shoot a variety of content, and at least some of that content is good enough for me, the model, and you, my audience.

All of that is to say that I can’t be wasting time fiddling with camera settings while the model is having her moment. I just need to get the shot, no excuses. This is why I bring two cameras, which I’ve always got within arm’s reach, and each camera has a zoom lens on it. This way I can pick up what I need and get the shot framed up, focused, and captured in a matter of seconds. If I can get into a flow with the model, we can get a lot of great work done in a short amount of time – that’s really the only way that it works. It’s stressful, but it’s also exhilarating when it all clicks.

Nastya basically directed the shoot. I did my best to keep up, finding the good light and always being ready to grab the best stuff she was giving me. I barely had to suggest anything at all once we got started – she was always thinking ahead to the next location, the next change. At one point we checked the time and saw that we had about 40 minutes left. “I think 20 minutes on the couch and 20 minutes in the kitchen,” she declared. Yes ma’am! While we were shooting on the couch, she was eyeing up a plastic yellow rotary phone across the room. “Give me the phone,” she demanded. A few minutes later she was standing on top of the couch, jumping up and down, pillows akimbo. I stood back, cranked the ISO up to 1600, and documented the beautiful chaos.

It was great fun shooting with her. I think she’s the youngest model I’ve shot so far; she was palpably spontaneous, playful, and uninhibited. She’s also the first model to give me a high-five when we wrapped. So if the images in this week’s post seem to have a bit of a different energy, well, that’s just Nastya.

She might be back in a few months, so let me know if you’d like to see us work together again!