When I stop to think about it, this thing that I do – arrange to meet models I don’t know in places I’ve never been to take photos that have to be good enough to share with the whole world – is actually pretty difficult. Some days I feel that difficulty more saliently than others, and today was one of those days.
I’ll start with a confession: I don’t often look forward to these shoots. That may sound absurd, given that I’m currently trying to quit my day job and make this my day job instead, but I can square that circle. It’s my personality that does me in: I’m an unfortunate mix of introvert and perfectionist. That means that, in the moments leading up to a shoot with a new model, I’m both anxious to meet a complete stranger and terrified that I won’t be able to get good shots from the session. This happens pretty much every time, and even though I completely understand why it happens, that understanding never attenuates my hesitation.
What usually happens, though, is that I meet the model, she’s wonderful, we get on well, and I end up with a bunch of photos that we both really like. It’s the knowledge that it will all work out in the end that keeps me powering through the unease at the beginning, and I’m always right.
Today was the closest I’ve come to being wrong.
Look, I don’t want to be overly dramatic. Everything, in the end, did work out – after all, I’m sharing this writeup and the images with all of you. (I’ve only had one shoot so far that I haven’t published, though you’ve seen me teasing it occasionally here on Substack.) But I do feel like I just eked this one out – a buzzer beater, maybe not in double overtime, but at the end of regulation.
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 Vermilion, available for high resolution download. You can get two posts just like this one per month by subscribing there, plus lots of other perks.