isis
Isis. The sweetest girl with a somewhat unfortunate name.
As with a lot of these shoots I was doing at the time, I came into this with an idea of some lighting ideas I wanted to try. This shoot was an attempt at controlling flash lighting and making it look like natural light, without using any big modifiers such as a large Octa or umbrella.
Isis is a young French model who came in with a beautiful smile and was willing to let a silly English photographer try new things while she waited patiently for me to get things right, or at least as right as I could at the time.
I’ve never been good at languages, and although she speaks almost perfect English, we decided that this shoot was a good time for me to learn a bit more French. So whilst I was shooting and messing around with poly boards, she was giving me sentences and testing my knowledge. Not only did we get to learn a lot about each other quickly, it made the time just fly by. I really enjoyed my time with her, it was like a friend from school even though she was probably close to a decade younger than me.
I usually finished off these shoots, regardless of style, with a quick few minutes shooting hard flash. No clever tricks, and on this occasion, this is where we got our best shot. I like to think of it as my best attempt at a late 90’s Levi’s advert. Just a pretty girl with style, wearing a simple vest and jeans.
It’s so perfect, mostly because of how simple it is.
Isis looks great in this shot and it is a great example of simply trusting your model. Let them do their thing, and often they will deliver. I really think this is up there with one of my most effective and best model portraits to this day. I know she was happy with it at the time as well.
Merci beaucoup, Isis
One last note - her mother followed me on Instagram after our shoot. The only model parent ever to do so. She occasionally likes my stories and for some reason that makes me really happy.
