This was my first go at doing a photo shoot and as any perfectionist worth their salt I wanted it to be as perfect as possible. I’d done my homework about how to approach working with a model. I’d looked up so many tutorials you can’t even begin to imagine how much footage I must have seen or the quantity of articles read.

There are some basic rules that seem self explanatory, but are worth following:

• Listen to the model.
  They have a message to give to their audience, and you need to know what it is, and discuss what kind of photos or video they want doing, and how this will help them to portray this message.
• Do your homework.
  Preparation is everything. Know what kit you need, or might need. This can include batteries that have been charged, memory cards at the ready, or enough rolls of film for the purists out there. This also includes a back-up camera… Murphy’s Law and all that!
• Be a gentleman.
  Avoid any type of douchebaggery. Your model is human being and deserves all the respect you would want them to show you. When I did this shoot we were both equals, and most definitely on equal footing. She wasn’t my thing to play around with and take photos as if she was a potted plant. I’m fine for giving direction, but there are limits. Apparently some photographers forget this very important rule and come over as really creepy and sordid.
• Show some of the images so the model can have an idea of how the shoot went.
• Editing.
  Go home and start the editing process, or get you films to to the lab, and hope they don’t screw up the development and that you negatives arrive without scratches, which once happened to me. Choose your photos from the huge amount you’ve taken because you wanted to be sure and gt at least one reasonable photo. I took one of the chosen few photos and edited in about 5 ways and showed it to the model,so she could give me her opinion and it would also give me a process to follow for the rest of the editing.
• The Model is a Human Being!!
  I’d really like to come back to remembering the model is a human being and must be treated with the upmost respect. That person in the viewfinder is somebody’s daughter, sister, mother, spouse etc. Don’t be a cad and even if you are not, you must act always as the perfect gentleman.

My research on how to approach photography with a model took me through many articles found on Google and a good few videos on YouTube. There was one in particular that stood in my mind and was more about a certain philosophy instead of just technique. And here’s a link to it!

https://spark.adobe.com/page-embed.js

So Pandora was my first model, and first real introduction to Yoga. It’s a fascinating subject.