Jahara

I shot with a model yesterday. Sort of. My subject was not a professional model, which was fitting because I am not a professional photographer.

Looking for more things to photograph, I put an ad in craigslist offering to shoot photos of people for free if they'd sign a model release.

The ad began with the disclaimer: "There's a saying that goes 'you get what you pay for.' It's true! I am not an expert and there is a chance I will screw this up and have nothing for you. For a one-time event that you can't re-shoot, hire a pro."

So, of course, the first person to reply wanted me to shoot a wedding -- in January 2010, probably figuring that I'd have enough practice by then to get it right.

The second respondent was a 26-year-old woman named Jahara. She had appeared in a commercial for her company, enjoyed it and wanted to do more. She wanted some shots she could use to send to casting agents but she's not serious enough about it that she wanted to pay someone.

Convenient for both of us. We met in Ybor City yesterday morning shortly after 8 a.m. Ybor is largely empty in the morning we had the run of the place for most of the 90 minutes or so that we shot.



Jahara was a good subject for me as a first time shooter. I didn't give her a lot of direction. I'd suggest things, sometimes demonstrate how I wanted her to stand then I'd just capture natural reactions. She has a wonderfully expressive face that gave me so many different looks that it looked almost like I had more than one model.

She was also a good sport when I asked her to try to walk on a railroad track in her high heels.

We shot a lot of shots where she looked at the camera but my favorites, as you can see here, tended to be the ones where she was looking elsewhere. Her husband might have been a source of comfort for her. He gamely tagged along as we traipsed around Ybor City. She was looking at him in many of the shots.



I had the camera set incorrectly for some of the situations and a lot of the shots, including some that I would otherwise have really liked, came out blurry. But if you shoot several hundred photos, at least a few will come out well.