When the Studio Becomes a Collaborator
Some of the best moments in a session are never on the shot list.
We had two projects on the schedule for that day — Holy Water, and something else I'd been building toward for a while, the real crescendo (just you wait and see!). Both gave us exactly what I'd hoped for — and more! But somewhere in between, there was an open stretch of time and a studio full of odds and ends that instantly inspired my creativity.
A torn V-flat board, it’s straight edge manhandled so much that it had a curved textural element to its side. A strange old bench, low and dark, more sculpture than furniture. A dress form lying forgotten in the corner.
I don't always plan for this part. I just notice when the room is offering something.
I got inspired by what was sitting there and decided we needed to play. I had her lean into the dress form like it was an old friend she was teasing. I moved her onto the bench and let her fold into shapes neither of us had planned. I brought her to the torn edge of the V-flat and directed her body to answer it, curve for curve.
This is the part of my job I love the most. Not the planning, not the lighting, not even the final images — the part where a woman stops performing a pose and starts actually playing. You can see the difference in a photograph, even if you can't always name what changed. The shoulders drop. The face does something unrehearsed. There's a looseness that no amount of direction can manufacture.
What struck me, watching it happen, was how different this version of her felt from the woman I'd been working with in the planned shots. Holy Water had asked something pure of her — soft, unguarded, almost reverent. This was the opposite energy entirely. Something sharper emerged. A tigress, truly. Same woman, same afternoon, and somehow a completely different creature looking back at me through the lens.
I notice this every time I work with a woman, honestly. How much range exists in one body, one afternoon, one camera's worth of attention. We tend to think of a woman as one thing — soft, or strong, or sensual, or serious — when really she's ALL OF IT, often within the same hour, sometimes within the same frame. My job is mostly just staying alert enough to catch her when she shifts.
None of this was the plan for the day. That's sort of the point. The plan gets you in the room. What actually becomes the work is usually what happens after the plan runs out — when there's nothing left to perform for, and the studio itself starts offering up its strange, half-broken, beautiful debris for someone to play with.
I left that day with images I never could have storyboarded. I also left with a clearer sense of something I already half-believed: the best part of this work isn't controlling the outcome. It's creating enough safety and enough room that something true gets to wander in on its own.
She blossomed in front of that camera in a dozen different ways that afternoon. I just happened to be standing there with it.
