How did you manage it with inexperienced models? I've been thrown in a few shootings last year, but always felt the models considered themselves "pro" simply because they were charging money for it. One in particular was pretty much like a doll, we had to tell her everything otherwise she would freeze in the last pose she did. Very little collaboration, it was extremely onesided and frustrating most of the time.
How did I manage it? I don't think that I did. I handed in pictures at the end of it all, and showed the completed production to nobody. In fact, I didn't even handle the production - for the first time it went to another company doing different promotional stuff for the client. As memory serves, there were three pages devoted to that London girl, the rest I'd rather forget. As bad, I never got back my trannies and have next to nothing left from that Singapore leg of the shoot. I only have left what I didn't offer... perhaps I already felt where it was going, could smell the drain.
The problem was, as with your experience, some thought it enough to have been paid for a couple of gigs, and that made you a pro, pretty much as it seems to be the case now with some photographers. In fairness, those 'local' girls never had the opportunities to develop their craft, but writing that may simply be myself trying hard to be kind. I began with a few girls from the Glasgow Drama College where I'd spoken with the management and asked to be allowed to put up a small gallery (exaggeration! a few prints!) in the foyer. As I wasn't looking for money, it suited both sides and I got some nice stuff from one or two girls. Later on, once I was out on my own (it was during the pirate radio era), a commercial on Radio Scotland advertised a new model agency set up by Clem Bettany. I went to see her, and we fixed some test shots of some girls.
It was the best photo favour that I gave myself: one evening, into the studio walked this girl with a pile of clothes and accessories, and we got to work. It was instantaneous. She just had it, in spades. She became my muse and we did everything together that I could offer her, clients willing, and the truth, which I will always be perfectly willing to admit, is that we taught each other all we ever learned about the business of models/photographers. I never found another to replace her input. She just understood images. We'd work together even without clients, just for the hell of it. You can't buy that. Yes, it was totally platonic.
But inevitably, time moves on, folks age, get married, have kids; after the cals arrived I was able to use London exclusively as a model source, and you can never go backwards on that one.
Rob
