My First Photo Shoot Experience

I called up my friend Amanda and arranged a time for her to bring her two children, Aerika and Taylah, around to my house for my first photo shoot. I had an AIPA (Advertising and Illustrative Photographers Association) form for each child for Amanda to read and sign to give me permission to photograph her children and use the photos for my portfolio and other applications over the next two years.

I wrote up a list of ideas for each child as a guide to what I would photograph. The list is as follows:

Taylah:

• Wearing makeup, looking in the mirror at herself
• Taking a pxt of herself, maybe sending it off where you can see the image on another cellphone
• Reading a Cosmopolitan magazine or a book like this that is too old for her
• Listening to an MP3 where you can see the album art of and artist who uses explicit lyrics
• Surrounded by receipts and shopping bags from spending a lot of money
• Wearing heavily labelled clothing
• Wearing a lot of jewellery, big earrings, etc

Aerika:

• Using my laptop to look up inappropriate things or using a webcam
• Pulling a top out of a drawer wondering what to wear, top has inappropriate saying or image on it
• Watching TV/movies that are too old for her
• Drinking milk out of a wine/martini glass
• Sitting in the bottom of a closet trying on high heels, surrounded in shoes
• Hugging a photo of a boy or kissing a poster of a famous person
• Straightening her hair
• Hair dyed (using Photoshop in post-production)

I began to work with Aerika first who was the younger of the sisters at age 6. I found her unbelievably hard to photograph. At first she would seem really excited to get ready for a photo but as soon as I got her in front of the camera she would refuse to do anything I asked her to do and nearly started crying at one point. Due to this, I cut her part of it short and only got her to do a few of the ideas I had come up with.

I then moved on to working with Taylah who is the older sister at age 9. She was a lot easier to work with and even helped me with Aerika during her photographs. Taylah was easy to direct and had fun doing it which made photographing her very easy.

The kids started to get a bit restless so I decided to call it a day and arrange for another time to take photos once I was back at tech. From here I will be able to look at the photos I have and re-shoot the ones I am not happy with and continue to work through my list of ideas. I will probably just work with Taylah on the rest of the photographs since she is a lot easier to work with and because of her age, is easier to get her to pose.