A funny story, coming from the lack of communication in between me and my model regarding what we wanted from the shoot. In reality there was no communication at all. I was asked to take a couple of portraits of a girl for her boyfriend’s birthday. The shoot was scheduled to take place on a beach. I met the model a couple minutes before the shoot where we got a couple of minutes to chat and talk about what she wanted to get from the shoot. Before that I had not seen her or had any direct contact with her. She quickly reiterated what the third person had earlier told me – she wanted a portrait for her boy friend’s birthday. The rest was up to me. As this was in the beginning of my career I had a limited experience and had no clue how to translate the true wants of my models.

To make matters worse I realized that it would be nice to have an assistant to help with me with the lighting, as it was a really sunny day. So I asked my girlfriend at that time to accompany me and hoped that maybe she would learn something new and fun while observing how harmless the photo shoots are. She agreed without a second thought and helped me carry some reflectors and blankets.

As we were approaching the earlier picked out spot I put all the equipment down and started getting ready. Then I looked over to my model and realized what kind of “portrait” picture she wanted – she was undressing to underwear. I quickly turned to my camera and started to go through the menu pointlessly. At one moment I looked over at my girlfriend and saw the look on her face. That look explained everything – I was going to be killed, but later.

The shoot did not go so swell as you can imagine – I constantly got an eye from my girlfriend, I had problems talking with the model as my girlfriend was constantly looking eying me and her, I was struggling to give even correct guidance to my lighting assistant as she was furious and by this time didn’t even care about any of it.

Well after the shoot I was forbidden to take photos of other girls not even considering nudes, despite not even taking a nude at that shoot. The moral of the story – it is important to realize what your client really wants from you and never take your special other to your photo shoots.