Shooting Makayla - a shooting diary (Patreon)

I am getting into the processing of Monika and Makayla's shoots from yesterday, so they will both roll out over the next several weeks (there are a lot of keepers).

But I wanted to talk a little about how this shoot went down.

When I teach people how to do a modelling shoot, I always tell them to operate on the principle of "no surprises." Everything regarding style and content should be agreed before the shoot. Well, Makayla surprised me!

I have to confess that when I shot Makayla nearly 2 years ago she was only 17 - something I didn't know until she turned up to the shoot. She has been keen on doing lingerie and bikini shoots for quite a while before that, much to the chagrin of her conservative parents. Since then we had vaguely kept in touch, but I did not know the details of her life.

So I just assumed this was going to be another lingerie shoot.

We started shooting and to help make things relaxed I started chatting about what she had been up to. She told me she had left home as soon as possible, moved to Melbourne and is studying at uni.

"I think you mentioned at one stage that you were going to move to Sydney," I said.

"Yes, that was the plan for a while. I went there and did some dancing for a while, and it was a lot of fun."

"Dancing?" I asked.

"Well... stripping. I'm working as a stripper now."

"Oh, well in that case, and considering you are now 19, what are your limits?"

She told me that she had done some implied nude with another photographer, so we agreed to include some of that in the shoot.

Later in the shoot she says, "It is so nice to be working with some who isn't creepy." Well, I blushed. Any compliment from a model during a shoot is nice.

"Have you been working with many creeps?"

"I have only been working with one photographer," she tells me. It is a guy who took a lot of the bikini and lingerie stuff when she was younger. "He is not great to work with but he pays really well!"

So by this stage I know that Makayla is very comfortable with me. This becomes more apparent when she instantly agrees to every suggestion I make, even before I finish making it. For example, at one stage I had her posing in jeans, alternating between a bikini top and a jacket with nothing underneath.

Having played with those for a while, I said I'd like to do some topless in jeans, and before I can describe the different ways she can be covered without obviously covering (the way I like to shoot implied), she says, "Yeah, great," jumps into the set and starts posing. You will love these photos, which include my favourite from the shoot.

As the shoot was coming to an end, I asked her if she'd trust me to cover her with shadows, a style I was shooting earlier with Monika. Again, she jumped at it, and covering was not an issue.

So that is the story of how I came to do Makayla's first fully nude shoot. She had a great time, and is insisting we shoot again soon. She said her other photographer is going to lose his cool when he finds out she posed nude for me.

The moral of the story is that if you show respect, and cultivate a reputation of being respectful, you never know what surprises may come your way.