get in the moment. stay in it.

near the end of my first year of studies in photography, i was able to pursue a creative project and chose a direction from a small list of prompts. i chose “unnatural element” as one of my choices, and gave myself a lot of time to think of a creative idea to pursue.

wanting to mix the idea of something beautiful and gross, the vision of having mouldy nails on a subject with a glamour styled shoot came to mind and I started working on making something out of that. the creative process, planning and styling the shoot came easy to me, but i found myself apprehensive about how to pose my model when it was time to take pictures. Researching some techniques and ideas for posing a model helped me refine my approach, but I knew i would feel pressure in the moment during the shoot to come up with a range of poses and help guide my model sell the shot.

thankfully, i was able to commission some mouldy themed nails from one of my friends (@pouncing.paws in Ohio - Danielle you are a creative genius with your nail skillset and brain!) so I knew the aesthetic i wanted to shoot would be there.

when it came time to shoot, i made sure to make my model comfortable by making sure we had some rapport built, encouraged them to bring some of their favourite music to listen to while we photographed and made sure i asked for consent before helping with posing and styling.

the magic happened when we found a creative flow and focused on the creating something beautiful and gross. I learned how important it is to hold poses with slight variations in them and try as much as possible before moving onto something different. during the shoot, we found a couple of poses that we both really enjoyed, and tried to replicate them. this was not successful because we were no longer in that creative flow and spent more time trying to mimic something rather than pushing to create something new. that feeling of creating and being present in the moment will always produce better results, and its so important for me to approach all of my creativity with photography with this mindset. get in the moment. stay in it.