This weekend, we had our second shoot with the wonderfully talented Shelley. Shelley, who came to the project by tagging along on a shoot with her friend, model Leah Sarah, has emerged as one of the BeautifulYouth Project’s most talented young models.
We began the shoot on a gorgeous summer morning in a local municipal rose garden. However, something happened that has only happened once before with the project… we were asked to leave! (The only other time this had happened was during a 2001 shoot with Sophie… we had set up to shoot on the grounds of an unfinished shopping mall… we were asked to leave because of insurance concerns). As it turns out, the garden had rules about private vs. commercial photography on the grounds- one of the groundskeepers asked us what we were doing… and seemed a bit confused! The rule seems to have been put in place so that the city could charge (rather exorbitant) “license fees” to wedding photographers. While we weren’t shooting “family photos”, we weren’t shooting wedding shots either. It seems that he didn’t know what to do with the “artistic” photo category. So, erring on the side of… well, I’m not sure what side he was erring on, he decided that we should go elsewhere.
Which is what we did… a city park a short distance away served as the backdrop for the remainder of the shoot, which turned out rather nicely. Shelley was wonderfully poised, confident, and was clearly having fun with the shoot. We look forward to another shoot with Shelley later on this summer. Look for photos from Shelley’s new shoot in patrons’ galleries soon!