Having Models to Stay

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    Ariel Anderssen
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    Hello everyone!

    Since we moved house to our lovely current location, the way we shoot has inevitably changed a little. For a start, we no longer have a designated “studio “as we used to in the old house. We do have a garage which we could potentially convert, but since moving we have been so enjoying shooting in the house and sometimes even with natural light. And since there are plenty of photos studios around that we can hire if we want a blank backdrop, I can’t imagine us actually converting the garage any time soon.

    Another big difference is that whereas once many of our models would arrive on the morning of the shoot and leave again immediately afterwards, now they quite often need to stay the night before because it’s not so quick to get to us by train anymore for most people, and quite a lot of our models don’t drive.

    And consequently we get to know our models a bit better! Which is lovely from one point of view, but on the other hand it makes me feel worse about tying them up sometimes. Moving house hasn’t stopped me being a sub 😉

    It’s also really nice to get to see models without their hair and make up done sometimes. Even as a model myself I tend to expect pro models to look the same as they do in their published images all the time. And I love seeing them looking so much younger and less polished over breakfast; it’s a good reminder that models are people with private lives, and pets, and families and vulnerabilities. Seeing this ensures that Hywel and I continue to make sure that we treat everyone who works with us as well as possible.

    I’m not sure how good we are as hosts. I tend to want everything to be perfect with complicated meals and home-baked cakes. That’s obviously not always achievable in the middle of a shooting week, and that tends to make me anxious and stressy. Hywel gets less stressed, and doesn’t freak out about bedlinen matching towels and stuff like that. But he does have loads to do and limited energy for socialising, which means that having me, and a model, both talking nineteen-to-the-dozen over breakfast, does tend to make him feel a bit weary 😉

    We both often have a lot to do during the evenings too; Hywel doesn’t get to stop work until late evening quite often since running Restrained Elegance is rather more than a full-time job. And after a day of working for Hywel, I normally have to pick up the reins of my career as an independent model; it involves a lot of email as well as lots of packing suitcases in advance with different outfits for all the different shoots that I might be going to by car, train and plane over the next few weeks. Luckily it turns out that most models are more than happy to be abandoned once we’ve had dinner. We point them in the direction of tea, coffee, hot chocolate and snacks as well as pointing out the DVD collection and giving them the Wi-Fi code. Then quite often we all head in different directions, scattering all over our big, crazy house. And I might not see the model again till the morning; both of us will probably have spent similar numbers of hours emailing photographers and setting up shoots that night. Sometimes we even email each other with suggestions. And doing the same job gives us so much to talk about at breakfast, which is what makes Hywel so very tired 🙂

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