Meeting Strangers on the Internet, Vol. 3 - Meg

March 17, 2020

Hello, and welcome back!  The world is a strange place right now, and rather than contribute to the abundance of content centered around our global pandemic, I hope I can provide you with a momentary escape from it all instead.  So, without further ado… 

This week’s Stranger is Meg!  Meg is a graphic designer who has overseen and contributed to design projects for the likes of Beyoncé, Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, Warner Brothers, Spotify, and many more.  With such a stacked resume, Meg was definitely someone I was interested in meeting.  On top of that, she wrote a very nice e-mail when she first reached out! 

I’ve mentioned the overwhelming response to my ad, and how it wound up working to my advantage since I could pick and choose those with whom I wanted to work.  In that massive, virtual pile of e-mails, you wouldn’t believe how many included some variation of,

hey. 24 y/o male model/actor, need new headshots.  can we do thurs at 2:30p?  three looks?  txt me 818.555.5555

My eyes glazed over passing through all the lazy one-liners, but Meg took the time to make her message personal.  She told me a bit about herself, and even had some ideas about what she wanted to do during our session.  We met at Barnsdall Art Park on a Saturday afternoon.  She had already posed for a friend’s shoot earlier that day (a product shoot of some kind, I think), and was therefore already warmed up.  We picked our first location, and it was smooth sailing all the way through.  Meg was really easy to work with, and the photos just seems to come together.  It wasn’t until later that I realized why. 

Each one of these sessions is a learning experience in its own way.  This one reminded me how inexperienced I am at posing my subjects.  I’m not confident telling them how to stand, switch sides, or what to do with their arms and hands.  This becomes even more of a problem when a client has zero experience in front of the camera, and will do nothing unless prompted.  Lucky for me, it was clear that Meg needed no prompts or instruction.  She knew exactly how to pose, move, and turn while I fired off shot after shot. In the end, I wound up with an unusually high number of good captures.  I wasn’t used to having so many options!  I know not all of my subjects are going to have the same level of experience that Meg has, but now I know that if I improve my directing skills, it will yield a greater number of quality images from the session.

So thank you, Meg, for both helping drive home that point for me while still hitting so many great poses!