I never really paid much attention to the blogs here on UMD, but now that I've found them, I think I'll share a recent story from a shoot I had before the holidays. It was a shower shoot in a hotel with a model I had worked with before. The shower stall was not a tub shower, but just a shower with a glass wall and glass door. While I enjoy getting wet myself, I usually wear a bathing suit during shoots, even to shower shoots, because as I move around to get various angles and perspectives, I inevitably will get wet and I want the model to be comfortable. Wondering why a photographer is getting their clothes wet is something that would likely distract some models. Distracted and/or uncomfortable models don't take good pictures.

Well, on this night, I was in a rush to get to the shoot because I had to get home from work, grab my stuff, and get to the hotel to check in and set up prior to the model's arrival. One of the things I ALWAYS take with me is a change of clothes. The first year I did this, I got thrown in the pool at the end of the shoot (after the model got thrown in by her husband and he got pushed in by her, they turned on me). It was July, so no one really cared about going home a little damp. But it taught me that I ought to be prepared because not all of my shoots are in the summer, but they are all around water.

Anyway, I throw my change of clothes in the backpack, grab my camera bag and get moving. I get to the hotel, get checked in, start setting up, and go to pull out my bathing suit to change into. No bathing suit. Then it hit me that it was not in the neat stack of folded clothes that I threw in my bag, but was unfolded right next to a big pile of clean laundry I had dumped on the bed that morning. There wasn't enough time to go home, so when the model arrived, I had to tell her the whole story as to why I'd be shooting in jeans and a t-shirt. She was completely nonplussed by it, and even moderately entertained. I told her it was likely I'd end up almost as wet as she'll be and she just smiled.

So, we start shooting. She's doing her thing all wet in jeans and a button down top. I step into the back of the shower to get some fresh angles and, while the stall isn't that big, I mentally noted that my feet weren't getting wet. With my vision restricted to the view finder, I can't always tell where I am, but I'm thinking I was safe outside the spray of the shower, so I squatted down to get some low angle shots. Then I see a smirk across her face and all of a sudden, she turns to give me a profile and lean against the side wall of the shower and I get soaked from the spray she had been blocking. Without missing a beat, I stayed put, eye still in the viewfinder as I kept shooting, and let the water soak my jeans from mid-thigh down.

After that series of pics, I stood back up, looked at my jeans, looked at her, smiled and said, "Well, there's no point trying to stay dry now." She chuckled and agreed. By the end of the shoot, I ended up completely soaked from just above the waist down. Even though I wasn't soaked from head to toe, it was still a lot of fun to get wet so unexpectedly and have the person I was with be 100% cool with it. But I was VERY thankful to that model who pushed me in the pool all those years ago. If she hadn't, I wouldn't have had a change of clothes and going home wet in late November in Philly would not have been fun.