Unboxing Becky

This is Rebecca Perry from a workshop I did in Copenhagen 2 weeks before the world shutting down for COVID-19.

I was in a huge rental studio with three models, and on that day, there was a crowd of 18 participants (purely for demonstration, no participant photography).

I was using a 2x2m/6x6' diffuser screen with a lamp shooting through that to create a large but still hard lightsource.

That lamp isn’t exactly easy to set up or move around, so when you position it, you focus on lighting the body and maintain that position as much as you can.

I was demonstrating model direction, with the light coming from my left, which turned Rebecca toward the right (her left) so the light would accentuate her body.

But she kept turning the opposite way, which caused light to strike her breast head-on, doing the opposite.

So I kept directing her to turn to her left, and she did the opposite, and as you can see below the light is much more dissapointing, when turning the body toward the lightsource.

Eventually, I was satisfied with what I had and called it quiet.

One of the participants approached and said,

“Wow, that was a tough tug-of-war - congratulations on winning.”

And it did feel almost like we were battling for control.

We all went to dinner in the evening, and I brought it up with Rebecca.

She had been a bit annoyed with me for turning her to her left, as she saw that as her masculine (less desirable) side, and wanted to be photographed from the other side.

She hadn’t given a second thought to the light.

I pulled up my laptop and showed her some images from both sides, and she was genuinely surprised that she liked the ones from her “weak” side better. And the lighting too of course.

It turned out that a photographer at some point captured her from her “bad” side, and she didn’t like those photos.
Since then, she's always tried to turn the other way during shoots.🤷‍♂️

So, two years of unnecessary behavior because of a single photo session, and a profound lack of communication, as everybody else had just let her do her thing.

Let me note that she is an exceptional model, and I don’t in any way hold this against her.
It’s a learned behavior, coupled with many photographers being ready to go with whatever the model offers instead of sticking to their principles.