I met Ashley while looking for models for the LoveSmack Studio Live Demo Event a few months earlier. Kristopher Osuna and I were sitting down at LoveSmack Studios at a casting call when this model walked in with a big smile and a ton of energy and said, “I want to be a part of this shoot”.
She showed me her book and I was convinced I was looking at a twenty-something year-old’s portfolio so you can imagine my utter surprise when she said that she was 14 and would be graduating from 8th grade in few months.
Ashley joined up on the LoveSmack shoot and she did a great job. For someone so young she has tremendous poise and presence. Some of my favorite photos from that evening included her.
Shortly after the LoveSmack shoot I came down with a bad case of mono and that pretty much put a stop to everything. Getting over mono is a slow process. There is nothing you can take to make it better the only thing that helps is rest. As the weeks started to slip by I did start to improve but I realized that I had a wedding coming up and it would have been eight weeks that had gone by without me taking a picture and I had no idea what my endurance would be like.
About this time Ashley reached out and expressed her interest in working together again. With my health beginning to improve I thought a small shoot with one person in the studio as a kind of warm up for the wedding the following week might be good for me. Besides, I wanted to work with Ashley a little more without being quite as rushed as we were at the LoveSmack Demo.
Kristopher Osuna stepped in for the hair and makeup duties which was great. He and I have worked together so much now I know I can just give him a couple of inspiration photos and hand all of that off to him and it will be great.
Ashley agreed to take care of the wardrobe for this one and that was a big help. I think getting wardrobe and styling nailed down is one of the hardest parts of any shoot. When Ashley and her mom arrived at the studio it was like we just picked up where we left off the last time we worked together.
Ashley is a young woman with goals, ambition and the drive to get there. She wants to become a professional model and I think she’s well on her way to accomplishing that goal. She brings a lot of great energy and she’s fearless in front of the camera and maybe more importantly she’s got the support from home that she’ll need. She’ll try anything and is capable of pulling off some really difficult poses with ease.
The bottom line: we didn’t shoot all of that long but we got a lot of really great shots. We had such a fun time – it’s everything you hope for in a shoot. Good people creating something cool in a relaxed environment with the freedom to try and experiment some without the fear of failure. I’ll be editing for days probably and as much as I wish I could take credit for them I was just there to capture the work and Ashley and Kris created together and I was glad to be a part of it.
