$3.99 doesn’t begin to express the value of this sheer-backed ombre-blush top. The shirt is cheap, but to me it is priceless; I’m so excited to see her wearing it. We picked it up at a thrift store years ago, but keep waiting for the perfect time to shoot her in it. At night. Her body visible through the light mesh. With oceanspray in the background.
She’ll have to wear it backwards. At just the right time. With light so hard to get just right.
I’m too attached to a vision we can’t possibly get right. PROBABLY can’t get right. Not with the limitations of what we know. The limitations of what we have. The limitations of time. How the moon doesn’t stay in one place all night. Only a few days when the oceanspray is in bloom. Even fewer days of when it’s just right. How to combine moonlight with staged light. Extension cords that don’t reach. Stands that tip over, expensive bulbs break. So fucking sweaty in this heat wave we should just snatch all the few darker cooler hours to sleep, not try to execute some ridiculously elaborate unattainable vision that nobody else will really care about and we’ll never be compensated for … except for the pictures we’ll have that I can swoon over, and the excuse the work gives me to immerse myself in colors and textures and shapes that I love.
The more magical the vision, the more difficult to get it right. The greater the disappointment. I have to lower my expectations.
This is why the cheap ugly things we throw into our bags as afterthoughts always wind up being the coolest: because we didn’t think they’d be worth anything at all. We didn’t have any preconceived notions or attachments to how they would turn out. ANY little thing is a win with those.
Of course none of those things would mean anything without a gorgeous hard-working model. The right lighting, technical expertise, the location, the clothes — those things do not amount to ANYTHING without the woman in front of the camera and everything she puts into it and exposes.
Have to shift my approach to gratitude for any little thing. Any little thing shot at night is a magical win. Any image no one else has. Any moment captured outside of a studio, on a real street or in some backwoods. Any shot that shows we have seasons. Faces and bodies that are ours alone.
Ethereal wind-blurs of white flowers. Flying ghosts to frame a bare body.
I know I should let go.
Let go of the night. Let go of the oceanspray. Let go of the interplay of too many complex variables.
Instead: just focus on the colors. Or the sheerness.
Just focus on how amazing my wife looks through veils of pink whispers.
Don’t make yourself shoot black and white; better to shoot in warm flesh tones anyway.
Don’t make her try to pose super-still with those too-long-open slow shutter speeds. But now all these years later: who has to? Maybe I can just do it with my newest phone that’s able to see at night better than anything before.
Or don’t shoot at all and instead just focus on finally compensating her for all of the beautiful things we’ve shot already.
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