I’m not going to lie; this shoot was a challenge for me. But I’ve been doing this for long enough to know that a challenge means growth if you learn from it.
Emme has a broken foot. She has a removeable cast and a scooter that she’s using to get around. She can’t point her foot. She can’t put weight on her foot. It’s hard to maneuver into different positions because that foot is unusable. And to top everything off it was about one hundred degrees out even though we started in the early morning. I’m talking visible sweat drippingly hot. Oh, and we were working within time constraints.
So my go-to dancing poses get flung out the window. Throw away anything that requires balance for fear that she will fall and injure herself further. Get rid of anything involving the forest or stairs. Pretty much 80% of what I rely on to make my shoots a ‘Paige Thomley’ shoot is gone.
We are left with sitting, standing, laying.
And you know what? That was enough.
It’s nice to know that at the end of the day, when you put me in a corner, I can still bring the magic.
In all honesty I wish I could have captured Emme in the forest on the path with the vines wrapping around her. Frolicking amidst the trees, weaving in and out of the shadows, that glorious hair flying behind her. Walking on the moss-covered stone steps down into the valley. I wish I could have gotten her to the ginormous blooming hydrangea bushes at the bottom of those stairs.
I wish, I wish, I wish.
My shoot with Emme might not have been as robust storytelling-wise as I would have liked but we still created some amazing images together. And now I know that I can absolutely bring it if a client comes to me with a broken foot ever again!
Emme, you did amazingly, broken foot and all!
