Friday mornings, I usually drive to Pickering to get my haircut at All My Sons barbershop. This week, I wasn’t able to go because I was doing newborn photos of my cousin’s son. Most barbershops are busy on Saturdays but I didn’t really have a choice.
Just as I was about to get on the highway, I received a phone call from a number that I didn’t recognize. The gentleman on the other end of the line wanted to do photos for his birthday. It was 11:30am at the time and I took him to come to my studio at 2:00pm.
My client arrived a bit late, but I didn’t mind because it gave me a few minutes to eat. I texted him my address and he replied about 10 minutes later that he had arrived. I opened my door and didn’t see anyone. I stepped outside and I saw 3 young men next door waiting for someone to open the door. He informed me that the text said house number 158 instead of 156. The auto-fill feature on my iPhone was set to the wrong address for some odd reason, but the client arrived and it was time to go to work.
At first glance, I was surprised at how young my client was. I was expecting an older gentleman in a shirt and tie prepared for a business shoot. This was a much more casual shoot to celebrate his 19th birthday.
Before Paul arrived, I had switched my backdrop from black to white, again because I was under the impression that we were going to do something much more formal. His first outfit, he came out with a white shirt and white jeans and white and orange Chanel sneakers. I had to laugh to myself because I thought that I should’ve kept the black backdrop to make the white contrast more and “pop”.
The second outfit Paul brought out was a checkered jacket with matching pants courtesy of Forever 21. As a photographer, this definitely caught my eye and I was thinking how could I get some creative shots incorporating his outfit with the equipment that I have at my disposal. I used a Red gel filter from Rogue to add some colour to the image. It was pretty exciting considering that I haven’t used these effects since my photography class at George Brown.
The final outfit was the original outfit that he walked into my house with. With this outfit, he wanted to include his friend and unofficial fashion stylist Bilbo.
Thanks to Paul for calling me and coming to my studio to take pictures to commemorate his birthday and once again to Google for appearing in their “photographers near me” search query. Happy Birthday.
degreyphoto 