WirtzWorld Loc: SE WI

Sam wasn't my kind of model. She was a bit rough to look at and to listen to. I shot her as a favor to my brother, who was friends with her mother. Sam wanted to be a Suicide Girl. If you don't know what that is, just google it, but she wasn't even of that stock. She was a nice enough person, just a bit crude for my taste. She came to me all kind of bruised and disheveled, like you see her here. I took her to a railroad yard that I knew of and tried to make it an urban decay kind of a thing, but I'm more of a glamour or portrait shooter. I guess you could portraitize anyone, yeah? Anyway, we got down to it and I actually got some photos that were okay in a kind of different way. She found this old frisbee laying around the rail yard and spontaneously used it to look at me through. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. I actually like this picture because it shows her as she really is. I only shot her the once and never heard from her after I gave her a cd full of her images, so I have no updates on her availability for shoots, just in case any of y'all were thinking that way.

PAR4DCR Loc: A Sunny Place

Like your shot John but like you said, she is a little rough around the edges.

Don

JohnFrim Loc: Somewhere in the Great White North.

Nah, not my cup of tea. The shot is OK, but I am not moved by the subject and/or her adornments.

Rab-Eye Loc: Indiana

I find it oddly compelling. Normally I would agree with JohnFrim.

joehel2 Loc: Cherry Hill, NJ

I think her eyes betray a sadness.

rlv567 Loc: Baguio City, Philippines

"Window to the Soul"???

Loren - in Beautiful Baguio City

Toby

I agree she does look rough in a sad way. Your capture is good but it is unfortunate for her that it appears she really may have some problems. Looks like she has/had potential with some changes.

WirtzWorld Loc: SE WI

I agree that in my photo she appears to have a hard time getting through her days. She had a physically hard job which accounted for the bruises and cuts and she had a vocabulary to go with it. She wasn’t like an abuse victim or anything like that, at least not that I knew about, but that could be imagined on a viewing of this and other of her photos. She really wanted to be a model to try stepping out of her hard life. I wish I could have helped her more. After I found her file in my hard drive, I started to wonder about where she is now and how she’s doing. (I do wonder about a lot of my models and what their present is like. It’s a reasonable thought stemming from getting so intimate with a person for 3-5 hours and then they’re gone. And by intimate, I mean their baring of themselves physically and emotionally to create art with a stranger who’s doing his best to have them trust him. Sometimes it can be exhilarating and exhausting at the same time, but always rewarding.)

Rock on.

mjc925 Loc: SF Bay Area

Like most, maybe not my "cup of tea" type shot, but I do like that it tells a snapshot of this woman's life, a bit of a story, which is what a good photo can do. Don't know if this will lead her anywhere in life, but I hope she saves the CD series and in the future looks back at where she was and smiles when comparing it to where she arrived. If a model does that with a photo of mine, it has done its job. That is the photographer in me talking....now the "Dad" side of me looks at the photo and hopes this girl is currently OK!

Jules Karney Loc: Las Vegas, Nevada

I would like to see some shots of her in black and white to set the scene or the hardness and a tough life.

ski Loc: West Coast, USA

Appears she's into SMBM with all those scratches, bruises and dirt.

Real Nikon Lover Loc: Simi Valley, CA

I appreciate your explanation in detail here. Red flags go up when I see a bruises on a model, male or female. I am jaded because of my professional work (not a photographer) and my vivid imagination gets the best of me sometimes.

With that said, I appreciate your work and time to post so much of it. Thanks so much.

WirtzWorld Loc: SE WI

I will plan to post more of her sometime. Next week I’m going to Fripp Island in NC for a week of golf, photography, whiskey and general foolishness, so I may be absent for a while. I’ll do my best to post in the next few days. Thanks for tuning in, and don’t touch that dial.

josquin1 Loc: Massachusetts

She looks damaged.

WirtzWorld Loc: SE WI

You’re right, she does. But I don’t think that was her reality. I think it was her image.