"Hot Model" Is Not a Concept

I am not a photographer, but my friend Cynthia is. She's good, too. You can see her work here. Since nobody reads this blog yet, that link probably won't get her much publicity.

Tonight, Cynthia was asking me to help her come up with a concept for a model shoot she has scheduled. What I love about Cynthia's work is that she doesn't settle for concepts like "pretty dress" or "unique hairstyle" (although she sometimes uses those things). She always reaches for the much more difficult goal of telling a story in a photo.

I never fully realized how difficult it is indeed. I like to think I'm rather good at telling stories with words and with bodies in motion, but it is a very different thing to tell a story just with a single moment frozen in time.

These were my suggestions that Cynthia rejected:

1. a typewriter

It could be a secretary, I explained. Or a receptionist, or a court reporter. Ombudsman with a typewriter. Notary public with a typewriter. Cynthia said it would just read as "sexy secretary".

2. a cash register

I wasn't even given a chance to explain this one.

3. Mary Tyler Moore

Throwing a beret in the air, etc. You get the picture. I also offered some variations on this concept that included I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched. Cynthia said a shoot like that would require more than one model and a lot of planning and money to get the look right.

4. slipping on a banana peel

Cynthia said this one had some promise because it involves an action and not just a model looking like something, but she had to reject it because she didn't want to ask the model to fall on her butt. "That's her main asset," she explained.

5. mowing a lawn with a pair of scissors

This is where I had a real breakthrough. Cynthia wondered how one would convey that the model was mowing the lawn and not just trimming some blades of grass. My first solution was that it would have to be a series of photos showing her progressing inch by inch across the lawn. Then the answer came to me. You're gonna like this, it's pretty good. Use an overgrown lawn. Mow half of it and place the model with her scissors at the halfway point. Then we can clearly see in one image the progress she has made and all the work ahead of her. A full story captured in a moment. I'm brilliant, yeah?

So why was it rejected? Cynthia lives in San Antonio, and apparently it's against the law to mow a lawn at this time of year in San Antonio.

My genius is wasted yet again.