I'm Only Human

Most photographer stories are wildly exaggerated. In this one, I had to leave some details to the imagination.

As a photographer, some tasks would seem to be a pleasure to perform, but one such task was fraught with danger. One day I got a call from a good client who needed me to photograph a woman for a large pastel portrait. This artist possessed a great talent for capturing naturalness in a body pose, but admittedly felt less than secure drawing faces and expressions.

This thirty by forty-eight inch pastel portrait was to hang over her boyfriend’s bed to remind him of her love for him. His only request was that she appear in the nude!

On the day of the shoot, the artist and I waited in the living room/ studio for the subject to arrive. In walks the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Tall and willowy, her feminine curves were impossible to hide beneath her severe office clothes. A natural blonde with light brown eyes, her skin glowed with a California tan. After the introductions, I readied the camera and lights while the subject started to take off her clothes. Almost as an after thought, she brought out a photograph of an oil painting of a reclining nude painted by a classic artist in the sixteen hundreds. She pointed out that the skin of the model in the oil portrait shone with lustrous highlights and glowed as if rubbed in oil. This was the very effect that her boyfriend requested she duplicate.

I took the artist aside and discussed the problem. No filter I knew of could reproduce such an effect on her skin. The artist decided that I would have to cover the subject’s skin with baby oil to create the desired glow. Meanwhile, the subject had stretched out on the chaise lounge we had set up with patterned tapestry velour throws forming the background. The artist went to get the oil as I tried a few poses with the subject. When she returned, she handed me the baby oil with a smirk on her face, ready to burst out laughing if I even so much as raised an eyebrow. Somebody had to do it, so I started rubbing the oil on the nude’s body, not missing an inch of skin in the process. The artist hovered in the shadows, trying to look like the cool chaperone, but not meeting my eyes when I looked at her. The subject stoically remained silent as I bent to my task. Up one side and down the other, then flip her over and do the other side.

Finally, the oiling was done and, after thoroughly washing my hands, I proceeded to photograph the subject. Four weeks later, the finished pastel occupied a center spot on the artist’s wall, a hidden spotlight enhancing the glowing colors of the beautiful woman in the picture. Since no one was allowed to see the picture except for the subject and her boyfriend, I convinced the artist into allowing me to photograph the finished work for her portfolio. A few days later, the subject picked up the portrait, never to be seen again – except in my (unrequited) dreams.

No two days were alike in the portrait profession.

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