Down in the Bayou
November 1st, 2006
Several years ago I happened to travel through southern Louisiana on the way to Texas in February. I was impressed by the beautiful monochrome character of the swamps along I-10 at that time of year. I knew immediately that I had to return and find a nice pink model to put out in the middle of all that gray and brown. So a year later I made that trip, arranging to work with several local models . Nico here came to my motel a couple days before the shoot we had scheduled to meet me and talk about what we were going to do. When I saw her I thought she was probably not going to work very well for me. She was very cute, bubbly, a sorority girl kind of person. I thought maybe if I held her underwater for, say 20 minutes, she might start to have the look I was after. This is proof that first impressions can be very seriously wrong.
I worked by loading two models into a small boat and heading out into the bayou each day. I told the models that I was taking two so if we lost one to an alligator we wouldn’t have to stop shooting. Of course the ‘gators were hibernating at that time of year. We didn’t see one the whole week I was shooting. But Nico turned out to be the real trooper of the shoot. I’d find a location like this one and pull up to it with the boat, one of the models would climb out and work on finding a pose that worked while I backed the boat off and got it into position for the shot. It’s not really that easy to steer a boat with an outboard motor, correct for drift in the current and handle the camera at the same time, but we managed. Nico is in pain in this photo. She is wedged into the fork in the tree and that bark is rough. But she knew exactly how to pose and make her body look relaxed and graceful. A really beautiful young woman and a talented model.
This has been a pretty successful photo. French PHOTO magazine chose it for publication later that year. It’s also always popular when I include a print of it in gallery shows.
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