Ayla Rose
Ayla Rose contacted me while visiting Denmark to work with another photographer. Her original host, then her AirBnB, cancelled their agreements to host her and she desperately asked if I could accommodate her.
She offered to take some pictures together in exchange and, by this time, since I was hosting much less, I decided to accept.
When I picked her up at the airport, I was a bit concerned, because I thought she looked about 13 years old! She was quite cute, wore baggy clothing and big glasses. She spoke like an adult, though, and I had learned that models do not always appear to be models when in “civilian clothing”.
I later found out she had a daughter that was closer to 13 than she was, so looks can indeed be deceiving.
We did two shoots together. The first started in the evening and went on into the night. Like some models I worked with, she preferred to do the entire shoot nude. Early on, she did mostly traditional beauty poses. I was impressed by her acting ability. She could make a natural looking expression of spontaneous laughter, instantly followed by smouldering come-hither eyes, the immediately after give a shy, humble glance downwards, and on and on. Unlike most other models, I did nothing to help influence these “natural” expressions.
As the evening grew darker, she started having fun making more grotesque expressions and poses. She laughed about these being exactly the wrong type of poses for her portfolio, but we both enjoyed going against the norm.
In the end, this short shoot was one of my favorites. It captured the essence of what I like best with working with professional models that are comfortable with their bodies and creative in creating visual stories.
We did a second, much shorter shoot mostly in darkness, lit only from a standard bulb above her. Once again, she was wonderful at expressing many different visual ideas that incorporated her physicality, her hair, and her expressions.
