Lessons from a Photo shoot!
My best friend and I had had a terrible week. To put it mildly, we hated anyone and everyone who crossed our paths, irrespective of whether they had done anything to piss us off or not. To make matters worse, a friend had invited us out to dinner on Saturday night. After a long day of work and PMS, we were hardly going to be in the mood to dress up and go socialize. Our conversation on Thursday night went something like this: Me: Dude. Let’s not go. Let’s you and I have a sleep over where we do fun things. Oh my god, we should totally give each other make overs. We’ll feel really pretty and make all the other girls jealous. Best friend: LET YOU AND I HAVE A FASHION SHOW. Me: YES. AND WE WILL TAKE PICTURES. Best friend: LOTS OF PICTURES. Me: OH MY GOD. Best friend: I CAN GET CLOTHES. Me: AND WE’LL HAVE TO MAKE DO WITH KAJAL AND VASELENE AS MAKE UP COZ I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING ELSE. Best friend: WE WILL WALK THE RAMP AND IT WILL BE THE WHOLE DEAL. Me: We HAVE to do this. *_*
We spent most of Friday messaging about what the three themes of our photo shoot should be. She said that she would pack a suitcase with three outfits picked out for each theme with matching accessories. I, on the other hand, said that since I believe in learning on the job, I would put together my outfits once we saw how she looked in her first round of pictures. She yelled at me (by typing in caps lock) and said that the ‘learning on the job’ excuse is bullshit, that I’m plain lazy and that I hate being organized. We then proceeded to discuss how if we were characters in F.R.I.E.N.D.S., she would be Monica and I would be Rachel. If our bosses knew what their interns talked about on WhatsApp while using the office Wi-Fi, we would have probably been fired on the second day of the job.
In order to go through with our plan on Saturday, Tasha, my best friend pretended to be sick half way through dinner. I never realized what a good liar she is, nobody seemed to suspect a thing. Anyway, we made it home by 10 pm. We thought we had an effortless night before us. Boy, were we mistaken.
Even though we had our outfits sorted out, we had no idea where we were going to take the pictures. My best friend, the perfectionist, wanted our ‘backgrounds to accurately reflect our themes’.Therefore, she spent the next twenty minutes scrutinizing every corner and piece of furniture in my house, with the aim of finding the perfect back drop. Since she gets crabby when anyone tries to help her, I polished off six rasgulla as in the meantime and made my Bengali grandmother proud.
By the time Tasha was done ‘scouting for locations’ (read repositioning the furniture in my spartan house), I had already started feeling sleepy. Turns out, she had made a list with four columns –hair, make up, shoes and clothes – she had it all planned out, down to the last detail. Even though I relentlessly make fun of her lists, I knew that this one would help me get to my bed faster. So for once in my life, I decide to cooperate with her and not argue with everything she said. We got dressed up for the first theme, and decided that I would be the first one to ‘model’. Bad decision. ‘Aashna, try and look sexy. ‘Okay smile a little…No, Now you’re smiling too much…No, now you look scary. ‘I think I need to tie your pony tail a little higher. ‘You think you can smoulder? ‘Will you neighbour mind if we borrow some lipstick? ‘Okay, this isn’t working. Go to that wall… No come back to this wall, the lighting there is terrible. ‘What is exposure? ‘Dance a little, you need to loosen up. ‘You need to re-apply your kajal. ‘Hold your stomach in, just a little bit more! ‘Look to the right, a little more, a little more, now a little to the left, just a littttle to the right and that’s it! Hold it there! ‘This isn’t working, do you want to listen to some music? Let’s put on some music. ‘Try pouting like those girls on Facebook you make fun of. ‘We need to change the battery of the camera. ‘‘Make a cute face…that’s not a cute face, you look like you want to kill me. ‘AASHNA!
I was so exhausted by the time we finished all our themes that I tumbled into bed with my shoes on and stayed there till 12 pm the next day. All this while, I had been envious of models. I used to think that they have the easiest job – that all they have to do is show up at the location, sit still while people do their hair and make-up and stare at the camera a couple of times. I never realized how wrong I was. Modelling is hard work. Modelling is extremely hard work. I felt like I had had the longest day ever, and we had only been fooling around. I can’t imagine how much effort models have to put into their work – sitting still while strangers keep prodding your face, wearing uncomfortable clothes for hours which make you look like a joker out of a circus, being patient for hours on end, having a ‘new pose’ every minute, and not being paid enough after all that hard work. Being a model is not a piece of cake, I quit after my first try. So, I guess it’s a good thing that I have size 12 feet and don’t get heels in my size -modelling was never an option for me anyway.
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About the Author: This article is contributed by Aashna Banerjee, our Intern.
Image Source: www.giphy.com
