Pain, frustrations and photo shoots.

My latest photo shoot was, to say the least, painful, annoying and quite frustrating. In fact, I almost gave up which has never happened before. However, it also inspired me to write this post, because in the middle of my misery, I found it quite comical as well. I had the idea in my head, that I would shoot something with a rope hanging from a tree and a woman hanging in the rope by her wrist. I decided to use myself as model, since I am always available when needed. I spent the night preparing my shoot,  gathering my stuff and researching how to tie a hangman's noose, which by the way, is a very scary knot.

 

The next morning, I ventured out to one of my local shooting spots. I like to bring an old stroller to transport all my gear and props from the car to my final destination. Since this shoot was spontaneously decided on the night before, I hadn't had time to go scout the location, as I usually do. I had a tree in mind that I hoped would work. It didn't. The branch was too low so I had to quickly decide on another tree before the sun got up too high and would ruin my light.

As it turns out, there are a lot of people walking their dogs, jogging and biking that particular trail in the 8am hour, so I got a few stares when I walked my stroller to my location. However, that was nothing compared to the looks I got when I hang my hangman's noose over a tree branch. I started setting up my shoot, it was getting a little late, 8.30am, and the heat was starting to kick in. We still have temperatures around 30C/90F in the mornings here in Austin, so there are several good reasons to start and end a photo shoot early.

I got myself in position with my hand in the rope and when I started putting weight on it, I realized why this is such an effective knot. It tightens fast and is very tight! I have this little remote control that triggers the shutter on my camera and I got a few shots, before the rope came down too far (I hadn't tightened it very well to the branch). Also, I had to check my camera and see what I had gotten so far. The problem about self portraits is, that you constantly have to walk back and forth between the camera and your pose, to make sure that you are actually getting what you are aiming for. I did this several times and sometimes when the pose was most painful, the remote wouldn't trigger the shutter. So once again, I released myself from the tight knot, standing on my tippy toes trying to reach, while getting bark and dirt in my eyes, from the rope rubbing over the branch.  I tell you, that gets old really fast! At one point I stepped on a baby cactus, yes with bare feet, and I also got a couple of ant bites. Yet, I was just going to try one more time to get the right shot. Close to the ending, I felt I had to assure a by passer, that almost fell of his bike from staring, that I was just doing a photo shoot and not actually trying to hang myself.

I did end up with rope burns on my wrist and my thumb has partially lost some of the sensation, hence the pressure from the rope on the nerve. I am positive though, that I will heal up again and I am now an experience richer. On one last uplifting note, I managed to keep the vultures at bay ;-)

If any of you would like to hear more about my photo shoot adventures, please let me know. I have more images on my website www.mettethellefsen.com