Walking on the wild side

I recently discussed the difference between myself and a high fashion model. Essentially I compared a starving cow to that of a full bred bison, horns optional of course. One of the differences of course is that as a commercial model we typically aren’t called upon to walk. Of course as the contract states and I agreed upon, I go where they say to go. 

Fierce like a tiger, use that confidence and strut your stuff. With David Bowie giving a play by play a cool guy walks down a glittered stage. 

Pop Quiz: How do you make sure you are cool guy?

As previously mentioned I have booked the same number of fashion shows from castings as this guy:

I would like to think its my walk or my goofy face. Unfortunately when you are the equivalent to the broad side of the barn and the other models can be thrown, you get passed on easily. Initially it bugged me. Then I got comfortable with the fact I wasn’t the look and now I have come to embrace that I am not a fashion show guy. 

A list, everyone likes a list, so here is my Bowie (Pro) vs Bieber (Con) list for fashions shows: 

Bowie:

Ziggy stardust, game over. 

You spend the entire day with a bunch of models

Free food after and sometimes drinks (champagne, yes please)

Bieber:

You spend the whole day with a bunch of models

Low pay

Hurry up and wait

Herded into a casting like lamb to a slaughter

Herded into a fitting like moo (another pop quiz… remember what moo means in thai?)

Herded into hair and makeup like a bunch of zombies after they hear a gunshot (been reading the walking dead comics lately)

Castings, fitting, all day at show – a lot of time invested

Does nothing for your portfolio

As you can clearly see that Bieber has a much larger list. This is directly proportionate to his fans under 20 compared to Bieber. The negatives far outweigh the positives. I am not exactly sure where I was going with that. Bieber sucks and Bowie is awesome. That is of course my opinion and any prostitot and tweenie can go suck on a tootsie pop rather than chirp me.  

Reminiscent of a zombie feeding frenzy, there were close to 200 hundred models of all shapes and sizes waiting for this casting. Seriously, 5 ft nothing and 6"4, man, woman and everything in between.

I lucked into baep sib baep or those not familiar with Thai, the lucky chinese numbers 88. 10 at a time we were led into a meat market. Clients feast their eyes (drooling at times) on who they wanted to represent they fine threads on the tiger walk (much more fierce than catwalk). Both Thai's and falang (foreigners such as myself) were there together. These guys had a bad walk down pat. Only one of the 6 thai models actually had confidence in his walk. In their defence I think many it was their first time and they were nervous, kinda like daisy a baby calf.   

Run through the jungle

Skipping over some of the action from recent work, this past Tuesday I found myself in the jungle. Sweltering heat, through dense trees, this Canadian that is built for cold weather dripped lakes of water from arrival to departure. As part of an advertorial for April’s Hommes edition of L’Officiel, their photography, and fashion teams piled into a luxury Lexus van alongside me for our destination.

Just over an hour from the bustling polluted city of Bangkok, the air cleared up. With clean air surrounding me, it was no easier to breath with the weight of a million micron sized water droplets marching over me like a stampede of elephants. Humidity here was quite possibly the highest I have experienced outside of being submersed in water.  With humidity at such high levels, my fears of blood sucking mosquitoes were at an all time high. It must be the birds or the bats in the area because not a single mosquito was to be seen, rather hundreds if not thousands of beautiful butterfly fluttering by.  

The entire team was awesome to work with. While not perfect just about everyone spoke some degree of English which makes communication far easier. Fortunately as well I wasn’t receiving command like “big pose”, “more attitude” or “cool guy”. Those of course are the standards things photographers ask for. For you rookie models, “cool guy” is just smile without teeth.  

Once you get into modelling more, you have your cues. Of course the biggest cue is *click* . The click of the shutter is what tells you to move. Every time I hear that sound on set I know to move. When you move, you literally just move. No thinking, it becomes a flow of eyes, arms, legs and torso any number of directions. Off set, my ears perk up like a dog when a can of tuna is opened. Unfortunately due to the nature of our location we had a generator booming the song of its people (brrrrrrrrrrrrrr). Making due with instinct I continued my flow hoping things would turn out for the best.  

Unfortunately I can’t share any of those photos but here are a few on location and behind the scenes shots.