Keenyah Hill-Americas Next Top Model/Cover Girl & Linger Magazine September
I photographed Keenyah Hill and darn it she is nice, I dont have any drama to tell not that I would but darn it just fun stories about a beautiful girl who is a successful model, television personality, hard playful worker and a fun team of professionals ........
I received a call on a Tuesday and I was shooting in New York City Friday. We all had a great time shooting for 8hrs on the streets of NYC after meeting at the Mac Pro Studios. Keenyah was greeted by tons of fans its was almost distracting but watching her embrace the fans was very special. Keep in mind when shooting I'm a team player but who are these people interrupting my shoot... Oh they are just as sweet as Keenyah she attracts kind people ok so crazy ones too but thats the city and what happens & she was sweet about it. At times I became very protective over my subject as this beauty on the street of NYC drew crowds. I was protective over my shot at first then it quickly turned to concern for the subject as people were wild about her. It hit me shooting at the Flatiron Building she was a damn star. The Mua Jami Svay for the shoot started getting my attention so I would look around and when I did I noticed no less than 50/60 people watching this go down. I looked up and noticed a sea of people watching/documenting this shot and thought oh wow go go go get the team out of here fast and now... We did have Keenyahs assistant with us and he would guard her but who knew we needed crowd control... and believe me we needed it. We all had a blast shooting, running away and I'm sure all have unique stories to tell..
I have so many images of Keenyah as she was game to play and that made me happy. She even pulled one off for my portrait series and was window candy for me (THANK YOU Keenyah)... it was great but the shot that has me singing is Time Square. I cant thank the stylist/designer enough for allowing us to shoot in a rain storm in her beautiful gold gown now trashed. This shot makes me so happy. I over the past month or two have been dying to shoot in the rain but had no idea this was in my cards. I had dreams of pretty girls simple umbrellas and yes gowns too.. but wow this was amazing. So basically we went to the hotel room in Time Square and took a break and Boom Rain... what to do right... Well I have to give full credit to the team and Jami for saying lets get this going. I was like you guys are kidding me right portable power in a rain storm or no way was I going to place a studio light and portable power out in storm.. I grabbed my standard flash and went for it.. The image you see here where the umbrella flipped really happened. I'm not a fan of faking this type of image as things happen during shoots for reasons and this one makes me happy. First it shows how Keenyah is game to shoot and have fun with it. It also shows the amount of rain that was falling and believe me it was look at the umbrella it has streams of water coming off of it, the team like me was wet like a fish when this was over. But wow it was worth taking the risk. We had the place to ourselves. It took a rain storm to finally have time alone with my subject. It was the icing on the cake of a day of shooting on the run and laying in the gutters for angles. It was so worth carrying 45lbs of gear and then to break it down to the basics to get this who knew this was my treat at the end of this shoot.
Many thanks to Keenyah Hill, 'Mr. Love'/assistant to KH, Jami Svay/MUA, DaMara Altman/Designer, Yajaira Daniel/Hair and Linger Magazine for having me.... I had a blast on the run. What you will noticed posted above are the full frame of what was shot and then 'ouch' I had to cut things a bit to fit print... And Yes my initials on the pink light image.. So one friend jump in my business for this and I told him hey look at the raw files it just happened just like the umbrella flipping things happen. Believe me if I was planning this I would have asked Keenyah to pose like a "L" to make it complete...
**cover/5pgs incl some fun on the streets**
