Back on the bus with the full compliment of gear + loo. 3 flights of stairs. Some rickety ladders and footholds later and Voila - balming on a hot asphalt rooftop with Chris and Jayne.
We had beaming spring sun, some wicked props and a backdrop of Edinburgh University at our disposal. All well and good as normal until the one basic but ultimately unmentioned moment, the drop of the trousers. At the start of the project, if one thing could win the award for "the most daunting prospect", it would naturally be this. 3 months ago i could hardly see myself successfully convincing someone to change their trousers, never mind cringingly drop them in public. The good news, is that i have never really had trouble in that department, but i've never really developed much of a good method either. So even the current shoots suffer the same measures of avoiding glances and frantic gesturing. Which i have gotten pretty good actually
The reason for this post though is to acknowledge a far worse discomfort. Not just the horror of having to let someone take your picture on the toilet, and madly insisting you sit "as accurately as possible...<cough cough.>" But the shock of seeing the photo and confronting, maybe for the first time, your naked lower half. Take it from me, this can be hard for a man! Sounds like a real crisis i'm sure, but i have started to wonder if a person alive doesn't recoil at their own image. One of the great joys of sitters is that there is no room for glamour, but lots of space for beauty. And from a life of seeing images of the billboard poised and the glossy beautiful, it can be quite a shock to have to admit the reality of beauty. Patches of hair, dimples and bruises and, great earthly shock!, the inevitable first showings of a little pouch on the tummy. They are there, they exist on all of us.
Good man Chris for showing yours off to the world from a-high. So lesson learned- Get your pouch out!
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