A nude with no baggage...

Something reminded me of a shoot from a while back where I was bringing in a model from out of state for some nude work, and the airline lost her bags. The initial reaction is "oh, well, it's a nude shoot... not like she needs to have any wardrobe" but it's not that simple. In this case, the model had packed her hair supplies and toiletries, as well as her Rx meds, cell phone charger, an expensive purse, and a few choice wardrobe items, including several pairs of "kinky boots." She had to describe a distinctive item in each of her bags to the lost luggage drone, and asked me "what do you think they'll make of two bags filled with boots, heels and lingerie?" That and a round trip of only about 24 hours... ah, appearances.

We could have shot without doing much to her hair and without wardrobe, but the real trouble was the time-consuming effort of trying to work with the airlines to figure out just what had happened to the bags, and when they might be arriving. The 7:09? The 11:15? Maybe the 6am flight? I ended up driving to the airport four times that weekend. Not to mention the aggravation factor -- dealing with airlines ranks right up there with the phone company and the cable company -- somewhat putting both of us off our game a bit. And there were further complications I won't go into here.

It also really cut into the time I'd hoped to shoot... was planning on some hotel room fun the night she arrived and an early start the next day and possibly a couple different locations. Granted, we did end up with my "usual" 3 hours to work, but considering the expense and what seemed like months of discussion and a few weeks of actual planning, I was disappointed in the amount of time we had. We did get some excellent images, which is the important thing. But still, when the "best laid plans" are messed up by the damn airlines, it's hard not to think of what might have been.

This shot is NOT the model in question, but rather to illustrate the position the airline put me in...