Edited Clients

Last night I dreamt I was taking pictures of three women. Sisters. I didn’t get DOBs but they were in their fifties…but like old school fifties. Not like me and my gen-x gigi girlfriends.

There was one main client, the one who hired me, and her two older sisters. They wore pastel-colored, empire waist dresses, each in her own hue, like three Easter eggs fresh from a Spring dye bath. They arrived in high spirits, too high. They were giggling so flamboyantly that they became tangled into something impossible to capture. I offered a few opening posing suggestions, but my words floated into the humid air, unclaimed. All three were oblivious to me, yet performing for me.

I couldn't get a single decent shot.

Inwardly my eyes wanted to roll back into my head whilst exhaling “Whhhhyyy” in manner that was both a question and a statement. Outwardly I was all smiles, keeping it cool, light, chill – because it’s the photographer’s job to direct the energy, and under no circumstances shall the photographer secrete so much as a hint of a negative vibe into the atmosphere during a shoot.

“Secrete.” Ew. Gross word.

Anyway. Never.

It began to drizzle. It was time to shift into gear and get the shots we needed before the downpour. I perched, camera-ready, under a narrow awning, while the sisters continued frolicking wildly under the open, dripping sky. I kept trying to gently hurry them along, but they couldn’t be bothered by my cordial sense of urgency. One of the sisters squinted in my direction, defiantly studying my finger on the shutter button as she attempted to synchronize her spread-eagle leap in front of my lens with the shutter click. She landed with a gleeful cackle, “Photobomb!”, arms triumphantly raised, as if her stunt was an Olympic ten.

Predictably, the drizzle turned to real rain. Hair, once high and dry, now clumped together forming aqueduct channels routed along rosy cheeks and black rimmed eyes, delivering water via fine facial lines. The pastel fabric that once provided a tent underneath which every body part could roam without care, now adhered like a semi-translucent second skin, exposing… um…everything that was previously concealed.

The shoot was over.

As I walked inside, the client sister followed me. She indicated that she was under the impression that I would meet them later that day, once the rain cleared and hair was re-coiffed, to finish the shoot.

I told her I had plans, which wasn’t a full-blown lie because I did plan on not doing another photoshoot with them that day. My kids were home for the holidays, I explained, and I was hoping to spend time with them. Then I mentioned something about boundaries (not bad for a dream).

Then she followed me into the bathroom. I actually had to go to the bathroom, so I worked it into my dream. She just stood there waiting for me, which I didn’t care for. At all. So much for boundaries.

I woke up. Went to the bathroom and returned to bed.

I don’t have many work dreams. If I do, they’re always about me being a mess, failing to get to a shoot on time for one cockamamie reason or another. There’s an elephant in the road, but when I finally move him out of the way, my car has a flat tire, or my trigger finger is in a splint. That sort of thing. Never wacky clients.

Wild.

The mind is a funny place; in the wee hours of night, it's busy offering up funky new edits to our lives. I think I'll stick with our "unedited clients", they are far more fun to photograph than the 2am ones.