Introducing... Jasmine High
Introducing... Jasmine High
I've only shot Jasmine twice, but the second time was a commission about interacting with light sources for drawing references, where we managed to smash out loads of different sets and ideas. The first shoot almost foreshadowed what was to come, as I had her interacting with a new lamp I'd built from an old-skool continuous beauty dish I found at an oddities and antique dealers place. I also used some old barbers chairs that I wanted to sell, as while they were super comfy, they were a bit bulky to be moving around the studio for the little use they were getting.. case and point, I wanted to use them properly for the first time before selling them, and I had had them a couple of years. Aside from that, we also did the old faithful; the neon wall!
I hate working with time constraints, which is a funny thing to say when you charge people by the hour to use the studio, but I felt I could have done better in the first shoot, but maybe on the second sitting we were just more comfortable and used to each other to have better chemistry, as we smashed that one. Sometimes you second guess, and move quicker when you're not sure how someone else works as people are different and like to work in different ways, so it becomes easier to cut corners while reading the room to keep an equilibrium.. add in a time constraint and you're not working to your true capacity. Having said that, working with Jasmine has never felt awkward, but she was maybe a little quieter the first time around as she has a soft nature and English is her second Language. Despite saying that about our first shoot, a couple of images from it made it to publishing in Photoplus Magazine.
Hiring her for the commission, I had been given a brief with a little emphasis on emotion as it would challenge new artists to draw a range of potentially practical or fun emotions while interacting with said light, so it was a little more than a contouring and understanding light drawing exercise. It's probably the one thing most models fall short on as they're often managing their image, so they are too inhibited to let go and act out a scene, but Jasmine came good and even had me asking if she'd done any acting previous. Having fun and conveying emotions beats 800 resting bitch face images every day of the week, in fact, a lack of emotion can break a shoot/narrative time and time again. As I said on her Purpleport reference, she's a bit of a gem hiding amongst the many, as while she keeps busy, in a sea of average, emotionless and inflated priced models, Jasmine is highly accessible but delivers, and all while taking nothing for granted and offering to help where she can. Jasmine on Purpleport Jasmine on Instagram