Naughty Paris

Day 2 started out with three very dehydrated, sleep deprived ladies in sunglasses. Luckily we're all young enough to bounce back by the time the shooting starts at the naughty perfume boutique, Etat Libre d'Orange, in the Marais. We had to improvise a bit to get some good perfume shots without actually spraying the model with the perfume (since we wouldn't have time to hose her down before the next session).

We can't resist a closeup of the model's shoes on the hot pink rug.

After lunch we shoot at L'Hotel in the St-Germain-des-Près district, a sultry Jacques Garcia designed boutique hotel. Aarathi arrives to help style the room photos. We have a beautifully exotic room for the shoot (the Marco Polo, I believe), and decide to go ahead and fill the tub so it can look like the model is about to get in. I should mention that all of the hotels we shoot are kindly letting us use the room for an hour or so. But we're not supposed to mess it up, so we're very careful to "leave no traces" at the end of the sessions. Between setting up, arranging and changing the photographic equipment, styling the models and then cleaning up behind ourselves, it soon becomes obvious why so many people are needed on fashion shoots!

Aarathi arranges the model's hair to look "natural".

We wrap up at L'Hotel and go for lunch at La Palette, just down the road. The model's boyfriend has arrived in Paris unexpectedly, so she won't be coming to the evening session at Chez Régine's. Luckily, I invited all of my girlfriends to participate in the shoot, which is for the weekly ladies' night, "Au Bonheur des Dames". How do you get your friends to come out and basically "work" for free? Free drinks, free food, free male entertainment....if only all my work was this easy!

The ladies waiting patiently for the show to begin.

What isn't easy is getting in, since there's a whole sea of women pressed up against the velvet rope at opening time. After talking our way past the doorman (with the help of the PR woman's email to me, which I thankfully remembered to print out and bring along....this is France, after all) our crew set up on the edge of the dance floor where the show takes place. And what a show!

"Zorro" shows the willing participant where to pull the zipper on his tight black pants...

At some point during the shooting, Kirsten lost a piece of her flash equipment, called a diaphragm, so I had to walk around asking the wait staff if they'd accidentally "cleaned up" a large white diaphragm...sometimes this job has its surreal moments. Despite the loss (I promised to bring some wax paper and scotch tape to the next shoot to improvise), it was another successful day of shooting. We got the photographer home earlier on Day 2, just after midnight!

Tune in tomorrow to see us shoot our first naughty toy boutique!