Remember the Princess from my other photo story The Princess and The Cowboy? Well, she was wearing a soft rose dress in that story, but her favorite color is red, in just about any shade, but especially bright ones.
I don’t know if you remember, but the Princess also loves ball gowns, so of course I had to do another shoot with her wearing another gown. That is how it came that on a February afternoon of a few years ago we had a little indoor fun.
The challenge in photographing the Princess is getting her to relax… and shut up. You have no idea how many images we have of her with her mouth in some weird pose. Actually, not that many anymore, because she tends to trash any images in which she, or any of us for that matter, doesn’t look good. She is really good at clutter clearing by the way, even better than me.
So I patiently direct her, tweak her, until she relaxes and I get authentic looks, smiles and poses. She tries to give me pouty fashion model attitude, but fails miserably, as she is one of the kindest, gentlest, sweetest people in the Universe, and that would require more acting than she has in her to to pull the pouty face off.
Not that models can’t be sweet and kind, but they are trained into putting on various attitudes and moods as directed.
Then sometimes I just let her play into the silliness of the moment, because you have to play sometimes… Actually, let us make that all the time. I had some fun with the edit, too. How do you like this almost-black-and-white version? I love the soft ash-rose tone the dress takes in the process.
I did this photo shoot during one of my visits to Italy. I had actually managed to fly all the way there from Hawai’i with the Princess not knowing I was coming. This kind of thing is not simple to pull off, as the Princess and I check in with each other via text message once a day and Skype once a week. The Cowboy, one of my aunts and a cousin were the only ones who knew I was coming. SURPRISE!!
The Princess really loves her gowns, and all those rare elegant events where she can wear them. Even if he prefers jeans and t-shirt, the Cowboy owns a tux, of course, and will dress the part just to make her happy, because making the Princess happy makes him happy. You know it: the Cowboy is just as sweet and kind as the Princess.
For those of you who have not yet seen my other photo story, the Princess is my Mother.
Now, if you could all send out good vibes to the Cowboy (my Dad) so he loses his fear of flying, maybe we can get my parents to finally come and visit me in California. Come on, all together now, one, two, three…. let’s fly!
