A couple of weeks ago, two of my talented friends and I planned an impromptu trip to Paris to shoot some cool photos.  My dear friend Physalis lives in Paris and kindly offered us a place to stay. While we were getting ready for the shoot we discussed possible locations and she came up with the idea of shooting at the beautiful and famous cemetery that shall remain unnamed because as we found out, it’s totally illegal to shoot there..

Anyway, everyone was on board with this idea because, let’s face it, it’s one of the most beautiful places in Paris. So we packed our gear and some awesome outfits that Physalis put together, and got on the metro.

 We had a bag full of clothes and lots of make-up, Physalis dressed Julian up and Ashley did some truly awesome stuff to his face. While they were working I scoped the area and found some spots with great light and cool backdrops, and also experimented with some leaves in front of my lens to create some fun effects.

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Only about 20 minutes after we started shooting, a security guard showed up. He saw Julian first, rocking  a latex corset and a bright blue beard. That must have been an interesting view. The guard only spoke french, and I only understood half of what he was saying. Luckily we had the french Physalis with us and she talked to the guard. He told us we had to either pay a huge sum or we had to leave. But worst of all, he told me to delete ALL THE IMAGES from my memory card! I couldn’t allow that to happen, as I had so many great pictures on this card and I did not want this shoot that we were all so excited about to dissapear. So I played a little trick on him. I noticed that Physalis was trying to distract the guard, she kept talking to him and asking questions, so I had some time to be sneaky. I had three cards with me, but made it look like I only had two. All the images from this shoot were on one card that I kept hidden in the palm of my hand and then slid into my wallet as I grabbed the other two cards. I formatted those cards, since I had already imported the images that were on them, and showed him the ‘NO IMAGE’ message on my camera screen. HALLELUJA! He bought it and told us we could take our time to clean up and pack, and walk around some more, but we were not allowed to take any more pictures.

We were so incredibly lucky that Physalis was with us to talk to the guard, and that my boyfriend urged me to take two extra memory cards with me in my wallet. Even though our shoot was cut short and we didn’t get as many pictures as we wanted, I’m very happy to be able to share these results with you.

Make-up by Ashley Wolthers, latex and styling by Physalis
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Make-up by Ashley Wolthers, latex and styling by Physalis EPH_9062-Edit

Make-up by Ashley Wolthers,  styling by Physalis EPH_9171-Edit