Atlanta Belles-and-Bottoms

I slept like a baby at the Hampton Inn. Melted right into the king size bed and drifted off to blissful sleep. Unlike my NYC experience, the halls and neighbouring rooms were dead-silent and I awoke feeling completely refreshed. What a relief!

(I'm obsessed with taking photos of my hotel rooms.... esp. when I'm staying in the US burbs because they are just soooo BIG for one person. This is the 'sitting room/office')

(continuing on my pictoral tour of my hotel room, here is the garbage can in the kitchenette)

(yes, I've already made a mess of my bed... how comfy does that look though! Props to Hampton Inn... I'm serious!)

I was already behind a day -- we were killing two birds with this Atlanta trip by filming with two characters. However, the "Jeans Designer" and I hadn't managed to connect in person yet to work out the details for our shoot in a few days. But I didn't have time to dwell on that... I had to finish up my shoot plan for today... and get myself looking somewhat presentable.

For those who know me, I am a bit anal (the puns are endless) when it comes to my appearance. I wouldn't quite call myself high-maintenance but I'll admit that I'm rather self critical. I do take care with how I dress and look. Add a camera (that I will appear before from time to time) to this equation and you have: a significant amount of extra time spent getting ready each day. But, those are the breaks.

I am in Atlanta to film an artist who partakes nude booty photography. His work really is something to behold -- and I am withholding details to build anticipation...

We met up with our first character (aka the "Artist") at his place.... and surprised him with a bit of filming as he was pulling up in his car, returning from an errand. We proceeded to film footage of his prior work and a background interview. The content was great, but I quickly became aware of an error in my planning. I had not allowed much time for "set-up". Over the past few years, I'd clearly become spoiled in dealing with tiny 'prosumer' cameras that maximize available light. I was further corrupted more recently by shooting as a one person crew for MTV Canada....on those shoots, I basically just WENT. As my crew fiddled to get the lighting and environment just right, I started to get anxious. Needless to say, this put us behind...

A bit of background filming at the Artist's place and we had to boogey to get to a coffee shop to meet some previous models from his exhibit.

In actuality, the local mall was the true place where gals from his community gather, but we weren't able to get clearance to film there. Apparently, the mall management did not sympathize with the Artist's work and did not see the benefit of allowing a camera crew (however small and inobtrusive we were) to film for reasons other than to feature a mall-specific event. So a coffee shop was the alternative... a lovely place called the Urban Grind. Tons of ambience... the owner let us turn down the music and set up stronger lights, as well as create a round-table like setting for me to interview and chat with a group of the female models.

(chattin' it up with the gals/models at the "Urban Grind" cafe)

(we could have talked for hours!)

It was a great chat -- Canadian Tatyana with a crew of Southern African American gals of all ages.... the subject: booty. What else? The girls shared their varied reasons for participating in the exhibit, as well as their experiences. By the end of the chat, several expressed the joy of being able to share their stories with a group of like-minded people and began ruminating over setting up a networking group! It was so refreshing to see -- the women were empowered and basking from the experience, as was I!

Though I had scouted and met with the Artist months back, you never really get to know someone until you spend a full, time-crunched day with them. This is when you see people's true colours. I experienced a bit of push-and-pull with the Artist, as he had his own ideas on how to film, and having made his own documentaries, had a very different approach to storytelling from my own. I understood and appreciated his intent to offer me "more than I needed" to film so I'd have options. But this posed complications to the schedule I had so precisely arranged. For example, he found a "New Model" and brought her to the coffee shop, mentioning that he'd be photographing her that night and we should come along. How could I turn that down? After all -- the girl was a first-timer AND was willing to disrobe with a camera in the room. So I decided to reschedule the additional planned segments with the Artist for another day.

(what's going on in here?!?)

When we got to the studio, I proceeded to try to interview the New Model. It was then that I found out the following things:

- she was only 19
- she was extremely unarticulate (vapid??)
- she was an escort!!!

As she offered useless, one-word answers to me and proceeded to get nekkid without the slightest bit of demureness, the scene took on a whiff of seediness. Where was my timid doubting gal with much verbally expressed hesitation? Where was my gentle, coaxing photographer, using his powers of persuasion to get her to see the beauty of nudity? I likened this experience to soft porn -- as the girl lounged between shots, showing off expressionless, full-frontal nudity. I immediately began to wonder just how long she had been in her line of work.

My mind already began to plan for the next shoot and ways to 'undo' this 'mess'. This was not the story I wanted to tell! But, it was the story that was unfolding, and a part of me challenged myself to tell it like it is. I've always had a tendancy to sugar-coat and edit a pretty picture. The New Model was in a sense illustrating what the critics might say about nude booty art... it made me uncomfortable but did that make it NOT WORTHY of telling? Therein was my first dilemma, and we were only into our first day of filming!

You never really can plan when you're filming real life.... I tell ya!