Latest Shoot: Evening Gowns in San Francisco

I had the great fortune to shoot with San Francisco photographer, Gerry Gatchalian of G2 proImages. We networked on Facebook and--like Ming in the blog post I did before this one--I messaged him after seeing his casting call posted on one of the FB modeling groups I'm a member of.

Gerry was excited to work with me and we began planning our shoot together a few weeks ago. I'd never worked with Gerry before but know a male model colleague of mine who shoots with him a lot. He vouched for Gerry so I felt good about the upcoming shoot.

We both knew we wanted to shoot evening gowns...something elegant, feminine and sexy but classy. The location for the shoot was going to take place in the evening (8pm to be exact) on San Francisco's Embarcadero Street. The only concern was that I didn't own any gowns that really fit the look we were going for, which was bright colors that would pop in contrast with the nighttime setting.

Thankfully, I utilized my resources and decided to reach out to Sarah Dottery, who owns a bridal boutique (Blessed Brides by Sarah) and is actually one of the people I model gowns for during the bridal season. Bless her heart, Sarah was more than happy to let me pull dresses for my shoot free of charge. I was super happy! I went for a fitting and found two dresses I loved.

The day of the shoot I was responsible for my own hair and makeup so I used all my superpowers, lol. While I won't say it was "perfect" the makeup and hair photographed well--I was just glad it was at nighttime so I didn't have to worry about the imperfections being targeted in the sun.

I met up with Gerry and his assistant, Drew, on location in SF at 8pm sharp. We got right to work and I was thrilled that Gerry was the type of photographer that didn't take a million pictures a second. He took time to make sure my pose was ready, the composition and lighting overall was good and then he took the picture. He also let me preview what we were shooting along the way. Drew snapped away with his own camera, capturing candids and behind the scenes shots.

It was funny because the night we chose to shoot on location was the same night as this huge biking event called Critical Mass, which was celebrating its 20th anniversary. So while I was posing and doing my thing, hundreds of cyclists were whizzing by, whistling, yelling compliments and one cyclist even rode around me in circles, blowing kisses, lol. It was a riot! Then of course there were the looky-loos in their cars who honked, waved and told me they loved me. Ah, you gotta love shooting on location! ;-)

We shot from 8pm till about 10:30pm. I got lucky that it wasn't as cold as it usually is in that area but by the time 10pm rolled around, I definitely started to shut down because it was so cold. Thankfully Gerry didn't force me to continue because he knew that if I was uncomfortable, there was no way we would get any really good shots. So we called it a night--literally--packed up our stuff and headed home.

Below are some of our favorite shots: