When I get time, I’m going to pop up some old work that either I’m proud of or have great stories … Here’s the first!

I’d been on the job for about six months and done quick, one-off shoots for stories, but we decided my first large-scale one would be for prom fashions. I thought it would be a great idea to use real high-school girls, not models. The photographer, Beth McGovern, and I decided to photograph everyday school scenarios, but to plop one girl down in the middle of it decked out for prom. (”Oh, me, wearing this big ol’ gown? Never mind that….”)

(Pics and more after the jump)

We came up with our themes (sports, science class, after school, etc.) then called the schools and asked for the senior girl who best represented that concept. The Mesa student who posed in our “science class” photo, for example, had the school’s highest GPA in science; the Apache Junction cheerleader was captain of the squad that year.

We took them all sight unseen; I spoke to them by phone to get sizes and descriptions; contacted salons who agreed to do their hair before the shoot; and showed up with dresses and accessories in hand at each school. It took more than a week to get the series done, and I remember thinking how tired I was after they were all done, and how I’d never do something like that again. (I was wrong, of course: As time went by, I’d do three or four times as much and compact it into a single-day shoot.)

Click on the thumbnail to bring up a full-size photo.

The first shoot was in Apache Junction — it was also the first time I’d ever driven that far east in the East Valley. Crystal was captain of the cheerleading squad, and Beth had the idea for a great picture in which all the cheerleaders were in a linear formation, cheering in unison, and Crystal would be in the dead-center of the photo. It went on forever as she tweaked the lighting, trying version after version — sometimes Crystal was cheering, sometimes she was talking on her cell phone, I think — but Beth just wasn’t liking the photo. Eventually we called a break and the girls all gathered around Crystal and somehow the discussion of her “boyfriend” came up — it was one of those “does she like him as much as someone heard he likes her?” things, and they were teasing her relentlessly. Beth just kept shooting, silently, and we never told the girls what to do. This was what we ended up with. (At this point I was still obsessed with making sure we also got a shoe shot to use as a thumbnail. Poor Beth: “Get the shoes! Get the shoes!” was something she got really sick of hearing.) It was our first “man, that was exhausting” shoot, but we liked the end result so much it reinvigorated us for …

Chandler’s theme was track and field, and the poor girl — Angela? — had to trot out to the track in this dress in front of her whole team, girls and boys alike. Beth wanted to have the other girls popping out of the blocks, so we commandeered four volunteers (the one on Angela’s left was named Chanel, I remember, because I thought we had reached the era where teens were now named after designer brands) and had them race toward Beth (who was lying on her stomach on the track) and me (standing right over her). And, of course, here is the mandatory shoe shot. We were high on the success of our first two pictures. …

Next up was a Scottsdale high school. No, in real life teen-agers don’t get to be crossing guards, but it was too much to resist. Julie (?) was a junior, and her friends in the background really reminded Beth and me that we were a decade older than they were. They seemed so young! On the drive back, we wondered if we looked like geezers to them. We had to keep telling them: “Happier! Happier!” And we had to get out of the way any time actual cars came through, too. The first casualty of the shoot: When the model returned the dress to us, she was stricken: There somehow was an oil smudge — like motor oil — on the bodice of the dress, which was $150 at Nordstrom. This is when my level of discomfort started to rise. Of course: the shoe shot, which if you examine closely reveals the tape on the soles, to prevent scuffing on concrete. It also reminded me to start asking the girls to remove toe rings. … (And our first jewelry shot.)

The science teacher at Red Mountain in Mesa called me concerned: The girl with the highest GPA (also named Angela?) had been so excited to do the shoot … but her family was Mormon, which meant she couldn’t wear many of the fashions offered up for prom. (Indeed, she couldn’t have worn any of the dresses from the previous three photos.) Did I need a substitute? We decided not: Since so many families here are LDS, we decided to address that challenge. (The lede said something like “sometimes a girl’s dress doesn’t just have to pass muster with her parents, but also her deacon.”) I went for an homage to Sharon Stone with her Gap turtleneck at the Oscars. Unfortunately, this was before I recognized the need for a clothing steamer, so all I see when I look at this photo is the wrinkles in her skirt. The extras in the photo got extra credit for hanging around late, and those bubbles you see blowing around in the background were generated by the teacher and me, squatting down out of camera range with bubble wands. This was my first association with the folks at Le Studio in Mesa, the salon I refer pretty much everyone to. Casualty #2: The bracelet clasp broke, so we ended up doubling the necklace around and using it instead. And, of course, a shoe shot.

For some reason, the student council leader at Horizon High School (which several Paradise Valley students attend, was a no-show). She didn’t even show up for her salon appointment. (Although I would have been even more angry if she had gone to the salon appointment and then blown off the photo shoot.) Her friend, Lindsay (?), tried to track her down but was unsuccessful … luckily, she wore about the same size, so we called her into duty, sort of against her will. We skipped the shoe shot for this one — we did a close-up of the heart-shaped Swarovski crystal tattoo we put on her shoulder blade, and settled for a handbag shot instead.

By this point, Beth and I were getting kind of grumpy at seeing each other every day. And Beth was coughing a lot.

The Gilbert High School musician also skipped her salon appointment, and had toes that weren’t ready for their close-up in sandals. (Ergo, no shoe shot.) “What kind of girl wouldn’t show up to get her hair done for free?” asked Beth, herself a big ol’ tomboy. I ended up painting her toenails myself, with a bottle of vaguely-matching polish I had in my big style bucket (which also has things like binder clips for pulling dresses tight [or emergency updos], lip gloss and hair spray). The bloom was officially off the rose. I was getting sick of the daily routine: I’d drive to a different store every day and return the dress, shoes and accessories from the previous day’s shoot, then hoof it over to the next store to sign out … a dress, shoes and accessories.

Veronica was either the art student at Marcos de Niza High School in Tempe or the woman who helped organize our shoot. Beth had fallen ill by this time and so her fellow photographer Brian Fitzgerald (whom she later married, by the way) took this shoot. Given what had happened with the dress up in Scottsdale, I was panicked about this shoot: We had borrowed a full-on gown from Neiman Marcus for this shoot, which was going to be done in a clay-filled studio, and any marks or problems meant I would be responsible for a dress that was worth about a month’s salary. It went swimmingly, and I remember the pottery students in the background singing loudly during the shoot in an attempt to make our model crack and laugh. I was in such a good mood to think this was the last shoot of the series, I went back into “get the shoes!” mode. Since it was Brian, he didn’t mind. And he even did a jewelry shot, too. The staff at Mood Swings on Mill Avenue did her awesome hair and makeup.

The whole package looked pretty cool, and it was the first time I’d done enough for a multipage layout. I didn’t do another one for months, though. …

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