How Blessed! (Sat-Mon)

My sleep was interrupted by a call on early Sat morning (8am); it was the Regional Group Director of a regional advertising company. We had earlier confirmed a talent for a shoot on yesterday but their photographer could not make it last minute. Hence she asked if I could help?

Praise the Lord, I was just talking to Reina on Friday to see if any miracle can happen to let us handle the shoot and here I was receiving this call directly from the Regional Group Director. I told her that I could help and we arranged to meet later that afternoon 3pm.

It was still way too early before my soccer game at 11am hence I decided to go breakfast with my mum! Yes, take it as early “Mother’s Day” treat… he he, since I knew I have to work on Sun… =)

Had a bruising soccer match later that morning, ending with swollen legs on both my legs but didn’t really felt the pain at all, perhaps my mind was all set on the meeting later with the “major” client. I hurried to the office half an hour earlier to set up our meeting room, prepared all the glasses for water and also “invested” on some pastries from Delifrance to impress my client… he he… like I always said, we are in “Show Biz”!

Finally the clients arrived, total 5 of them… 1 of them was the End-Client from a well-known skin care company. In fact the meeting was “To-The-Point” as they simply briefed me on what they needed… actually it surprised my as none of them had requested to see our photography portfolios. That showed how desperate they were and how much they trusted 1 of their staff for introducing our company to them… (Yes the staff is one of a friend)

After listening to the brief, I knew we could do it, and I accepted the job confidently. What amazed me the most was how direct the Regional Group Director went about doing her business as she simply told me how much the client was willing to pay. Probably this wa the budget that they had already set aside for the other photographer who could not carry out this assignment. Luckily for us, that photographer was a well-known one; hence the budget given to us was GOOD… Thank God, it was a “GIFT”!

I knew there would be a very long taxing day ahead. From the time the meeting ended, I had to work out formal quotations, planning of shoot & last minute briefing to my Photographer-Simon. Both he and myself were equally surprised in the way we got this job… We knew from that moment it was another opportunity from God. In fact the last job that we did is equally surprising and we found out that the End-Client turned out to be a family of Catholics. This time round, the Regional Group Director was a Christian who attended church regularly. In fact, she was also a volunteer to teach Sunday school for the kids in her church… That spelled something about God’s planning right?


SUNDAY – SHOOT DAY

We knew the curtain needed to be raise on Sunday. In fact, the night before we had done some setup in the studio at Selegie Road to make it “presentable”. We had our discussion and all of us knew exactly what our own roles were: To run a great SHOW tomorrow!

It was wet Sunday. We knew there would be tough rides later, however we kept faith as we knew God was with us. We met early at 7.30am for breakfast and final discussion. True enough, the clients arrived late, so did the makeup artist, hair stylist and the models… The actual shoot eventually commenced an hour later than expected.

When the first shot was out, we knew it would be a long hard day. The model was not experienced… (3 out of the 4 models were “street-casted” by the client himself, while the last one was from our side) All the concepts we were shooting were very lifestyles and full of expressions… The model started off a little nervous and “stone”. We had to spend a while loosening up the first male model and luckily after a little while, we got the shot needed to move on. 2 more shots from him later, which turned out to be easier as we managed to get him into the right mood. next male model was Noah, our model. We had not much problem with him as we already worked with him before. In fact, 2 hours were enough to settle his part and he was the earliest to leave.

The third and fourth models were female. The first one was more versatile and we got the shot rather smoothly. That moved us to the last female model. It was 3.30pm; 1 last model, 2 more shots with her and a couple of product shots to go. We had a short break to freshen things up before the final finale. However we were greeted with waves of nightmares...

We got the first shot with little trouble, but the last shot killed us… We needed her to “Groove with the music” – meaning we needed a dance pose. And true enough she could not dance… not to mention dancing alone in front of the entire crew of around 10 people! We tried to get as many people out of the studio, leaving Simon, myself, the client and my assistance in the studio with her, but no matter how we tried, she simply could not dance to the way we want her to… Simply put: SHE COULD NOT DANCE!

Very soon, the place became a little messy as everyone tried to help by giving her ideas, which turned out adding more stress. We spent the next 2 hours “toying” her to no avail. In the end, we gave up the dancing moves, and tried to make her "pose" something “Groovy” instead. As the situation was already a little disorder, the female model also got distracted by all the different suggestions as well. As for me, after drying up my reservoir of brain juice for 8 hours… I was already almost “Brain Dead” into the mess as well. As the client was very particular on human expressions, most of the shots & proposals that we did for her were all rejected… I was very drained indeed. All I could do was mumble desperate prayers for God’s to intervene.

Luckily enough, after many shots & rejects, the client finally came out with a pose that he liked and we did some test shots which eventually turned out pretty well. We knew that was it and spent the next half an hour triggering as many shots as possible on that pose. Finally we got 1 shot out of many hundreds that fitted the bill. Case close!

It was around 8pm… we quickly moved on with the product shoots and eventually wrapped up everything around 10 plus pm… it was more than 12 hours of work... Reached home around 12 plus and slept liked a log around 1 plus.

This morning, I had to dragged my feet to work. However all my tiredness evaporated after I received plenty affirmations and compliments from the clients... =) I managed to speak to the Regional Group Director and found out that it was also through God that she allowed us to handle the assignment… She told me that I was the first person she called after the rejection from the initial photographer. After speaking over the phone and realizing that I could help, she knew that she could leave this to God, and allow FAITH to take over. And yes, it was God who set up this divine arrangement. I can not stop thanking God. He is simply AWESOME and FAITHFUL! How could I ever repay our Lord and Savior? How Blessed!

Amen.