If you follow my Instagram, you’ve likely already seen this new face on my feed over the last week. If you don’t follow me, what’s taking you so long? https://www.instagram.com/katebensonphotography/

Lily contact me a few weeks ago and had a pretty cool back story. About a year ago she was approached by two ladies (I bet I could guess who) from a local modeling agency DirectionsUSA and they asked her 3 questions, “how old are you? How tall are you? When are your braces coming off?” The answers were 15 (at the time), 5’8″, and in a year. Turns out, Lily had just had her braces removed when she called me. She needed a model test shoot and needed it ASAP. In addition to sending her images off to the agency, she needed to send them to Charleston Fashion Week for consideration for the upcoming event.

Shooting a 16 year old is a fun change for me, as is a first time model. There is something really amazing about fearless way a model will try different poses and expressions when they haven’t already learned what their looks are. Lily brought so much more character and fun to the shoot than I was every expecting. In this little series for example:

We shot these in the marsh in Mount Pleasant behind my friends house so for part of this shoot, we had an audience watching. Let me just add, in addition to being a new model, to have to model in front of strangers adds to the challenge. But she killed it. I intentionally started shooting her later in the day in studio so we could move out to the locations once the light was where it needed to be. With the help of my new intern Chelsea who was assisting this day, we didn’t spend more than an hour total on the marsh. I wanted to get a variety of locations in before the sunset (which is about 6:30pm now).

So we wrapped up the marsh and ran off to the beach racing the sun, because, did I mention, I have a thing about using natural light so we were going to be done no matter what once the sun was gone. We did two looks there, a swimwear look and another younger look.

Our last look was inspired by some beautiful erosion at Breaches Inlet on Sullivans Island. That and the fun beanie Lily had brought. As the last of the sunlight slipped away behind the island, we quickly shot one last round of images.

These had the most amazing Maxfield Parrish feel to them (one of my favorite painters of all time). I loved them so much I am pretty excited to get back out there and shoot again. Lily as of this shoot, was unsigned and starting to look for agencies. I have no doubt that she’ll find one and have many, many more amazing shoots. As for me, I hope to get another chance to photograph her soon! Extra thanks to Chris, Lily’s mom for being such an awesome assistant on set as well as to Chelsea for all the computer/lens/reflector wrangling, Phil and Sandi for letting us invade their backyard and always offering me their home as a location (again), and Sam for watching Moose extra late that night and making sure there were some takeout tacos for me when I got home. He knows the way to my heart!