Sarah - a cemetery girl from Chicago!

(full size images can be seen here.)


I found Sarah via the Model Mayhem website in March this year. I wrote to her, informing her that I was going to be in the Chicago area for 10 days in June and asked if she'd be interested in becoming part of my "Cemetery Girl" collection. She wrote back, excitedly saying that she was very interested. We communicated with each other, off and on, over the next few months, and then made arrangements to meet when my trip neared.

Sarah actually lived in the very township that I was going to be staying in; St. Charles. I think it made her more at ease knowing that I had been there before and could talk knowledgeably about the local cemeteries (and other features/landmarks).

I worked hard at acquiring as many models as was logistically possible to work with in the Chicago area as I could (which ended up being 3). Sarah was my first contact and first confirmed model. The other two that I found I will write about in other blog entries. I think it is worth mentioning the models I did not get to work with too (due to unavailability or cancellation). But I will also save that story for another blog entry.

So my appointment with Sarah was on my second day in town. This gave me a chance to scout out the cemetery we were going to do the shoot at in the nearby town of Elgin. I took a drive up there with my mom (who was along on the trip with me) on our first day in town. I had seen a few photos of the cemetery in Flickr before hand so I had some idea of what it looked like. From those photos alone I had decided that it was a picturesque enough location.

The important discovery I made on this pre-visit was how intense the effect of the high humidity was on me. It was only about 82 degrees this day but I was in a constant sweat - even inside the automobile with the AC on.

I talked to Sarah on the phone that evening and we discussed where we would meet the next day. For my own ease I suggested the city library at 1pm. We had spoken earlier about her bringing an escort along, and also of driving all the way into downtown Chicago to do the shoot at Graceland Cemetery; Chicago's most famous and beautiful cemetery. But Sarah lives with her sister and her sister was not cool about her taking off on a 6 hour trip with a total stranger that just got off an airplane. I fully appreciated that and did not force my desire to shoot downtown. In fact, I said that she could totally control our day by allowing her to drive and said that her sister could come along if she wanted, and even that we could just do the shoot in the cemeteries in St. Charles (which were small, but usable).

But we met the next day at the agreed time. And she drove. Working and hanging out with Sarah turned out to be one of the most fun shoots I've ever had. She is a very happy and positive person and had me busting out laughing quite a bit. One problem we ran into during the shoot, actually only 30 minutes into it, was the humidity. As some of you know, I am overweight and suffer from high blood pressure. It doesn't take a whole lot of physical exertion to get me huffing and puffing (and sweating). Well, it was 90 degrees this day and the humidity was even higher. I brought bottles of water and Gatorade in MY car but forgot to bring any in her car. She said, "You're not going to die on me, are you?" Half giggling, half seriously. I was glad she said something because I was feeling really, really bad but probably wouldn't have said anything till I got worse. I suggested that we drive the mile back into town and get something cold to drink.

Yeah, Sarah was a lot of fun. She wore some beautiful dresses, as you can see in my photographs. Ooh, and she is the tallest model I've worked with yet. 6' tall! That was definitely one of her selling points on me choosing to work her. Anyway, the highlight of our discussion during the photo shoot was discovering that she was a "Buffy" fan! I've never known anyone that I could have such in depth discussions about "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" with.

Our shoot lasted about 2 hours. Afterwards we went back to St. Charles together and decided to meet later for dinner after we had a chance to clean up. We had dinner in an Irish styled pub/restaurant in Geneva, just south of St. Charles.