Suspenders from H&M. Pants from Megan’s sister.

Picked up that cross at Forever 21 for about $7. Win!

Lighting here was an AB1600 bounced off the ceiling. Tight squeeze in this bathroom, lemme tell ya.

I’d never been to Calgary except to pass through the airport on a family trip about 20 years ago. I’ve travelled a lot this year — Alberta was my fifth province in three months — but I was still looking forward to exploring the area and seeing some friends of mine. That didn’t really go as I had planned. A few weeks before I visited Cowtown, one of my Albertan friends decided she was abandoning her fair province for a trip to Ontario instead, coinciding with my visit out west. Some friend, eh?

Oh well, at least I had Amy to visit. Yes, you remember Amy, don’t you? “But wait,” you think, “Amy is from Halifax, not Calgary!” True, but she was spending the summer in Calgary with family and nailing down a school placement while she was at it. Until she broke her arms. Yup. And had to fly home to Halifax. Yup. Shitty. Poor Amy.

So now I had no one to see in Calgary… except Megan.

Megan came into my life thanks to Christine. You remember Christine, don’t you? I mentioned to Christine that I was visiting Calgary and she noted that an attractive family friend lived there — Megan — and that I might be interested in shooting her.

Damn right I was interested.

Luckily, Megan was totally down for being photographed. I quickly learned that this was her first photoshoot. Look at how gorgeous this girl is! Can you believe that I was the first photographer to ask if I could shoot her? That’s retarded. Some Calgary photographer should have snapped her up long ago.

So here’s the first batch of photos from our epic 7-hr (!) marathon shoot at the lovely Acclaim Hotel near the Calgary airport.

Megan’s a freelance makeup artist and I told her to go as crazy as she wanted on the one eye. The eyepatch cost me about $3 at Shoppers. I was debating whether or not to bedazzle the eyepatch and go with normal makeup or leave the eyepatch plain and go with crazy makeup. Obviously we went with the plain eyepatch and it worked out really well.

All the images were shot with mid-day window light. The third photo was probably far more difficult than it needed to be, as I decided I wanted to use the bed sheet as a diffuser. I laid it on top of Megan first, then crawled underneath it and propped it up with my head and my left arm while I shot with my right arm. Super awkward.

There are lots more of Megan to come, so stay tuned in the coming days for those shots.