May Warwar

I’d originally planned on just the two shoots in Pattaya (Alice and Prapassara) with the final shoot of my trip scheduled to take place on my last night in Bangkok.

With a couple of days to go before the journey north though, I woke up to a Facebook message from May. She’d noticed I was in town and it coincided with a trip she was making with her mum. Did I want to shoot? Truthfully speaking, having just completed two lengthy shoots I was a bit weary. However, after several messages bouncing back and forth I found myself agreeing to it. And as it turned out, it was so much fun and I’m so glad she persevered with me!

I was a little low on ideas after the previous days and didn’t really know what we were going to do. I was also really nervous that I was going to let May down with the images I was going to capture. I guess because I’d sensed how important it was to her.

The first 20 minutes or so was very tricky. I couldn’t find a location or composition I was happy with and in my own mind I felt like May was regretting shooting with me. In desperation I was looking everywhere that I could to capture her. More through luck than anything else, I wandered out the back of a Starbucks and found a clean wall, with just a few bushes. The light bounced perfectly off this wall. Thinking I’d finally get a few simple shots to build upon I snapped away. And from there everything just seemed to fall together. May took one look at the back of camera and relaxed immediately with a huge smile on her face. I knew then we weren’t wasting each other’s time.

After some street shots we headed back to the hotel and shot several swimwear sets. There was an amusing moment where a housekeeping maid came into the room and tried to make a swift exit as she thought we were doing something else! She saw the funny side when I called her back and I showed her some of the images!

Lastly we shot around the pool. It was funny to me that I’d shot that swimming pool with 3 different models in only a few days. yet had got some very different images and compositions in each.

I’m so glad I shot with May. She’s a terrific person and is so, so passionate about modelling and capturing images. Honestly a joy to work with and totally recommended to any travelling photographer.