Cassandra Violet
September 16, 2017Cassie first came to me with the desire to do something fun, do it differently and do it quickly. We met and talked about ideas and both decided that we’d love to do a motel themed shoot. We searched areas close by but only found one (that shall remain nameless) that looked remotely interesting. The interior photos that we saw online and on Instagram had interesting wallpaper and looked retro in a really cool, non dirty way. We decided to go for it, picked a day and drove out to book our room.
Once there, we discovered the hard way that motels in Hollywood are actually more expensive than a nice Airbnb and that if they even catch a whiff that you are shooting in the room they will raise the price even further. We concocted a story about a lusty affair to explain our presence in a motel so close to home, got a key and tried to figure out how to get all the camera gear into the room without being seen. As it turned out, the room was nothing like the one we had seen online, no cool wallpaper, nothing retro and there was a hair on the bathroom wall that neither of us wanted to touch, but it did have really pretty lighting.
For almost the entirety of the shoot the owner sat outside facing our room making it impossible to use any sort of strobe lighting, so I had to rely fully on natural light - I wasn’t even able to sneak my bounce in. In the end I got really lucky and as the sun went down it hit a wall outside our room that bounced in and illuminated Cassie so perfectly that it looked like something Gregory Crewdson might have dreamed up.