I’d found Chloe on Instagram, and while it didn’t look like she’d done any modelling at the time, she certainly had the style. I’d intended to message her asking, then saw that she did the UK Calendar Girls competition, along with Samantha. So I messaged her asking if she’d be interested in doing a shoot. She was, or this would be a very short post, and a bit lacking in photos. She had plenty of ideas for what sort of style she wanted to get, which we didn’t get too close to on this shoot – backlit with the setting sun wasn’t going to work at 11:00 on an overcast day in the woods – but we did get pretty close in our next shoot.

We hadn’t come up with much of a plan, beyond where to meet, just hoping to work it out as we went. Chloe had brought a friend along (Lauren, but not the Lauren you’ve seen so much of here), and we met up in Waitrose, in the cafe. Things got a little awkward at this point, as Chloe and Lauren went and sat down somewhere else, leaving me a bit confused. Sam went and got them to come over to the table we were sitting at, and we started coming up with ideas. Lauren had lived around Exeter for a long time, and knew the area better than the rest of us, and had a plan for a bit of woodland and open fields, so we headed off.

The location started with just a field behind some houses, which wasn’t too interesting, but that led into a bit of woodland, which was a bit more promising. We got some nice shots using trees and plants as props and backgrounds, and things were looking up.

We emerged to more fields, with some pretty little flowery bushes to use for a few more shots.

After that, things got a bit more muddy. We took a circular route back to the car, but part of the path was narrow and deep with mud. One of the first rules of modelling shoots is “Never touch the model”, but that had to be slightly abandoned as we had to lean on each other to get through without getting too muddy.

(On a side note from that, don’t touch models, but if you don’t know the difference between offering to help someone through mud or down from a wall and trying to touch them inappropriately, there are plenty of other types of photography that may suit you better.)

After that, we grabbed a few more shots with some trees, including a bit of air guitar. Well, tree guitar.

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I’ve been lucky enough to work with Chloe a few more times since, and she’s always been good. And it’s always good to find a model I can play Pokémon GO with on shoots.