JPG: Stories: How To: Crack addict

How To

Crack addict

By Guillermo Escudero

5 Jun 2009

Two and a half weeks after my friend Lorena had a baby she calls me to tell me that they are ready to have their picture taken.

I warn her that she should have Monita, ready and sleepy so we can handle her better and of course she won't be cranky and crying.

Of course nothing runs according to plan.

When I get there, Monita is sleepy and her mama is holding her.

I start setting up my equipment, I hang a black cloth behind her rocking chair, and set up two strobes with shoot through umbrellas, camera left face level and camera right, the strobe above their heads, my SLR is set at 100 ISO, f8, 1/200 sec, RAW file.

The rest is just wait, wait and wait.

Lorena starts telling me about the struggles that she has with Monita and her breastfeeding, seems that her milk is not coming down. The baby is sleepy but as soon as she takes her apart from her breast, Monita starts crying.

I ask Lorena if it is cool if I take her picture while she breastfeed and she has no objection.

I take a few shots, and time passes by, we talk about her experience, delivering Monita, after nineteen hours of labor, she decided to go to the hospital and have an epidural, the beauty was that it was a natural birth, they didn't have to cut anything!

Time goes by and Monita doesn't want to let go of mama's boob.

Finally after a couple of hours, Lorena decides to bring the heavy arsenal, Monita's crack.

The formula is prepared, Lorena calls it Monita's crack, after she gobbles down the formula, she is relaxed and full, so finally we can handle her and separate her from her mommy's breasts.

One thing that I learned from this is to have patience and also to listen to the mom, because, she wanted to have a picture for the announcement, and she had some clothing that she had made. My artistic vision, didn't include have my model with clothes on, but I also did some mall's pictures, so the mom and the relatives could be happy with the more main stream trend.

Oh well, that was my experience and I have not shown the pictures to her yet, I am curious to know which one will she pick for the announcement.

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