Serena in her bunned glory

8:00 am The team worked really well on this photo shoot.  The designers got involved from the concept and helped Eugene style.  Dale, one of our designers, came in early to do this cool bun hair-do on Serena the model which featured a round plastic object.  The lipstick was this perfect fluorescent orange that I am obsessed with and will not stop till I own one.

10:00am We left for the Navy Yard, and as we were only going about half a mile we got there quickly.  The guy at the security gate kept refusing to let us in, and sending us over to Steiner Studios, despite having a permit.  So it took us about a half hour of calling, and backing up and calling our contact before we reaching our first shoot location.

Outside the Greenhouse Hanger at the Brooklyn Navy Yard

11:00 am One of the piers has a giant orange greenhouse structure behind which is a loading site for cement.  A constant train of semi-trucks slowly ambled by us to drop off their loads.  I wrote the two models name on my hand as I have a horrible tendency to forget names, which ends up becoming moments of tyrannical gestures- “you over there move to the left”

11:30am Josh, yes it’s on my palm, was slightly boyish, perhaps even too so, but looked good in the dressed up meets industrial look we were going for.  We had him run, sit on the pier, walk around an awesome bunker like structure.

11:45am Serena had perfect bangs, red hair and strange eyes that looked both ordinary and beautiful.  She didn’t have too many model-ly poses which was a relief.  She walked down the yellow line in front of the trucks, she sat on the rope and we made fun of the rope to make her laugh.

Outside one of the buildings near the old Navy Hospital

12:30 We left the cement area to drive to the Navy hospital which was a dream as a photo shoot location- run down houses in and amongst trees and over-run fields.  However, our last photo shoot was in the woods so we wanted to get away from all the vegetation.  Still I couldn’t help taking a picture of Josh in the grass with the old monuments; it was so Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (which you should read as it is really good).

1:00 Photographed them both in front of the large bureaucratic building (nice, OK)

Serena outside of a Victorian Era Home

1:30  Shot Serena in the school outfit on the doorstep of the ivy covered building.  I wanted to move there, clean up, cook and have babies.  It just reeked of domestic haven from the Victorian era, of course, with all the repressive suicidal tendencies’ as well.

1:45 Thai lunch on Mrytle right where our warehouse is, and then back to the Navy Yard to the afternoon of texture.

2:00 Grab a couple of pictures of the cranes while the models are changing by the car next to the water.  Do you know the architect/theorist Anthony Vidler?  He wrote a really good book, the Architectural Uncanny which I seem to remember talked about cranes as walking architect or puppets.  I was obsessed with the book when I was 24, and interested in doing a group exhibit in mid-air.  Anyway, back to work.

3:00 A beautiful warehouse with nothing in it except two large pallets being moved around by two workers and a man standing with a new Suburu.  He was strangely very nicely dressed with a woven check shirt.  We played with the models, in front of the grey wall, in front of the brick wall.

3:30 Serena next to an abandoned stand-up washing machine, the photo was very white.  We passed the printing house for Duggal, hi said the guy on a cigarette break.  The architect was so varied, a Weimer German stone house next to a metal shell next to a fish house.  The tug boat guys waved their hands to take a picture and laughed.  I laughed and looked at my palm to keep directing.

Serena & Josh in the Brooklyn Navy Yard Tees

4:00 Found the museum they are making of the Yard but the anchor was wrapped as were the bicycle round things (what are they called?).  They looked like white snakes in the material.  T-shirt shots in a strange courtyard with newly planted trees, brownstone steps with no pavement, small plants amongst pebbles and a bordered up sidewalk.

4:30 The team is getting punchy, t-shirts are flying quickly.  Serena and Josh are working hard.  Josh lies patiently in a gravel pit but it’s not sexy so we move on.  Serena hangs on a pole, kind of sexy.

5:00 We are done.  Wow that was fast.  The Navy Yard was more like an abandoned film lot than an industrial park, with remnants of architectural layers and industries morphing onto each other.  Quite inspiring.  We could shoot there every month and not bore of the location.

-Lexy Funk