Shooting in a Arcade is a Lot Like Christmas
Games, dark places, and neon lights. This is the second of two photoshoots I was able to do while in Denver with a wonderful model named MiKaila. I had this idea of doing a shoot in an arcade with a vintage clothing look. I thought MiKaila would be perfect for this shoot; I also ended up tying in some jewelry shots for Gypsy South TN.
Here's how I pulled it off. I found a few arcades in the Denver area, the problem was most arcades are actually barcades these days and my sweet model is 17. So I found two that were barcades, but open during the day which I thought may equal at least a conversation on doing the shoot. The first place I called transferred me to a manager, then to a regional manager and the gist of what I learned was that they had not had anyone ask such a question before and would ask someone else and get back to me. Another issue was I wanted to do this shoot on a Saturday, which is a busy day for these kinds of places. I tried another place called For The Win, owned by Lucky Strike. The woman on the found stated that I'd have to email corporate, which in the past has not been a good sign. However, I received an email back in about an hour asking about the details, what time, how long, how many people, ect., he then asked if 10am, an hour before they open would work better. THIS WAS THE BEST THING HE COULD HAVE SAID. This meant we got the entire arcade area to ourselves, an hour before open. I contacted the model and confirmed, we were set. Here are a few shots of the space:
Since I had never been and we had arrived in Denver at about midnight the night before, there was no time for me to find the place earlier. I was almost late because I couldn't find it, turns out it was right where I was standing just three floors up. The up escalator wasn't working so I made a poor decision to run up a DOWN escalator, 1/10 would not recommend. As I reached the top my client was holding the door open for me, having gotten to see my poor choice. Everything was ready, we picked out two outfits and were informed the lights would start getting turned on at 10am sharp. While MiKaila was changing, I was standing in front of a game and the lights turned on, and continued turning on all around me quite literally like Christmas. MiKaila's wonderful mom aided it bringing lots of outfit options to choose from and coaching MiKaila in posing. Here are some of the final shots:
I also thought this would be a great opportunity to incorporate some of the Gypsy South TN pieces I'd been carrying around. I drove all the way to Denver with them, why not use them??
MiKaila is by no means an amateur. She and her mom have been working together to have her photographing every single week, learning and growing each time. This girl has an incredibly bright future ahead should she continue to pursue modeling, I dare say the next Kendall Jenner, but with less terrible Pepsi ads. Modeling "head to toe," as her mother would say is definitely something she does well, I was more than impressed with how versatile and open she was as well as extremely creative with the strangely positioned games we were posing with. In short, Book. This Girl. I'm adding some behind the scenes at the bottom taken by MiKaila's wonderful mom Karen for funsies. A HUGE THANKS TO: For the Win and Lucky Strike Located in the wonderful 16th Street area of Denver, please drink and play games here, they're the absolute best 500 16th St Ste 380 Denver, CO 80202 MiKaila of course! https://www.facebook.com/modelingbymikaila/ Gypsy South TN for the wonderful jewelry, buy all the things! https://www.gypsysouthtn.com/shop
