Lou O’ Bedlam’s Friday Feature: Caitlin Boyd

By Lou Noble on September 18th, 2009

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I’ve spent a lot of my life dealing with fear. Grappling with fear. Being undone by fear, yeah, that’s it.

I’ve spent my life being undone by fear, having it color my actions, having it, often enough the memory of it pains me, prevent my actions.

fear has kept me from living my life like I want.

So when I handed my card to Caitlin, it was a direct attempt to face fear, head on.

Because the second she came to the table as our waitress, I knew I wanted to take her picture.

I should say that it was a constellation of qualities that led me to that opinion, that it was the way she carried herself, the warm personality that came off her in waves, bearing.

But that was all secondary, man. It was that face of hers, first & foremost. And right after that impulse, that “ask if you can take her picture” impulse, was the fear. Fear she’d say no, fear she’s say no and scoff or laugh or vomit at the very idea.

Also, I had absolutely no idea what to say. This is generally a problem whenever I want to ask a woman….well, anything. But it’s of specific difficulty here because she was my waitress, and there’s a whole other mess of issues to deal with.

Don’t want her to think her tip is dependent on a Yes answer.
Don’t want my service to be affected because she’s resenting me putting her in a situation where her tip is potentially dependent on a Yes answer.
Don’t want to a No answer because she’s resentful of me putting her in a situation where her tip is potentially dependent on a Yes answer, and she’s so resentful she’s forsake her tip in favor of a very public No.

Such a problem!

It consumed me for the whole meal, as I turned the problem over in my head again and again, working it, trying to come up with some turn of phrase, some clever sentence.

My father is gifted in such cases. So gifted it sounds ridiculous, so ridiculous it must fail, and yet so upfront it is simply cannot fail.

So I just thought to myself, as I occassionally do, to varying degrees of success: what would my dad say?

I took out my card, handed it to her. “I’m a photographer, and I’d like to take your picture. Don’t answer now. Take the card, look at my website when you get home, you like what you see, email me.”

And it worked, she emailed me that night, we had a photo shoot later that week, and she’s been one of my favorite models ever since.

So what have we learned?

NOTHING. I’ve tried that same line on three subsequent occasions, only to have it fail all three times.

My dad would shake his head in shame. He knows that you can’t use a line, that you have to tailor your pitch depending on the specifics of the situation.

But the point, the reason those rejections didn’t bug me, is that each time I asked, each time I put myself out there to be rejected, each time it got a little bit easier.

That the enemy of fear is experience. That by doing that which I fear, I cease to fear it.

People ask me how I “do it.” How I find beautiful women to photograph. Same way anyone else gets what they want: by not being afraid.