WEIRD PHOTO SHOOT 1 - THORN AND THE HEARSE

It seems to be the case that if you have a professional looking camera in your hand then chances are that it will attract the most idiotic demented window lickers within a ten mile radius. Whether it be a pleb that feels it's their job to tell you that you can't take photos in a particular place or a slag muppet that sees you are shooting a model and feels that they have to insert themselves into your life just because of some weird brain abnormailty.

This is the story about a slag muppet and an idiot in a hearse.

Two weeks ago I drove to Canterbury to do a shoot with the awesomely awesome Thorn. Thorn has bright orange hair and likes to dress up in latex things. We spoke before about doing shoots with some hot rods and a hearse. The hearse idea sounded cool. I could do some funky Munsters/Addams Family style pictures.

We made it happen. Organised a date and time. There was some talk about doing some fetish pictures with the driver of the hearse. I had no idea what that involved. In my head though it didn't seem like a major thing. Just some straight from camera stuff. Maybe the driver would be holding a whip or something. I was thinking get that crap out the way then I can take some decent shots with the hearse and Thorn dressed up in a latex dress thing that looked like something Wednesday Addams would wear, but more slutty and shiny.

So we all met at a train station in Canterbury. The hearse driver, Thorn, Thorn's boyfriend and me. Thorn jumped in the hearse and her boyfriend jumped in my car, and off we went to the location.

Then after a while it dawned on me that there wasn't an actual location and we were just driving aimlessly around trying to find a location. Cool locations don't normally just fall in your lap. That's why it's best to scout for a location beforehand. So we were just driving. Every now and then we'd stop and say some words. Then back to the driving. At one point we actually drove past a pretty cool location. After some signalling and a phone call I got the hearse to follow me back to the location we had driven past.

It was perfect. Vast fields on either side of this empty country lane. Even a sign that said 'FARM VEHICLES ONLY'. In my head that meant because it was a Sunday the farmer dude would be chillin' and not doing farm vehicle driving stuff and we would not be interrupted. We stopped. I let it be known that I would quite enjoy shooting here and then everything would be cool. The driver of the hearse, let's call him Captain Spud Flange, said that it was too out in the open and he wanted somewhere more "secluded". So Captain Spud Flange drove past and continued down the small bumpy farm road leaving me and Thorn's boyfriend wondering when this 'looking for a location' section of our lives would end.

It was then that I started to get the feeling that Captain Spud Flange may have psychological issues and the best place for him would be laying in a ditch with a burning spear plunged into his eye socket.

Maybe twenty minutes later Captain Spud Flange pulled the hearse into an entrance of a farm. The farm had a big warehouse in it and some cool baby trees planted in lines taking up a whole field. If the gate wasn't locked then that would be a cool place for a shoot. The gate was locked though and both cars were now parked on a smallish patch of concrete. Captain Spud Flange seemed to like this new location. I on the other hand thought it was shit and this only enforced my feeling that Captain Spud Flange needed to be laying in a ditch with a burning spear plunged into his eye socket.

I said it was cool though just so we could get this weirdness done and I could go home and not go to Canterbury again for a long time. So Thorn began to change into her latex gear out in the open as cars were driving by. Captain Spud Flange then started to voice his concerns to me about this new shit location. I was fully commited by then. Just take some quick photos and then get the fuck out of there.

A few minutes passed and then Captain Spud Flange gave me Thorn's phone which was in the hearse. I didn't think anything of it. I put the phone in my car and started setting up my flashes. Then Captain Spud Flange started to reverse his car. I just thought that he was reversing it to a better place on the tiny piece of concrete, but then he drove forward, pulled out of the entrance to the farm and just drove away, never to be seen again.

So all three of us are standing there with a confused expression on our faces, wondering where the fuck Captain Spud Flange had just driven off to. Then it became clear that this was a good thing. We could just go to a church. Take some photos in the garveyard and then go home and I wouldn't have to take shitty fetish photos of Captain Spud Flange's cheesy bellend.

A short while later we were at a nearby church taking photos in a graveyard. We'd only been taking photos for about five minutes when we decided to see how things would look against the big church door. Thorn was just dressed in a latex underwear type thing and it was pretty cold. So she was dealing with the cold and I was dealing with one of my flashes not working properly when we heard a man shout "OI YOU CUNT!" maybe fifty metres away from us. He seemed to be getting closer and was quite angry about something. I hadn't really bothered to turn around at that point as he could of been calling anyone in the empty graveyard a cunt, but when I did turn around I saw a man who was about sixty years old running up to where we were and he was angry. He was the kind of angry that you get when a series of things happen that put you in the state of mind that you would randomly run up to strangers and start shouting at them.

He was saying that we were being sacrilegious. Then he asked if we would do this up against a mosque. Saying that we'd get our heads chopped off if we tried this against a mosque. He didn't seem to be all there mentally. There was something seriously wrong with him, like he really should be behind bars for the safety of others. He was right up against Thorn's boyfriend's face. It's like he was at that point where he was just about to start punching. He was quite intimidating. I think that's because the rest of us were really chilled out and not in a fighting mood at all.

So we're trying to be nice and not make him anymore angry. I think we'd established that we were going to pack up and leave, then he said "I'll take on all three of you", reached in his pocket and took out a big set of keys that he began putting in-between his fingers like a weird stabby knuckle duster. So we were all like "OK OK we're going".

So that was it. We left. The last thing I wanted to do is get into a fight with a weird old mental patient and risk all my camera gear getting smashed up. I think I got about three decent shots in the short time we were shooting.

So what did I learn from this? I think that I will now take weaponary when going on shoots and not to go anywhere near idiot hearse drivers that are into fetish shit.