Photoshoot for Awana

There are a few precious times in this business when you get to combine your job with something or someone more personal—this was one of those times! A friend and colleague, an employee of Awana, designed an ad using a stock image in the comp of a cute, earnest little girl. Turned out, the stock image was too expensive for their budget to purchase and pay to use continuously. As luck would have it, ,my god-daughter, Bella, just happened to be the right age and look of the girl in the stock image. We decided that we should loosely re-create and maybe even improve upon the stock image. I art-directed the shoot and Amber Beckham Photography shot the images. Bella, who is an actress, had never modeled before, but was a willing and sweet participant. The trick was to think of ways to communicate to a then seven year old the kind of expression that I needed. For instance one direction I gave her was this, “can you show me how you’d really like a bowl of icecream right now!” We strove to capture a range of expressions so that Awana would have a few images to choose from. We ended up having several images for the client to choose from and use as desired. I think the resulting ad is really eye-catching and of course Bella is just the sweetest girl on the planet—so how could you say “no” to her?