Whatever You Do, Don’t Try Practicing Your Breathe Hold Unsupervised After Reading
Photos and Words by Perrin James
The craziest thing about that shot is I only photographed that place for like five minutes. Because honestly, that shoot was awful. Like I was dealing with age prejudice for the first time ever. Another filmmaker on the shoot was just like ‘F*ck you kid.’ Like, for like weeks. It was honestly one of the worst shoots I’ve ever been on. And I was like, ‘Whatever, I’ll get in the water and shoot one more piece.’ I jumped in. I shot for five minutes, I looked at Kimi and I went ‘We got the craziest shot ever.’ I said that out loud. And I’m like, ‘Hey, let’s just go for a swim.’ I put my camera down. Everyone else in the cave was just like, ‘Alright corral the fish this way.’ You can’t corral fish. I think that’s a really cool thing is like, she naturally knows where to go in these situations. We don’t even talk to each other in the water. It’s just kind of like an unspoken rule of like, ‘Oh I should be here you should be there.’ When you’re photographing someone in the water I think that fluid friendship is really important. To have an attitude of we’re gonna figure this out and work with the natural world instead of trying to manipulate it.
