I shot with Casey Grimley in June 2018 at Joshua Tree, CA for his "Dancing with the Stars" series…read more
Casey is a nice guy. He has a true love for photography and capturing the Milky Way, albeit I feel his inexperience with aerialists may be his Achilles heel. Maybe a lot of the things we noticed he just never gave thought to, and I hope these notes can help.
I shot with two other pole girlfriends and Casey gave us a lot of time which was appreciated; from 7pm to 2am we were working really hard. While we were stretching in our outfits with hair/makeup, Casey says - "By the way, I don't do any topless or implied nude/topless type shots." None of us were wearing anything different than what lots of us wear to class or performances, and we plan for our looks weeks in advance of a shoot. I wish he noted that prior to being AT the location since I can think of well-known pole dancers who do gorgeous shots nude or implied nude who should be aware of this restriction. If a photographer decides to move from shooting inanimate landscapes to pole dancers, the judgement needs to tone done a bit.
We had several poses shot from below/under the chin/under the thighs. It's universally known to be unflattering, and shots we spent a lot of time with throwing fabrics, using wind, were not usable because of the poor choice of angle.
I have been part of a lot of photo shoots, pole and otherwise. Every photographer I have worked with moves around, lays on the ground, runs around you on spin pole - anything to get the shot. Casey was stationary, seated on a chair in the exact same spot.
You would hear only one *click* after 3-4 rotations when normally in other pole shoots I would have heard/seen 15-20 clicks of the camera and lights. This was frustrating for all three of us because he would not get a shot, and make us climb up there and redo some amazing combo over and over and over, seemingly having no empathy or understanding of how damn difficult and exhausting it is to do. We would be vocal in how we only had the strength for one more of a particular pose or trick, and for him to get ready - then we would hear only one click.
Meanwhile, the X-Pole Stage he brought was janky and uneven, and would lose its spin. Adding the desert cold after sunset that comes over you and the pole - it made for an extremely frustrating, somewhat unsafe, and physically difficult shoot.
We finish at 1:15AM-ish, fatigued, freezing, and in the pitch black in the middle of the desert in our "slutty" pole outfits. We climb into the car to bundle up, blast the heater, eat a banana, drink water. We didn't realize until that moment that we were trapped because we HAD to follow Casey out of the desert through winding paths in pitch black of night with no Google Maps reception from his chosen location.
This is my favorite part: we paid ~$1,000 for this shoot to be Casey's roadies. Last time I checked, the paying client is not your manual labor. We took apart the X-stage, alllll his lights set up, cranes, and his chairs. We loaded his SUV. We lifted sandbags and light poles taller than ourselves. We stood on his backseat to load the top rack of his SUV. At 2AM after already doing so much physically demanding work, while he sat in his chair in a warm jacket. I asked him "Hey Casey, what do you do when you shoot at home in Utah, do you have a team of at least 2 strong men to do your breakdown?" I was ignored. Honey, my voice ain't quiet. He heard me.
Post-shoot, we are describing these frustrations to our class and friends, and one who does photography explained that maybe Casey didn't move from his chair because he had to take each photo from a stationary position to fit into his "template" photo of the Milky Way behind us. In essence, photoshopping us and the pole INTO his first photo of the night sky.
Therefore, he has negated the need for himself, for being outside in general, when we could have done this all in a studio or green screen. Yes, poling in nature under the stars is beautiful, but what is the point then of the concept "Dancing with the Stars" if he just superimposes us into a photo? Might as well superimpose me on the pole at The Pyramids. Or in the Amazonian rainforest. We could have saved $1,000 and had one of our professional digital designer friends photoshop us into a landscape.
At this price tag, the concept of this type of photo shoot is utterly pointless. You are in essence paying for his family's hotel and travel costs, because he certainly isn't paying assistants or people to do his breakdown. He definitely didn't buy a functioning X-Stage. And as he admitted in his email a few weeks ago, he didn't even pay the photography permit fee! I will never put myself through this terrible experience again, and I would not recommend the "Dancing with the Stars" shoot to anyone.
