NomadicKats: 22 February "may well be New Zealand's darkest day"

Feb. 22, 2011. This day I will never forget. I was supposed to be on the Coromandel Peninsula doing a job. The job where I would eventually meet Ngahuia. The weather forecast was looking bad, so the shoot got moved. I woke up that morning with nothing to do anymore (and the weather was beautiful, of course). I strolled into my agency, Red Eleven, to bullshit with my agents and have some lunch. Amanda and I were talking about the fact that although I had been making money and doing a lot of jobs, I needed more editorial. I had shot for 3 magazines, and did the cover of Viva, but I am one of those people who is never satisfied. And hey, money is what I'm after, but I love doing creative photo shoots. So even though editorial doesn't pay much, it "feeds the soul," as a good friend of mine would say. Amanda had been on the phone with the photographer from our postponed job. She suggested that we do a shoot anyway. Hey, we were both free now and might as well do something productive, right?! So my other agent, Brya, drove me over to my roommate's (I love you Sunny!!!) PR room and she hooked it up with some sweet clothes. We were packing up all of the clothes when the news came over the radio; there had been an earthquake in Christchurch. That was all we knew at that moment. I just remember us all standing there silent, looking at each other.. not knowing what to do. It seemed like that moment lasted ages, but was probably a few seconds. New Zealand doesn't have a huge number of people, and I quickly learned that everyone around me had either family or friends in Christchurch. It was also selling season for clothing brands so a lot of Sales Reps were down there. My roommate, Sunny, was just down there the week before. It became one of those terrible days where the phone lines were jammed with people trying to figure out if everyone they knew was okay. A horrible waiting game. And it was in the middle of the day, a Tuesday if I remember correctly. Everyone was working and the only thing we really could do was carry on, we were helpless. We drove over to Garth's (the photographer) and I was dropped off. We watched the news while we did hair and makeup. We ended up turning it off though. You know how the news gets, same gruesome footage over and over and not a whole lot of real information. Almost appropriately, as we finished with hair and makeup, the weather turned to shit. Garth and I got in his car, and went to eat some food and plan out what to do if the rain didn't stop. Garth still hadn't heard from everyone he knew to see if they were alright .. We ended up deciding that we had to keep going with the shoot.. We couldn't do anything more at that moment, and it would help keep our minds off of what was going on. So we wrapped up dinner and were on a mission to find someplace to shoot. We had wanted to shoot in this great park, but it was still pouring down rain. We ended up at a parking garage.. these are the shots from that day.