Ibiza gave us rain. Ketty gave me this.

What do you do when you wake up before sunrise for an Ibiza shoot… and the sun never actually shows up?

Apparently, you use flash, a tiny bikini and a whole lot of playful energy.

Ketty and I had been trying to make this shoot happen for more than two years. When we finally did, Ibiza gave us rain, grey skies and basically no useful natural light.

So we stopped waiting for the morning we had planned.

We walked down toward the old fishermen’s casetas, I put the flash on my camera, and Ketty stepped into what might genuinely be the tiniest and shiniest bikini I had ever seen.

At that point, things started looking considerably more promising.

She barely needed direction. Within minutes she was already playing with the bikini, pulling at the straps, moving them around and clearly having fun with it.

And then the top came off.

What started as a simple idea for an implied topless photo quickly turned into Ketty taking over, using the bikini top as a prop and continuing with the same playful energy she had from the first frame.

Meanwhile, the terrible weather accidentally gave the whole shoot its identity.

Dark sea. Grey sky. Hard flash. Shiny fabric. Bare skin.

Instead of the soft golden sunrise I had imagined, the photos started feeling like they had been taken at the end of an Ibiza night. A little rough, a little grainy, almost like somebody pulled out an old compact camera at 5am.

Not what I planned.

Probably better because of it.

Sometimes summer refuses to give you the version you imagined.

You photograph the one that actually showed up.

Arnold ✌🏼


Oh, and by the way…

The people supporting me on Patreon have been ridiculously good to me, and they’re a huge reason I can keep making shoots like this happen. ❤️

The version over there is the proper deep dive: the full story is more than six times longer than this little blog post, with all the details from that morning, the complete uncensored gallery and the full behind-the-scenes video.

Seriously grateful to everyone who keeps supporting this weird little life of mine.

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