Seventeen.

By total chance the other day I got a message from a girl who wanted me to take her picture. Not expecting much, but with time on my hands I agreed and told her to come over.

Wow.

The girl shows up late. She's seventeen and has a face like Kate Moss. Great skin with soft freckles across her nose. Long, long, hair. She wants McDonald's. We get fries. She is a little bit short, which makes it hard for her in the business and as such, doesn't have an agent. Even so, she finds plenty of work from regular photographers just looking for someone to take pictures of. Most of the stuff in her book is 'glamour' with lots of heavy makeup that hides her features and styling that detracts from her beauty. I see through it though and I take her out in just her jeans and her shirt. She arrives from a photoshoot she had earlier and I ask her to take all the makeup off.

I shoot her as she is, with lotion and a touch of moisturizer for the lips. She's 17, from Slovakia and on her own in Czech as she has spent the past four days going from shoot to shoot that she organized herself.

Impressive.

We talk a lot and she makes for great conversation. I'm surprised because my general experience with teens these days are of young insecure model girls who are struggling to come to grips with the fact that society has offered to purchase their youth and beauty, but they aren't sure if it's an offer they can refuse.