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This is the third time I’ve had the chance to shoot Morgan Hartigan.

And for the third time, I struggled.

Luckily, she’s not only a good swimmer, but a patient individual, too.

The above image was among the final frames of the afternoon shoot. Morgan was home sick from school and I was on assignment sick of work. The timing for us to meet could not have come at a better time. As the kids say, it was sick.

At first, I had the idea to mimic a shot by photo chief little Mike Smith. His shot was of a spider web covered in dew. In each droplet was an image of a flower from the background. Pretty cool shot, so I thought it might be cool to experiment with that technique on a swimmer.

Not very cool execution on my part.

I got the light right, but I couldn’t get the water to form the correctly. I guess watching the Little Mermaid beforehand would have been a wise decision — you know, the scene when Ursula gets wicked crazy with the ocean.

Since my initial attempts to be awesome failed (story of my life), I moved on to a few techniques I knew might work. Do you like how I confidently knew, but there was still a doubtful might? Me too.

Morgan laughed a lot at my lame jokes and attempts to make her feel less uncomfortable. I think it was laughter intended at me, but I will interpret it as laughter with me.

In all, it was OK, but I would like to have nailed the water shot. In all likelihood, there will be another chance to shoot a swimmer in the future. Probably just none that will humor my lack of humor with compensatory laughter.

For more photos of the Morgan Hartigan shoot, click “continue reading” below.

Thanks for looking.

Editor’s note: AAron wasn’t really sick of work, it just sounded more clever written as such.

Below you can acutally see a frame of Morgan laughing at my feeble attempts to be a professional photographer.

Morgan: HaHa! What a joke!

Me: Oh, you liked my joke?

Morgan: No, you fool. You are the joke.