Calendar Shoot With the Boys
I am Azmi from Meknes, and last weekend my camera roll doubled in size in a single afternoon, because it was photo shoot day with Harold and Gus for the rescue calendar. Two gentlemen, one lens, endless outtakes. I arrived with a bag of treats, a lint roller, and far too much confidence, and I left with sore knees, a full memory card, and the particular happiness that only comes from watching two rabbits slowly decide to cooperate. This entry is my contact sheet, a catalog of the day frame by frame, because a shoot like that deserves to be logged properly.
The idea was simple. The rescue needed fresh portraits for the calendar, one month per bunny, with Harold and Gus holding down their featured months and rescue friends filling the rest. A whole year of calendar boys, all equally employable as models, all raising smiles and, with luck, donations. My job was handler, treat dispenser, background holder, and amateur photographer all at once. I have done silly dress-up photos before, but this was the first time the pictures had a real purpose beyond my own fridge door, and that made every frame feel a little more important.
Frame one through twenty: the warm-up
Catalog item one: the warm-up frames. Every shoot needs them and every photographer should plan for them. Harold arrived suspicious, Gus arrived hungry, and for the first twenty shots neither of them looked at the lens. Harold inspected the backdrop cloth with his nose. Gus tried to eat it. Three frames show only ears. Two show only tails. One shows my own hand waving a treat like a flag of surrender. I kept all of them, because outtakes are the honest record of how a session really starts, and because one day I will want to remember that even calendar boys begin as skeptics.
The setup was deliberately simple. Natural light from the big window, a plain cloth backdrop, treats held just behind and above the lens so the eyes tilt up. No flash, ever, since that startles them and ruins the mood for the rest of the day. I worked on the floor at their level, which meant crawling backward with the camera while talking nonsense in a bright voice. Harold watched me with the calm expression of a rabbit who has seen humans embarrass themselves before.
Frame twenty-one: the keeper
Catalog item two: the keeper. Frame twenty-one is the portrait that made the whole afternoon worthwhile. Both boys sitting upright, ears up, eyes bright, posed like the gentlemen they are. Harold slightly forward, Gus slightly behind, the kind of natural arrangement no human could have staged. I held my breath, took three quick shots, and knew immediately that one of them was the calendar page. The second shot from that burst is pure Thanksgiving, as my notes say: heads high, chests out, showing thanks, the kind of picture that makes people whisper please Santa bring treats on their behalf.
What makes that frame work is not perfection but character. Harold’s ear tilts a fraction to the left. Gus has a crumb on his whisker that I only noticed later and decided to love. They look like themselves, not like props, and that is the whole philosophy I carried into the day. A rescue calendar should show real rabbits with real faces, the kind of faces that make someone stop flipping pages and start asking about adoption. Technical perfection can wait. Personality cannot be faked, especially not with rabbits.
Frames thirty to sixty: the outtake goldmine
Catalog item three: the outtake goldmine, frames thirty through sixty, saved obviously and cherished deeply. Gus mid-yawn, looking like a tiny lion. Harold caught mid-groom with one paw over his face, deeply unbothered by art. Both boys sniffing the lens at once, two noses huge in the foreground. One frame where Gus flopped flat mid-shoot and refused all further direction, union break, no negotiations. These will never make the calendar and they might be my favorite pictures of the year.
This is where the treats-behind-the-lens trick both saved and sabotaged us. It produced the bright upward gazes we wanted, but it also produced a series of increasingly dramatic treat grabs, Gus standing fully upright like a meerkat, Harold doing a slow hopeful circle around my hand. I have a burst of five frames showing Gus tracking a treat across my fingers with total concentration, and it reads like a flip book. I laughed so hard at one point that the camera shook, and that blurry frame stays in the catalog too, labeled cameraman compromised.
The experience reminded me of my earlier silly sessions, like the one I logged in hat day one silly photo for the diary, where I learned that short sessions beat long ones and that quitting while the rabbits are still happy keeps every photo honest. We shot in bursts of ten minutes with long rest breaks, hay and water always available, and the moment either boy flattened his ears or turned away twice in a row, we stopped. No picture is worth a stressed rabbit.
Frames sixty-one to eighty: the duo magic
Catalog item four: the duo frames. Getting two rabbits to pose together is like arranging weather, and for about ten minutes the weather was perfect. Harold groomed Gus’s forehead. Gus leaned into it with closed eyes. I shot quietly without moving, barely breathing, and caught the tenderness that no posing could produce. Those frames are the ones the rescue loved most, because they show what bonded rabbits really are: gentle, patient, and quietly devoted. A calendar can carry dates, but pictures like that carry the actual message.
I should note the welfare side plainly, since a shoot involves handling and new surroundings. Both boys stayed in familiar territory the whole time, the session was short, and I watched for stress signals throughout. Anything involving animal health or stress that truly worried me would go to the vet without delay, because my camera never overrules their comfort. On this day there was nothing to worry about, only two relaxed rabbits earning an outrageous number of treats, and I drove home knowing the images were honestly earned.
Comparing pictures across the years has become a habit of mine, the same instinct I described in same bunny nine years apart my photo comparison habit, where lining up old and new portraits shows how much stays the same. Harold’s serious stare has not changed in years. Gus still tilts his head a degree to the right when curious. The calendar will freeze this version of them, and future me will be grateful.
Catalog closing: what the rescue received
Final catalog count: eighty-four frames delivered, six shortlisted, one undeniable hero portrait, and a folder of outtakes labeled for volunteer morale. The rescue gets the fame, as my original notes say, and I keep the boys, which remains the best possible deal. Other months will feature other rescue buns, each with their own shoot day and their own outtakes, and I hope each session is run with the same patience ours was.
If your local rescue ever asks for calendar volunteers, say yes, and bring knee pads. Work on the floor, follow the rabbits’ schedule, keep the treats small and the breaks long, and save the outtakes with the same care as the keepers. The calendar will hang on walls for a year, but the afternoon itself, the yawns, the flops, the two noses on the lens, lasts much longer. Harold and Gus were paid in greens and glory. I was paid in eighty-four frames of proof that two ordinary boys can look, for one bright afternoon, like the most employable models in Meknes.
Next in this chapter…
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