That Arnold - Ketty Put On a Shirt. For a Little While, at Least.

Ketty and I had already spent ten minutes proving that sunrise was entirely optional. No golden light, just clouds, direct flash and the tiniest shiny bikini I thought I’d ever see.

Then she reached into her bag and produced a new bikini bottom. Apparently “tiny” was a challenge, not a description.

Add a thin white shirt, a few waves that reached a little farther than expected, and the cigarette she actually asked me for, and the whole morning started looking suspiciously like the end of a very long Ibiza night.

I swear that shirt was dry when we started. And I swear we did not plan what happened to it.

This is the second chapter of my morning with Ketty: 18 edited photographs, a very wet shirt and the complete story of how we got there.

Arnold

The complete story behind Ketty’s second look, from putting on the tiniest bikini bottoms in the world to smoking a cigarette with the wettest white shirt on.

18 edited photographs in HD from this look.

A separate Spanish illustrated edition for readers who prefer Spanish.

Juro que la camiseta estaba seca cuando empezamos. Después de nuestro primer look, Ketty sacó una camiseta blanca muy fina y una parte de abajo todavía más pequeña que aquel bikini metálico.

Una ola decidió cambiar el plan. Luego llegó otra. Y cuando Ketty me pidió un cigarrillo, el amanecer fallido empezó a parecerse a las cuatro de la madrugada de cualquier noche en Ibiza.

Este es el segundo capítulo de aquella mañana: 18 fotos editadas y la historia completa, que también está disponible en una edición ilustrada en español.

Arnold

La historia completa detrás del segundo look de Ketty: desde ponerse la parte inferior de bikini más diminuta del mundo hasta fumar un cigarrillo luciendo una camisa blanca completamente empapada.

18 fotografías editadas en alta definición (HD) de este look.

Ketty’s shirt didn’t stay dry. Luckily, my camera did. All 18 photos in glorious HD, because some details deserve a closer look.

The first look had taken about ten minutes.

Less than an hour earlier, I had met this girl for the first time.

And somehow, within those ten minutes, Ketty had already gone from wearing what I was confidently calling the tiniest and shiniest bikini in Ibiza to completely topless, playing with that same bikini in front of my camera like she'd been doing this with me for years.

We stopped for a moment and looked through the photos together.

Ketty was still topless.

Still casually holding the bikini top.

Still talking.

Nothing about the situation seemed particularly remarkable to her.

There was still the transparent dress she had shown me months earlier.

Not yet.

That one comes later.

For this look she pulled out a thin white shirt and the bottom from another bikini.

And apparently the tiniest bikini in Ibiza had competition.

I genuinely thought the metallic bikini from the first look was tiny.

Apparently Ketty took that as a challenge.

Because this new bottom was somehow even smaller.

We are talking about the physical limit of bikini engineering here.

Strings.

A tiny little piece of fabric.

Optimism.

That was basically the entire construction.

And then I noticed the tan lines.

She already had tan lines from what must have been an absolutely microscopic bikini...

...and somehow these bottoms were even smaller.

They couldn't even completely cover a small landing strip.

I wasn't complaining.

I was, however, slightly distracted.

Before she actually put them on, though, something else happened that probably says more about how comfortable Ketty was than anything I could write about the photographs.

She was still topless, wearing the metallic bottoms from the first look, and we were just talking.

Then, in the middle of whatever sentence she was saying, she simply dropped them.

No pause.

No turning around.

No awkward little I'm changing now announcement.

They just slid down her legs while she continued the conversation and kept looking at me.

My automatic reaction was to look away.

Because less than an hour earlier, I had met this girl for the first time.

And she basically laughed at the idea.

This was when she explained the nightclub dancing properly.

She is used to being almost naked in front of hundreds of people.

Tiny stage outfits.

Nipple covers.

People watching her.

So one photographer with a Canon apparently wasn't particularly intimidating.

Her attitude was basically:

I don't mind. You can look. You're going to photograph me anyway.

Fair point.

I also needed to change.

I was still wearing jean shorts and a shirt, and we were about to work right beside the water.

You really don’t want to be wearing jeans anywhere near the sea.

So at some point I told Ketty:

“I'm gonna take my shorts off now, so if you don't wanna see anything you don't wanna see, look away for about ten seconds.”

And the look she gave me was almost funnier than the sentence.

Not shocked.

Not awkward.

More like:

Why exactly would I not want to see that?

She didn’t actually say that.

But that was very much the expression.

Like I had just introduced a completely unnecessary safety protocol into a situation she had already decided was perfectly normal.

So I started changing.

Ketty stayed right there.

We kept talking.

No dramatic turning away.

No weird silence.

No sudden moment where either of us became self-conscious about the fact that we were both changing beside some old fishermen’s huts at stupid o’clock in the morning.

She glanced over briefly.

A quick quality inspection.

Checking the goods.

I really didn’t mind.

My goods have nothing to be ashamed of.

And honestly, by that point I had the distinct feeling Ketty would have been perfectly fine if I'd just stayed naked.

Like I could have picked up the camera, skipped the swimming trunks entirely and carried on photographing her with absolutely nothing on myself.

I genuinely don’t think she would have cared.

Which is a fairly bizarre realization to have less than an hour after meeting someone.

My job is weird sometimes.

I grabbed the red swimming trunks from my bag and put them on anyway.

Quality control completed, I guess.

Ketty put on the absurdly tiny bikini bottom and the thin white shirt.

And the whole thing somehow felt completely ordinary.

Which, when I write it down now, is probably the strangest part.

Everything was just...

Chill.

Really, really chill.

I swear her shirt was dry when we started.

That's important.

Because looking at the final photos you could quite reasonably assume I arrived at this shoot thinking:

Right. Ketty. White shirt. Let's soak it.

No.

We started with her lying down on the rocks close to the water.

Same Godox V1 from the first look.

Flash sitting directly on top of my camera.

No softbox.

No assistant.

No elaborate lighting setup.

Just direct flash against a dark, cloudy Ibiza morning.

Small waves were coming in around her.

Then one of them reached slightly farther than the others.

And soaked part of the shirt.

My reaction was basically:

Oh.

Ketty's reaction was basically:

Nothing.

She barely moved.

If anything, she looked almost like she'd been waiting for the sea to make that decision for us.

And once one wave had done it, there wasn't much point trying to protect the shirt anymore.

Another wave came in.

Then another.

The fabric got wetter.

Her hair got wetter.

The shirt started sticking to her skin.

And because it was thin and white...

Well.

You can probably work out what happened next.

The funny thing is that there was absolutely no dramatic moment where we decided to change the concept.

The sea just made that creative decision for us.

Suddenly the shirt was wet and increasingly transparent.

Ketty didn't care.

I certainly wasn't going to complain.

It was the end of August in Ibiza.

The morning was hot.

The water was warm.

So we just kept going.

And honestly, it worked.

The first look had been dark and metallic.

Tiny shiny bikini.

Hard flash.

Black rocks.

Dark sea.

This one still had the exact same direct-flash aesthetic, but now everything felt softer and messier.

Wet hair.

Wet skin.

White fabric stuck to her body.

Those absurdly tiny bottoms.

It started feeling less like an intentionally styled bikini shoot and more like we'd stumbled into some strange scene at the end of an Ibiza night.

Which was becoming a recurring theme that morning.

After the water section we moved back toward the casetas.

Ketty was still wet.

Shirt wet.

Hair wet.

And then she asked me for a cigarette.

She normally smokes a vape.

I was the idiot smoking actual cigarettes.

I know, Mom.

I should quit.

But that morning it accidentally became useful.

I gave Ketty one.

Then she needed a lighter.

So I handed her my little red lighter too.

Normally I don't love cigarettes as photo props.

Put a cigarette into someone's hand purely because you think it'll make them look cool and it can become very LOOK AT THIS EDGY PHOTO very quickly.

But this wasn't really a prop.

Ketty had actually asked me for a cigarette.

She was actually smoking it.

So when I lifted the camera again, there was no pretending involved.

And this is where the whole visual story suddenly clicked again.

Wet white shirt.

Wet hair.

Tiny bikini bottom.

Cigarette.

Red lighter.

Old wooden caseta.

Direct flash.

Almost no natural light behind her.

These photos were taken in the morning.

But they absolutely do not look like morning.

They look like 4AM.

Like we'd somehow missed the entire night and I had found Ketty outside some random Ibiza club after everyone else had gone home.

Which is funny, because the entire reason we'd met that early was to photograph a sunrise.

The sunrise had completely failed.

Again.

And somehow it was still helping us.

The dark background meant the direct flash isolated her beautifully.

The wet skin caught the light.

The cigarette suddenly made sense.

Even the grainy, slightly cheap compact-camera feeling from the first look carried straight into this one.

None of this was what I had planned.

And I liked it more because of that.

The entire look took about fifteen minutes.

That's it.

Eighteen final photos.

No complicated setup.

No lighting changes.

No big production.

Same flash sitting directly on the camera.

A tiny bikini bottom.

A white shirt.

A few waves.

One cigarette.

Ketty.

That was basically enough.

And the weirdest thing was still how normal everything felt.

Less than an hour earlier, I'd never met her.

Now I'm photographing her in a soaking wet semi-transparent shirt while she smokes one of my cigarettes against an old fishermen's hut.

And neither of us seems to think this is particularly strange.

Then we finished the look.

Ketty kept talking to me.

Still maintaining eye contact.

And while she was talking, she slipped those microscopic bikini bottoms down her legs.

They fell around her feet.

Then, without interrupting the conversation, she hooked them with one toe.

Lifted them.

Swung them up into the air.

Caught them with one hand.

And deposited them somewhere inside her bag between all her other stuff.

Meanwhile I'm standing there trying to do the polite thing and keep looking at the face of the person I'm having a conversation with.

My job is bizarre sometimes.

I'm not complaining.

I did have one other thought while watching those bikini bottoms disappear into the bag:

Bye bye, bikini bottoms.

You'll never find those again.

They were basically an earring at that point.

And to be fair, there wasn't much reason for either of us to suddenly become shy.

The next look was going to be completely naked anyway.

It probably would have been stranger for Ketty to carefully hide herself from me while changing, five seconds before intentionally showing exactly the same thing to me and my camera.

By this point I remember thinking I probably could have remained completely naked myself with nothing except a camera hanging around my neck and this woman would barely have considered it unusual.

That was just where the morning had reached.

Everything was very, very relaxed.

And then Ketty took everything off.

Everything.

But that's the next story.

Arnold