Voyage Swimwear
My neighbor has a daughter who is one of those "born to succeed" types. Brittany seems to always have something going on and the more you get to know her, the more amazing surprises you find. One of those "somethings" she has going on is a fashion line of resort swimsuits called Voyage. She makes elegant and unique suits for both men and women with her signature print of world maps. Brittany sells her Voyage swimwear to individuals and resorts all over the globe, in places as far away as China.
And she makes it look easy...
One day, I get a call from her mother, who sells multi-million dollar homes for breakfast - the apple does not fall far from the tree. She asks me if I could do a shoot for her daughter's swimsuit line. Brittany had a celebrity friend who was in town and she had gotten permission from one of her clients to use his 120 foot yacht as the location. My response was a cautious "let me check my sched...YES!" Sometimes opportunity knocks, and sometimes it calls you from a luxury yacht with a celebrity in a swimsuit.
Brittany had met Emily on the reality show Below Deck. Brittany was showcasing her swimwear on the show and the two of them became friends. After Emily left the show they stayed in touch and, on this particular weekend, Emily, who is British, happened to be traveling from London to South Florida to visit friends. Emily had the appeal, Brittany had the swimsuits, I knew the mother of the designer, and I had a camera.
The shoot had its challenges but we walked away with some images I am very proud of. Emily was an absolute delight of a person and has gone on to accomplish some very exciting things herself since the time of this shoot. Like Brittany, success is part of Emily's DNA and she is back in London promoting good health through her Instagram account (@english_ems) and the prepared food company she co-founded, POW Food (Power Of Wellness).
The next time I would shoot for Brittany, would involve Eddie, a former professional tennis player who now coaches the talented Lauren Davis. I had done a photoshoot with Eddie a while back and Brittany was interested in using him to showcase some of her men's suits. I talked to him about it and he was more than happy to do it. Eddie is your all-around athlete type so beyond his talent for tennis, he was also a surfer and as it turns out he was at the beach pretty much every day at sunrise anyway.
I taught him that backflip by the way (true story). We met up early in the morning and got down to shooting. It's always fun shooting athletes because they are up for just about anything. We did some pretty standard model type stuff to warm up.
Then I just told him to fetch the surfboard and have some fun while I tried to capture his awesomeness with my camera.
Brittany even came out to check on us, in a Voyage one piece.
Some time after the shoot with Eddie, I was approached by my long time friend Fernanda for some updated modeling photos. She wanted to do some swimsuit photos so I immediately thought of Brittany. I gave her a call to see if we could get some Voyage suits for our shoot and Brittany sent me 2 suits to use. We got an elegant black bikini with gold Voyage detail and a characteristic map print one piece. The shoot took place at the gorgeous Jupiter Beach Park.
We shot at the beach and at the island pavilion among the trees and mangroves.
I also wanted to make sure I got an artistic shot of the Voyage "V" detail in the black bikini.
This is one of my favorite shoots with Fernanda, and it also helps promote Brittany's brand which is always a plus. I am a firm believer in helping people achieve their dreams, and here I got to help two friends at once.
I will end this post with some more images from the three shoots above, please enjoy!
Basketball Shoot
My son is crazy about basketball. He started to really get into it a couple of years ago and my wife and I have been trying to keep him playing constantly ever since. So this one particular night, I was taking him to this open gym event for him to play but when we got there, the event was canceled because not enough people had shown up. We had little choice but to head back home. When we got back, I said: hey, why don't we do a cool basketball photoshoot since we both have nothing to do for a while? He agreed so I started setting up the equipment.
I wanted to do something different with colored gels. I pictured in my head red and blue to contrast hot and cold and a high angled sharp main light for dramatic effect and muscle sculpting. I decided to make the background red and do a blue outline of the body. Then a small beauty dish up high for the face. I started with the background light and got that the way I wanted with some fall-off to dark.
Once that was dialed in I brought in two lights with blue gels on either side and set up the blue rim.
Finally, I put the beauty dish up high and dialed in the main light.
This is what the final setup in my living room looked like.
Once everything was set up it was just a matter of running through a bunch of poses. We were limited by the size of the backdrop and the location of the lights as to how much movement we could do and how broad the poses could be, but I was looking for a tight shot anyway.
Even though this shot was all about color with the gels, I decided to do one pose in black and white because the pose was really accentuating the muscle shapes in the arm and I felt this would be emphasized by the monochrome treatment. (Plus I just really like black and white).
So there we have it. Some great shots. My favorite was the one at the top of the post. I liked it so much that I had a 20"x20" metal print made of it by Artbeat Studios, and that thing is awesome! It looks fantastic on my wall and it's the first thing people comment on when walking into my living room.
Jacqueline's Book Cover
I met Jaqueline de Abreu through a friend of my wife's. I will let her introduce herself. This is from her own website Jacqueline Fonseca de Abreu:
I am originally from Brazil and have been living in the USA since 2002. This intercultural experience has an immense impact on who I am today. I have always loved to learn about other cultures, to travel and explore this amazing and incredible gift we have, our lives!
My main purpose is to live the best life I possibly can, being the best version of myself, and to connect and help people all over the globe to love themselves and others more, to become happier and share happiness, to become healthier and share health, and to become better educated and share knowledge and experiences.
You can click through to see more information about her various degrees, certifications, and general awesomeness that qualify her to help others to live life to its fullest potential. Jacqueline does this through coaching, lecturing, seminars, over a nice cup of herbal tea, and now also through books.
We happened to both be going to the wedding of our mutual friend's daughter in South Carolina when she asked if we could take the opportunity to shoot some images for the cover of her book. At the time Jacqueline was living in Iowa so this wedding was a somewhat rare occasion for us to get together (She has since come to her senses and moved back to Florida).
She knew what she wanted, which was one formal portrait for the bio section at the back of the book and a beach picture that she wanted to use for the cover of the book. As a Brazilian, specifically from Rio de Janeiro, she had a strong connection to the beach and wanted to show that in the book. We were all staying in a large rented home just a short walk from the beach in Charleston so this would not be a problem. What would be a problem was the temperature. We were in South Carolina and it was November. Not exactly beach weather. At least we would most likely have the beach to ourselves.
We shot over 2 days. The first day, we had just arrived the night before, we did not get up early enough for an east coast beach shoot. That made the formal portrait the obvious choice for the day's shoot. We chose a library room for the shoot given her extensive academic background. As luck would have it, the owner of the house we were renting must have been in the medical field as the room was filled with medical, and specifically psychiatry, textbooks. She picked her outfit as I arranged the books in the room for the shot. It was a simple, two light setup.
We did this very traditional pose, and she also wanted one where she was making the "I love you" sign with her hands. It's sort of a branding trademark of hers since the method she developed for living life is called L.O.V.E. Each letter represents a pilar of living a fulfilling life: L is for leadership, O is for optimism, V is for vitality, and E is for education. The hand gesture is a mashup of the letters I, L, and Y in American Sign Language in one hand. So we also ended up with this shot.
OK, so formal shot in the bag. We planned to meet very early (6:45 am I think) to get to the beach before sunrise. The weather was looking promising and was supposed to be a nice clear day, but somewhere around the upper 40s Farenheight that morning (or for my fellow Florida people, "20 below 70"). I asked my wife if she would like to come along, but made the mistake of telling her the time and expected temperature. She responded with nothing more than a look but I got the message.
The next morning we headed out as planned and the weather was also just as predicted, clear and cold. The beach was a short 5 minute walk from the house and it was beautiful. Just as we thought, we had the whole place to ourselves. The first order of business was to make sure the equipment was all working well. A test shot of the moon confirmed everything was in order.
Now it was time to roll up the pant legs and get scouting. There was really no bad angle so it was just a matter of picking the best way to shoot given the angle of the sun.
We made several shots in that freezing cold water's edge. Props to Jacqueline for lasting as long as she did. I think it became a bit of a competition to see who could last longer. "Are you ok to keep going?" "I'm good if you are." I shot a good variety of exposures and angles so she would have plenty of options to pick from. And, of course, we had to have plenty of "ILY" signs.
When I was convinced we had enough shots to pick from, we quickly packed up and went back to the house. I was not able to feel my feet for a little while which is always an interesting sensation, but Jacqueline was super happy with the pictures so I didn't mind it so much. She has been using the pictures from that shoot all over her social media and websites, which is the best feedback you can get really.
Even though it was uncomfortable at times, overall it was a great fun and we shared a unique experience that only strengthens the friendship and gives us both an interesting story to tell.
The Dashing Dasha
Last year I had the pleasure of making some photographs of Jacqueline Abreu for an upcoming book she was writing. This year I received a text from her asking me to shoot her daughter's senior pictures. Her daughter was visiting her in Miami from Iowa for the weekend and she wanted to do some pictures at the beach and among some trees. I immediately accepted and we did some quick planning, arriving at Jupiter inlet as the prime location for the shoot.
Before we get into the photos, let me say that this shoot went off very smoothly from beginning to end. The main reason for this was that Dasha was extremely well prepared. She had a very clear idea of what she wanted, the looks, the outfits, and the locations. That made the planning very efficient and we could work around the main themes she wanted and take little creative detours as the opportunities presented themselves.
The day of the shoot was an early morning at the beach. We met at Jupiter beach park at 6:30 am, about 15 minutes before sunrise. The parking lot was actually still closed so we had to go to the Jupiter inlet to park. We walked onto the beach and started warming up with some sunrise shots.
After getting the sunrise, we moved to the lifeguard house. I had done a beach shoot a few months earlier where I missed the opportunity to shoot at the guard house and had kicked myself for it. I was not about to make the same mistake. We got there and started on the steps. We worked around it and got a good variety of shots for her to choose from.
Now that we were fully warmed up and in a good groove, it was time to switch gears. No beach shoot is complete without a swimsuit right? So it was a quick change into her favorite bikini and we were off to the water's edge for some classic beach action. We did not get in the water since we had plans for other looks that would be ruined if she was all wet. So it was just simple walking at the water's edge.
Now it's time for another change. Dasha wanted to shoot among trees or some kind of foliage with a specific favorite dress. As we were walking towards the area where were would shoot, we passed in front of the Jupiter lighthouse and I said we had to get some shots including the lighthouse since it's so iconic for this location. I had planned to do this beforehand and brought my 2x teleconverter just for this reason. The plan was to put her up on the rocks and use the compression of 400mm of focal length to bring her and the lighthouse together. So I got my stuff ready and she changed in her car. As she got out of the car I noticed the sun shining through the long dress and that sparked the idea to shoot against the sun to get a silhouette of her legs. This is one of those creative detours I talked about earlier.
OK, detour over, let's get on the rocks and use that lighthouse. I shot from really far away at f22 (for the photo nerds) to get the lighthouse in focus enough to be recognizable. With the bright sunny day, f22 was no problem at all.
After this, I took another little creative detour because the pool of water in front of the rocks would make a great little reflection shot. So I had her pull the dress up and just walk around in the water. This time I opened up the aperture to f5.6 (minimum with my teleconverter on) to blur out the background.
Now we were ready for the shot she had wanted. We walked over to an area covered by Sea Grape, a very Florida location, and started working on her vision. She was very specific about what she wanted. It was a shot with the leaves to show the open back of the dress. We did that, then I brought in some light to get a more dramatic shot that I thought might look cool. Then we ended with a bright happy shot of her in nature. (Note the absolute mess of sweat and sand that I had become by that point!)
Dasha, like her mother, was an absolute delight to be around. She made the shoot fun, easy, and a complete success. I hope to get to photograph her again in the future.
Thanks to Jacqueline, her mother, for all the behind-the-scenes photographs.
Tip for Shooting in Harsh Sun
Living in Florida (The Sunshine State) means shooting in the harsh sunlight quite often. To make great pictures, one needs to learn to tame that beautiful fireball in the sky. In this post, I am going to share one of the best ways to turn the harsh sun into gorgeous light.
When shooting in natural light, the golden hour is your friend. That is the hour right after sunrise and the hour right before sunset. During golden hour, the colors are warm and the low angle of the light is flattering on people's faces and does not cast harsh shadows. As the day progresses, the angle and relatively small size of the sun in the sky start to cast unflattering shadows on your subjects, particularly in the eyes. Not to mention the extreme brightness making everyone squint. Note the hard shadows, bright shiny highlights, and squints in the image below!
So, unless you are going to limit yourself to shooting only during golden hour, you must find a way to deal with the harsh sun. There are several ways to do this: find some shade, turn the subject around and shoot against the sun, or use a reflector. All valid ways to get around the problem of harsh light, but also each with its challenges. Shooting in the shade can take away the sculpting property of directional light and the picture can end up looking flat. Shooting into the sun can cause silhouetting, lens flare, or an overblown background (all things that can also be used intentionally as an artistic expression). The reflector, I try to avoid in the harsh sun because throwing another bright light source on an already overwhelmed subject can be quite unpleasant if not painful.
So, my favorite way to deal with the harsh sun is to use a diffuser! A diffuser is a translucent piece of fabric that is used to partially block and spread out the light from the sun. One of my favorites is the Lastolite Trigrip. This diffuser comes with several different covers so it can also be used as a reflector. The diffuser is most effective when it's very close to the subject. The closer the better. It takes away the harshness but still keeps the direction of the light.
Here are the two shots side by side. The Left without a diffuser and the right with a diffuser.
Notice the picture on the right, with the diffuser, how the shadows have been softened, the highlights are broader and more subtle, and the subject can now open her eyes! The diffuser makes the lighting smoother and softer all around. Unless I'm going for a specific artistic look, I will always go for the diffuser in the harsh sun. In my opinion, it produces the most flattering results for a portrait.