Sophie and Hurricane Leslie

This shoot took place a couple of weeks ago in early September when Hurricane Leslie threatened to hit the island.  The shoot was on Saturday, the storm was estimated to hit the island on Sunday, fortunately it changed its path and missed well to the East.  What it did do though, was create some nice storm surge, perfect for a quick unplanned shoot.

On Friday night I put out a Facebook post asking if anyone was up for a hurricane shoot and Sophie replied.

End of Summer Bikini Shoot with Asha

 This shoot with Asha took place at the beginning of September.  It was the last of the summer shoots that were planned back in April.  However,  since busy work commitments have taken up Monday through to Saturday and Sunday is now dedicated to NFL there hasn't been a lot of free time in September, it has taken a month for me to get around to processing the images.
 This is the second time Asha and I have shot together, the first time being 2 years ago, which was also a bikini shoot.  Asha told me that this was the first time that she has shot since then. 

Really Riley - Part 2

This is part 2 of the Really Riley shoot.  For a description of the shoot concept and lighting details see the write up in Part 1. 

Really Riley - Part 1

As with almost all my summer shoots this shoot with Riley Henderson was planned back in April.  We originally agreed to shoot swimsuit, however, Riley has been busy modeling all summer and had already done several swimsuit shoots, so a couple of days before the shoot, we decided to change the concept to a fashion shoot.  Riley asked Shay Gibbons Ford if she could use items from Shay's Renew collection.  Shay agreed and I believe there may also be some items from Fatimaya too.

As the clothing is youthful, colorful and urban/edgy I suggested that we do the shoot with a lot of personality, so rather than shoot editorial expressions that generally tend to lack a lot of emotion and eye contact, I wanted this shoot to be goofy, flirty and have the sort of poses and expressions that you'd take with your iphone in the bedroom mirror when you're messing around.  Riley loved the idea as it's something that she hasn't done at a shoot before, although by all accounts something she does a lot in front of her own bedroom mirror.

Bottle Top Bikini: Part 5 of 5 - Yuki at Pink Beach

This was the final shoot in the Bottle Top Bikini series that were designed by James Lee.  I understand that James has another 2 or 3 photographers lined up to shoot the remainder of his collection, so keep a look out for their work coming in the near future.
Yuki Hoshina was the model chosen to wear the Amstel Light bottle cap swimsuit.   Yuki had responded to my April casting call when I was trying to schedule my summer shoots, but unfortunately I was booked up by the time she messaged me,  so it was nice that we still got to shoot after all.

James's concept/vision for this shoot was have a regal feel, so the outfit was accessorised with a belted cover-up and bracelets.  The make-up was done by Shaela from MAC and was based on an image of an oriental bride.

Sophie wearing Definitions By Dean

I've been wanting to shoot some of Dean's work for over 2 years.  I came very close in December 2010, but bad weather put pay to those plans.
As Dean's collection's are mostly custom made orders, they are already sold, so he rarely has any stock outfits sitting unsold on a rail.  Dean, therefore, generously offered to design something specifically for this shoot.

 He liked the idea of challenging himself to create a small collection that was editorial, unique and at the same time cohesive.    The concept I asked for was a sports wear/ready to wear style collection with a Amish/Religious twist.   Alexa Chung's outfits was my inspiration.

Bottle Top Bikini: Part 4 - Cleo at Nine Beaches

This was the fourth shoot from the bottle top bikini series as designed by James Lee.  The model for this shoot was Cleo and she was modeling the Heineken cap monokini swimsuit.

We decided to shoot at 9 beaches, it was an evening shoot.  We were hoping for a cool sunset setting however, when we arrived there was a slight sprinkling of rain, but fortunately it didn't last too long.  We had seen some interesting images of the huts perched out in the water, but we weren't able to get to that set as access to them was behind a locked gate.   Consequently we couldn't get to the side of the headland where we needed to be to see the sun set.

Bottle Top Bikini: Part 3 - Introducing Sherall

This is the 3rd in the series of bottle top bikinis designed by James Lee.  When James asked me which models I wanted to use for these shoots Sherall was the first name I gave him.  Actually, I didn't know her name, but I had seen her several times at the Evolution rehearsals and she was at the top of my list of new faces I wanted to shoot.   When you see these pics I'm sure you will understand why.  She is one of the most beautiful models I've had the privilege to shoot.  I believe the bottle caps used in this swimsuit are from Millar.

Bottle Top Bikini: Part 2 - "Look a Super-Model"

This is the second of the bottle top swimsuit shoots, as designed by James Lee.   See previous post for more details about the swimsuits.
This shoot was with Malyssa and was shot in the water just off the causeway at the Blue Hole park end.  It was shot late evening.  As expected there was a lot of traffic crossing the causeway and hence a lot of horn tooting, yelling and a group of tourists who pulled their convoy of rental bikes to the side of the road and could be heard talking amongst themselves, "Look a super-model."  Needless to say Malyssa loved all the attention.  LOL.

Bottle Top Bikini: Part 1 - Cave Woman

About this time last year I had the idea to create a bikini out of bottle tops.  I put out a request for people to start saving their tops instead of discarding them.  Shortly after that request I got a message from James Lee asking what I was planning on doing with the bottle tops, he mentioned he was also collecting them and oddly enough was in the process of creating a line of swimsuits from them.  In the end I never got enough caps or found the time to create the bikini.   James, however, continued with the idea and now has about 30 designs and several finished bikinis.  He asked me if I was still keen on the idea of shooting the bikini and whether I'd like to shoot some of his, rather than create my own.   I'm pretty sure I would never get around to creating my own and if I did there is no telling how hideous it would look, so I took him up on his offer.  Together we agreed on the models and concepts.  This is the first shoot we did.  The model is Sarafina, who I had previously shot back in February, she was one of the models in the lip tattoo shoot.

Rayneisha's Pool Party

Rayneisha and I have been planning this shoot since March.  We were discussing the details for the previous shoot we did, when Rayneisha showed me a picture of this brightly colored swimsuit.   It immediately screamed David Lachapelle.   So we started planning a second shoot that was to include multiple people, some crazy things going on and lots of bright colours.

Darius (Wilhelmina) - in Ralph Lauren Polo

I've known Darius since about 2008 when he used to live here.  At that time he wasn't a professional model and was in the process of building his portfolio.   I was new to shooting fashion and models, so finding interested models wasn't easy,  Darius was one of the few models willing to take a chance and shoot with me.
We shot 3 or 4 times between 2008 and 2009.   In 2010 he left Bermuda to model professionally in South Africa and is now signed with Wilhelmina in California.

We bumped into each other last week,  at the model workshop where he was a guest speaker.   At one point he handed out his comp cards to the models and to my surprise one of the four images on the back was one of the shots we'd taken way back in 2008.  Later on he showed me his printed portfolio which also includes an image that I took. I actually still use this image in my model mayhem portfolio.  Here is a Link

The evolution of the Evolution Fashion Show 2012

For the last two weekends I put shoots and blog posts hold as I've been immersed in following and documenting the City Fashion Festival in photos.  There has been something of interest on most days, and on the days when there has only been rehearsals I've been attending those too.

This blog post is a summary from my perspective of everything Evolution, from when it started with the Casting Calls way back in March, through model boot camps, show rehearsals, the fashion festival and then culminating with the final event, the Evolution Fashion Show, on Saturday July 7th.

Rayneisha's Editorial Style Shoot at St Georges

When I discussed this shoot with Rayneisha she said that she wanted to do an editorial style swimsuit shoot.  She gave me, as inspiration, a link to the June issue of Vogue Spain which was a shoot of Juju Ivanyuk on a beach in various dresses.
Shooting Rayneisha is really easy, she requires almost no direction, her poses are always modeled from head to toe (to steal Tyra's phrase) and of course her face photographs beautifully.  This shoot was also made easier for me as Rayneisha took control of the styling, all I had to do was find the right location and figure out how I wanted to light it.

Sherelle's Swimsuit Shoot

I did this shoot with Sherelle on Monday, which was a public holiday.  So it took a while to find a beach that wasn't jam packed.  We finally settled for Southlands which was still really busy but not as much as the public beaches.  I wanted to shoot at low tide, which meant shooting during the hottest part of the day.  The good thing about shooting at midday is the colours are always very vivid.  The downside however, are the harsh shadows and the tendency that the model will squint a lot. 

Gabriella in "Shifting Colors"

This shoot with Gabbi was inspired by a Greg Kadels colorful shoot for Numero #134 which featured a selection of trendy outfits shot in an urban setting with colorful buildings.

I've shot with Gabbi many times but this was the first time that we have done something with a more editorial feel.

We shot in the car park at Noah's Ark pet store.  Although its not colorful it had the architecture I needed to give the images the feel that they were shot somewhere other than Bermuda.  Post processing was then used to give the images the artificial/colorful feel that I took as my original inspiration.

Ashley's Visit Home (NSFW)

WARNING: CONTAINS NUDITY

Ashley was back on the island for a couple of weeks and had contacted me back in March when I was scheduling my summer shoots.  We had planned to shoot on May 20th but the poor weather that lasted all week put pay to lots of shooting opportunities.  Fortunately the last remaining free day I had before she left turned out nice and sunny.
When we discussed concepts Ashley said she wanted images that portrayed aspects of Bermuda's beautiful beaches and were also to be a mix of sexy swimsuit, as well as some implied and topless sets.

Part 2: "Natural Beauty" By Christopher Vee

This is the second part of the Beauty Shoot that I did with Christopher Vee a couple of weeks ago.  Part 1 was a bold look with bright make up to match the Moroccan necklace, this shoot was the complete opposite with the aim to keep the make up very natural and simple.
The models Christopher chose for the shoot were Riley and Malyssa.  I shot with Riley a couple of years ago but this is the first time that Malyssa and I have worked together.

Thanks to Alex Masters for letting us use
whitespace* studio

Part 1: "Morocco" By Christopher Vee

This beauty shoot with Christopher Vee was based around a necklace that he purchased in Morocco whilst on vacation there earlier in the year.

The model is Shaela Godfrey who I saw in a fashion show the weekend before the shoot and thanks to facebook managed to track her down,  Turns out Shaela is a MUA as well and works at MAC.

Thanks to Alex Masters for letting us shoot at whitespace* studio.

Tamara - Swimsuit Shoot Part 1

This is the second swimsuit shoot that Tamara and I have done.  The first one was back in November 2010 and was more of a fashion style.  This time Tamara wanted the images to be more like Sports Illustrated swimsuit style.  The intention was to shoot 3 outfits, however, the weather, which had been nice all day, started to turn cloudy as we started to shoot.  We started with this black bikini at one beach and got the following images.
 By the time we got to the second location the weather had deteriorated, we shot some images but in the end decided not to use them and rather to reschedule the remainder of the shoot on a better day.    For this kind of shoot you really do need a nice sunny day with blue skies and aquamarine water, as soon as the clouds roll in the sky goes grey and the sea loses all of its beautiful colours.

'FETISH' by Alexandra Mosher

The inspiration of this Fetish shoot started out when I saw a pic of Tamara wearing a piece that Alexandra Mosher designed for a Fetish Art show.

I contacted Alexandra and asked her if she had any other pieces and whether I could shoot them.  We met shortly after for a brainstorming session.  Alexandra was excited by the concept and offered to make custom pieces for the shoot.
The basic inspiration for the shoot theme  was a youtube video of Lindsey Lohan called "Lindsey's private party".  Becca had shown me this video a couple of years ago, but we never got round to basing a shoot on it.  The inspiration for the style of poses was taken from a shoot in the April Edition of Vogue Italia,  basically trying to take the edgy video concept and putting an Editorial spin on it.

Alexandra Mosher Fetish Jewelry Shoot - Behind the Scenes

Here are some BTS pics from yesterday's Fetish/Bondage shoot with Models; Whitney Morfitt and Chelsey Simonds, Designer: Alexandra Mosher, Make-up: Christopher Vee.

All pieces were hand-made by Alexandra, most pieces were custom made for this shoot.   Including bras, pasties, thong, head pieces, calflets, cuffs and earrings.

Beauty Shoot With Gaynete and Make up by Afroditi

I've been looking to practice my retouching techniques that I learned last summer, so decided to do a quick beauty shoot.   I asked Gaynete to be the model, as we had planned a shoot like this a couple of years ago and never got around to doing it.   Afroditi agreed to do the make up, which was great, as the quality of her work is really first class and can stand up to close up beauty shoots like this.

Desiree Riley wearing Designs by Amethyst

This shoot was arranged toward the end of 2011 when I saw Desiree modeling Amethyst's collection at the Premier's fashion show at Barcardi.  The first outfit in the shoot is from that show and the second is from one of Amethyst's earlier collections, but one that I have always wanted to shoot.

This was the first time I have worked with Desiree and I hadn't seen any work of her work from previous shoots, so I was taking a bit of a gamble, admittedly, not how I normally do things.  However, any concerns I had before the start of the shoot immediately disappeared when we started.   I've lost count of the number of shoots I've done but its well over 100, maybe over 200, but I can only think of maybe 5 shoots where the model has given so much variety and creativity in such a short time frame.  Totally undirected by me too.  I don't normally edit so many images from a single shoot but I had so many to choose from it was hard to narrow them all down.   Even more impressive was the fact that I had some serious technical problems with the flashes not firing, so there are a bunch of images and different poses that weren't even usable.   I'll definitely be looking to shoot with Desiree again in the near future.

Thanks also to Christopher Vee for doing the make up and also to Lamont Robinson for letting me use his premises.

Kalyn Cannonier - Fashion Shoot

A blog post is long over due I know.   Unfortunately I never got the opportunity to shoot in February hence the lack of posts here.  Well that's not entirely true, I shot some sports and wildlife, but nothing worth blogging about.   This shoot with Kalyn was planned for February, but it seemed that every weekend there were high winds and since it was an outdoor shoot, we had to cancel at least 3 times.   Also, whitespace* has been undergoing some renovations so there was no option to shoot in the studio as it has been unavailable.
Last weekend (March 17th/18th) was the first opportunity to do this shoot.  In fact, as I had a backlog, I ended up doing 3 shoots in a 24 hour period.  Kalyn's was the first of the 3 and the first time I used all the new Einstein's.   I'd like to say they performed perfectly, but that's unfortunately not the case.  There was a point when one of the strobes stopped firing, but removing and replacing the MC2 seemed to fix the issue.  That was nothing compared to the problems I had on shoots 2 and 3, but I'll discuss that in more detail when I blog those shoots.

Thank You - Violent Lips

Violent Lips sent goodies to the team.

Sheri and Tamara modeling the Violent Lips T-shirts

BTS Video of the Lip Tattoo Shoot

Thanks to Tamara for creating this video and allowing me to add it to my blog.

Lip Tattoo Shoot

Here are the images from the Lip Tattoo shoot that took place at the end of January.

With 5 models these have taken quite a while to edit, hence the lack if Blog posts over the last couple of weeks.   I haven't kept count of the length of time but I'd estimate editing has taken somewhere in the region of 50 hours.

Hannah Collins was the make-up artist, Lip Tattoos were supplied and applied by Monique Stevens, Styling by Monique and James Lee, Hair Stylists were Sierra Scraders and Kiwana Stephens.  Models were Danielle Smith, Sarafina Durrant, Sherri Scott, Courtney Davis and Tamara Bradshaw.

Special Thanks to Alex Masters for letting us use whitespace* studio.

Rachel Sawden - Beauty Shoot

This shoot with Rachel was a really short one.  It was a beauty shoot with just one look, so the entire shoot was completed in less than an hour including lighting setup.

The concept was something that Rachel and Christopher Vee (MUA) had come up with.  Basically the focus was on a very strong dark eye with the rest of the face remaining quite neutral.

140mm F4.5 1/125sec ISO 100

Tiara and the Chinese Water Hats

 When I first saw the hats hanging up on the wall in The Bay Grape store I knew immediately that I wanted to shoot them and it was obvious that the model was going to have to be nude.   I mentioned the hats to Tiara and she loved them too and agreed to be the model, despite being a little scared at having to be naked.

Lip Tattoo Shoot - behind the Scenes

Today's shoot was a beauty shoot using lip tattoos.    Being that its a beauty shoot, with a lot of close up shots there was a great deal of emphasis on the make-up which needed to be immaculate.  Hannah Collins was the make-up artist and did some really great work.   Lip Tattoos were supplied and applied by Monique Stevens, Styling by Monique and James Lee, Hair Stylists were Sierra Scraders and Kiwana Stephens.  Models were Danielle Smith, Sarafina Durrant, Sherri Scott, Courtney Davis and Tamara Bradshaw.

Special Thanks to Alex Masters of whitespace* for allowing us to use the studio.

 

New Gear Has Arrived !

Today my order from Paul Buff arrived.  

 Here's what I got: 

Back Left to Right:  2 Mini Vagabonds, 22 inch beauty dish, 8.5 reflector, 2 Einsteins, 11 inch long throw reflector.  Pocket Wizard MC2.  MacBook Air (this was bought today from town when I went to collect all the Paul Buff stuff)
Front Left to Right:  Pocket Wizard MC2,  64" PLM extreme, Diffuser cover for PLM, Diffuser Cover for Beauty Dish, 2 spare batteries for the Mini Vagabond, extra Mini Vagabond charger, MBA Baby Boom Arm.

Already have:  1 Einstein, 1 MC2, 1 PLM 64 extreme, 1 Mini Vagabond, 1 spare battery and 1 8.5 reflector.   So should be all set for a new style I want to try out.

Tiara: January 2012- Part 2

Here are the remaining images from the Beach shoot with Tiara.  The second part of the shoot was an Indian theme and inspired by jewelry that was kindly loaned to us by Perri Gold.

Tiara: January 2012- Part 1

Following on from the behind the scenes images that were posted last weekend, this is the first set from that shoot.  The concept was a cream/white sweater and the beach, again keeping it pretty simple.   We were aiming for a romantic feel with a mixture of editorial and portrait poses and composition.

200mm 1/500sec at f/2.8, ISO  50

For a technical description of the shoot and more pics, expand the post below.

Behind the Scene's at Tiara's shoot

Had a fun shoot at the beach with Tiara today.  I will be posting some edited shots later in the week with technical Data.   In the meantime here are some Behind the Scenes pics that were taken by me and my assistant (Jonathan Sousa)