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.



We did the shoot at Pink Beaches, in the evening from 6-9pm.  The main concept was to utilise a stone wall that bordered the pool.   We had a tight time frame to get the shots as we had to be out of the pool area before the hotel guests arrived for supper at 7pm.  The remainder of the shoot was more improvised and included shooting in and around one of the hotel rooms and also to keep with the water theme from the other 4 shoots, some playing around with a hose pipe.

Technical Info:
The first part of this shoot was on the wall and the setting sun was bright and off to camera right.  The result was the right side of Yuki's face (as looked at from the direction of the camera) was in bright sunlight and the left part was in darker shadow.   I used the Einstein with the beauty dish attached, positioned it on my left, and set the power so it was just strong enough to open up some of the shadows.  It was probably about 1/2 to 1 stop below the ambient reading.  If you have read some of my other posts you will by now realise that I use this set up for practically all my shoots.  I have 3 Einsteins and various diffusers, but my go to set up is one light with the beauty dish.  I apologise if it gets repetitive but that's the set up I'm most comfortable with when shooting in daylight conditions.  Basically I'm just using it as a fill flash.

The hose-pipe shots are also shot with the same set-up and the beauty dish was positioned directly above the camera at about 8 feet high.   This was shot as the sun was starting to fade so ISO was increased to 400 and the shot is lit more by flash than ambient.

For the shot in front of the arched doorway,  I needed to increase the ISO up to 1250 in order to get a good exposure of the outside lights.  Ideally I would have shot this with a tripod but both Shaq (the lighting assistant) and I were perched on the edge of a flower bed wall with our butts in a bush.  So no room for tripods.  The shutter speed was 1/30 sec, so the lens 's Image Stabiliser was needed otherwise I'm sure this would have been more blurry.

The final image on the sofa was shot again with just the beauty dish which was directly in front of the sofa at about 7ft high and pointing down at Yuki.  There was very poor ambient light in the room so this is almost completely lit by the strobe.   You can actually see a small amount of the tungsten light (yellow) behind Yuki's head.  That''s coming from a lamp that was at the side of the sofa.

Thanks to everyone that collaborated on the shoot:
Model: Yuki Hoshina
Designer: James Lee
Make-Up: Shaela Godfrey (MAC)
Lighting Assistant:  Shaquille Young
Location:  Pink Beach Resort


CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE

58mm, 1/180, F6.7

 58mm, 1/180, F6.7

58mm, 1/180, F6.7 

90mm, 1/180, F6.7 

55mm, 1/180, F6.7 

58mm, 1/180, F6.7 

60mm, 1/180, F5.6

45mm, 1/180, F4.5

90mm, 1/125, F5.6, ISO 400

 90mm, 1/125, F5.6, ISO 400

 

90mm, 1/125, F5.6, ISO 400

65mm, 1/30,  F4.5, ISO 1250

50mm, 1/30, F6.7, ISO 800

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