The session with Brooke Lynne was almost over after we’d shot one roll of film and we were finishing up with a few extra digital captures when the last couple of poses made me stop to think I should run another roll.
I knew there were several images that would certainly fit with the series but decided one more roll was needed to quickly work with what we’d come up with.
This whole shoot from start to finish took less than 15 minutes.
The selected image for the series is in the top left corner …
A few months before arriving to Mexico I had this image in my head all of a sudden of Carlotta with a Sombrero posed exactly like this:
So I emailed the owner of the Hotelito to ask if she knew of any shops in the area to purchase a sombrero or if I should buy one in Los Angeles and suffer the issues of flying on the plane wearing a sombrero. She told me a friend of hers had some antique sombreros and they just so happened to be from former El Presidente’s of Mexico. Of course I promised to treat the sombreros with the utmost care and she came through for me. This speaks volumes of how amazing she is. I’m thankful she entrusted me to use the sombreros. They were gorgeous!
Carlotta and I traversed all corners of the Hotelito during our shoot and found some beautiful light and cool areas for posing with these historical sombreros and for doing other images too. ¡Arriba! Carlotta is blessed with the ability to work in so many different genres of photography and it’s always so great to work with such a pro. I didn’t get to see her feature in Mexican Playboy while we were there… anyone have a link? Would love to add it here! Quite a coincidence. ha.
Enjoy our pictures. 🙂
Merrique and I shot twice for the Hotelito Studio series.
As I was reviewing the digital images from the first session I noticed some of the surroundings were coming into shot. The work from the studio series ( as with all my film work ) is reproduced full frame and with the film edges shown, so these surroundings became a distraction I didn’t want. With this in mind I decided to shoot another session using a different location.
However, once the film came back from the lab I noticed I hadn’t captured these distractions on film and the hero shot was on this first roll! I’ll post outtakes from roll 2 soon …
The selected image for the series is in the top left corner …
I loved the Hotelito for all it’s stark shooting situations and shady spots too. Who needs a backdrop when there’s an abundance of natural light and beautiful vivid walls? I knew it would be good shooting when I looked at it online before arriving and definitely was happy when I arrived. I’m enamored by modern architecture and bold lines.
I worked all week with my Nikon FM 35mm and my Rollei. Little cameras that didn’t weigh very much so I wasn’t carrying around tons of gear in the heat. Plus I was scared to pack up my 4×5 with all my Polaroid film for fear Mexican Customs would hassle me on arrival. On the way home at the airport when they were searching my bags before departing they didn’t know what 120 film was, so I may have had a hard time explaining Type 55 Pos/Neg film to them and Sodium Sulfite. Though Steven Billups managed to bring in all his Polaroid film. Though I was happy with all the work accomplished with my little cameras. I ended up shooting more and going back to the camera set up I learned on.
Claudine and I worked together back in 2008 during the 29 Palms festival with my 4×5, so good that I had something different with me to get a different look. We had the opportunity to work together twice this time around. This is our first shoot. We didn’t wander too far away from that fabulous swimming pool. Shoot 10 minutes, jump in, shoot 20 minutes, jump in again… that was my week really. Claudine is quite an enigma, in a good way. She seems so unassuming in person but when you point a camera in her direction this intense confidence pops out and lends itself to inspiration. She’s great to work with!
Hotelito – stark geometrics and hard surfaces. The perfect foil for a curvy bod 🙂
This is part eleven in a series of blogs on my recent artistic adventures in Mexico.
Ever been to a party where you don’t know anyone? Many people find that to be an uncomfortable situation.
Me? I don’t really mind it. I guess it depends on the people at the party, but I can usually get a conversation going with someone without too much effort. And if I’m at a gathering of artists, well that’s a piece of cake!
That’s good, except with all the evening socializing, great conversation and mingling going on at ZoeFest, it was a challenge to make it across the room to speak with someone you were hoping to have a conversation with because there were always a handful of great conversations to be had in the space between. Kinda like trying to get from the hotel entrance to the elevators in Las Vegas. A maze of shiny, blinking things to distract you on the way.
During the first few days, St. Merrique and I had managed to only have a few sentence fragments of communication in passing. Enough that I knew, yes, we both wanted to work together in Todos Santos and also that she would be departing from ZoeFest a few days earlier than the rest of us.
Yet we always seemed to be on opposite sides of the room at whatever social function we were attending. She finally resorted to sending me an email to try to schedule some shoot time. It worked.
Merrique is from my favorite city in the world, Paris, although she currently calls Los Angeles her home base. She has a quiet graceful quality about her, but you can also tell there is a powerful strength behind those eyes of hers. Beauty not to be trifled with.
This was the second of three shoots on my third day of ZoeFest. Again it was at the Hotelito where I had just photographed Claudine. Since my shoot with St. Merrique was scheduled right as the mid-day heat was about to make its entrance, we decided that perhaps shade should be the theme of the day. I found an interesting vibrant pink wall that would keep her out of the direct sun. Definitely a background she would stand out from, even in the shade.
I took one test exposure frame of her casually standing at rest against the wall and satisfied with my camera settings, I told her I was ready as I raised the viewfinder back to my eye.
And bang!
Before even clicking the shutter, just looking through the viewfinder, whoever it was that was in my first test frame was suddenly replaced by… well… St. Merrique!
One of the great thing about working with models who exude a great deal of professionalism is that there is so little direction needed. Merrique knew her environment, the light she was standing in and where I was in relation to it all. All I had to do was find the composition that worked with what she was giving me. Just her against a textured wall. A doorway to the left of the frame and a shaft of sunlight from behind the little building, sweeping past her feet.
Maybe I would have her move a bit closer or away from the wall or maybe a half a step to the left or right, but to be honest, there was very little I could say to improve upon what she was doing. Really perfect.
It was also one of those times when I was having a color or B&W argument in the back of my head while we were shooting. I’ll talk about this more a bit later, but I usually know whether an image is going to be color or B&W as I’m composing it, because I do compose differently depending on that choice. The decision is usually not made in post processing, but at the time of the shoot.
The wall was so vivid behind Merrique. I finally let myself off the hook by agreeing that I could later choose how light or dark the wall would be behind her in my B&W conversions and balance the composition accordingly whether I decided to go with B&W or color. Regardless, I had to stop the mental argument because St. Merrique was really doing some amazing things with her shape!
We decided to head over to the pool. Even though I had shot in that location just a few hours earlier, the light was completely different now and one half of the pool was now completely in the shade. Perfect.
I had Merrique move to the middle of one of the long sides of the pool and this time I moved close to the wall instead of shooting across the pool. It created a lot of negative space which I love to work with. All I had to do was to not fall in the water as I balanced precariously close to the edge!
She continued with lovely poses and this time I ignored the color or B&W argument that had started up in my head again. It was a lovely blue wall, but I was thinking B&W as I shot.
St. Merrique was a joy to work with. Lovely, graceful, intelligent. A wonderful collaborator in the hot sun. Except that we were smart enough to remember to work in the shade.
We wrapped the shoot, very happy with what we had created.
Oh, and I should mention that not only is she a stunning model, Merrique is also a musician and audio engineer! Crazy talented! You can hear some of her music here.
My next shoot with the spectacular Rebecca Lawrence would begin in an hour!
More to come!
Round three of outtakes from the Hotelito Studio series, this time with Anoush.
We shot these images around the Hotelito pool with the wonderful deep blue/ green tiles.
The selected image for the series is in the top left corner …
I started a new “tradition” last year in Australia. It seemed only fitting that I do it again.
There will be video soon…
Every model who was at the festival!
Claudine, Ella Rose, Anoush Anou, Meghan, Stephanie Anne, Kiera Grant, Rebecca Lawrence, St. Merrique, Candace Nirvana, Brooke Lynne, Carlotta Champagne, Samantha Grace, Anne Duffy, Tara Tree and Sara Liz. Thank you, Ladies! Stay tuned for the video!
This is part ten in a series of blogs on my recent artistic adventures in Mexico.
People have been asking me:
“So, Billy. How do you know this blog is going to be 50 parts?”
or
“So, Billy. Are you really going to write 50 entries about your trip?”
Both fair questions. I originally figured the blog about ZoeFest was going to be one or two entries. After I drove to the Cabo San Lucas Airport for my flight back to Chicago, I had plenty of time to kill both at the airport and on the flight and I wrote what turned out to be the the first half dozen or so entries before I landed. It was then I realized I had way more than a blog entry or two.
About how I came up with the 50 number? I really just pulled it out of the air. In my very brief editing sessions while still in Todos Santos, I quickly found 50 photographs that seemed to have promise. And that was only after a very quick glance. I will most certainly find images I like better than those first 50 that caught my eye once I have a chance to sit down for an extended period of time and really get critical. I thought I could write one entry for each of the 50 first-round-of-editing photographs. That was how I came up with the number.
Of course, it also became impossible to talk about each shoot without showing several images to illustrate what I’m talking about. It’s only fair to you lovely readers.
As for the second question, I really have no idea if I’ll hit 50 different entries that all pertain to the wonderfully artistic ZoeFest Mexican Adventure. I would do neither I, nor you, kind readers, any favors by stretching this out with filler, just to reach a number.
And now since this is starting to feel a bit like the filler I want to avoid, let’s continue with the adventure, shall we?
I woke up on day three, had the usual early morning coffee chat with Mel and Scott and headed off to Hotelito for my first of three shoots that day. By the end of the third day, I would complete no less than seven shoots. Thankfully, for the remainder of the adventure, I would book a maximum of two shoots per day.
I was starting the day with Claudine, who was based out of Chicago like I was, although amazingly, we had never worked together before. Instead, we would fly 2,500 miles to get to our first shoot.
Claudine is a very happy person. A deep infectious laugh that I had been hearing for days whenever I was in her proximity. Maybe it’s a Chicago thing. We both laugh big.
I was anxious to shoot at Hotelito. A very different shooting environment than anywhere I had shot up until then. It was modern, colorful, geometric. Claudine was curvy and it seemed to be a good juxtaposition to photograph her there among the straight lines and geometry.
Since it was morning, the heat of the day was still a few hours off, so we headed outside to look for interesting places to begin. There were many interesting chairs and lounges around the grounds. One made up of white circular padded cylindars caught my eye, but I wasn’t quite sure the light was quite right where it was sitting on one of the porches. I’d have to think about that one for a bit.
The first thing I saw as we approached the pool area was a wall with rows of square cutouts in it. The sun was still low enough in the sky that the wall threw a perfect pattern of squares on the ground. Claudine stretched out and I walked around her, looking for the best angles of her within the shadows and how they passed over her. Sometimes you have to look at something from multiple vantage points to find the best one.
Then we headed off to the pool to play with reflections and shadows she could cast on the wall. By then the sun was getting close to being 45 degrees up from the horizon, probably about the maximum height I consider to be good light before the shadows start to become unflattering on faces. We worked, reviewed a bit and continued to work around the pool looking for the best angles from a reflection standpoint.
We moved to one of the short ends of the long pool and Claudine posed against a wooden wall at one end. The reflections were good. What I was curious about was how the tone of the wood and her skin tone seemed to be very similar. I usually prefer there to be more contrast between my subject and the background. It was one of those times when I wasn’t exactly sure if my B&W conversion would work the way I was imagining in my head. Hopefully the knots in the wood would be enough of a difference. I wouldn’t know until I could process the images.
After the pool we decided to explore some of the geometry of the Hotelito. There was a beautiful staircase leading up to the one of the rooftops and we found ourselves being pulled toward it. I had her move up the stairs, experimenting with various positions, some sitting, some standing. There were so many intersecting squares and rectangles to compose with. Many textures and varying tones with slices of sunlight cutting through them. Quite amazing really and we laughed as we reviewed a couple of the images. Those bigs laughs again.
Finally we headed back to one of the porch areas and the tubular lounge. We had initially discussed moving it to another location, but when we returned the light had changed and the shade of the porch became a bit of a frame. I just hoped the lounge was not 120 degrees as it baked in the sun. Happily not.
Claudine once again gave me many great poses as we tried to find interesting ways to oppose the square shapes and straight lines with her form and the arc of the lounge. Perfect!
The sun was starting to get high in the sky as noon approached and we decided to stop for the morning. Claudine had great energy and was a valued collaborator, helping me to explore this new location.
It was a great way to end the first shoot of the day. Two Chicagoans playing thousands of miles from home.
Time to take a break and get ready for my second shoot with the lovely St. Merrique.
As always, more to come.
Here are the first outtakes from the Hotelito Studio series, starting with the Carly session.
With only 24 frames to work with we managed to get close to half of them as contenders for the hero image.
It was quite a task to choose with a few of the following coming a very close second. The selected images is in the top left corner …
