A week or two ago, while I was still out to sea on my last trip, a friend/fellow aerialist/fellow photographer, Meghan Meredith, tossed out a great idea. We have a lot of photographers as well as talented aerialists at Aerial Revolution, our gym/second home. (I mean that, it's kinda like the Cirque Du Soliel version of Joe's Gym from Dodgeball, we're family- even if we're nothing close to average) So why not collaborate and set up a photo shoot day. We'd all get to work together, the aerialists would get great pics for their resumes, we'd get great stuff for our portfolios, and the studio would make a little extra money. Everybody wins.
So, yesterday was the first shoot of what hopefully will be a regular occurrence in the future, and I have to say it was awesome. I was a little worried at first because I wound up running late (note to self, GPS in the iPhone does NOT take traffic into account when it calculates travel times from point A to Point B) but I actually had planned ahead and knew exactly how I wanted to set up the lighting, so was able to get in and set up while the models were still warming up and getting into costume.
Meghan had already worked out costuming, posing and makeup with the models, once I had the lights up and rigging set, it was game on. Our first aerialist was Amy.
We got into a good rhythm, I was shooting, Meghan and two of our instructors, Ivo and Jackie, were posing the aerialists with a little input based on what I could see through the lens. Went pretty well, we were having fun, music was on (I'd comment on Ivo's playlist, but my musical taste has also been called into question at times, so I won't) all we really needed was beer to make it a perfect day. Amy came to the rescue and offered to make a beer run while we kept shooting. Her selection was as excellent as her posing and the shoot got even more perfect.
Next up was Mary, who rocked it as well.
Our third and final (planned at least) model for the day was Traci. She is one of my favorite people, recently returning to aerial after a hiatus, and it was awesome to see her flying again. She also gave the camera some great stuff:
even when we disagreed as to creative direction:
See why she's one of my favorite people? Anyone who can look that awesome while flipping me off is definitely a person worth knowing, right?
Anyway, while we were shooting Traci, Mary was getting ready to head home. She is a motorcyclist, and she happens to have the most awesome kitty ears helmet I have ever seen. She was putting on her boots and biker gear and someone said we needed to get her on the trapeze in her leathers and boots. She mentioned something about wanting to do a shoot on her motorcycle one day. I can neither confirm nor deny that the beer had any effect on what came next (and she hadn't had any- for the record) but someone said why not today? So we opened up the back door to the studio, and in rolled Mary on her cruiser. Parked it right under the trapeze and the shoot after the shoot started.
We finally had to call it quits, mostly because we were laughing so hard I couldn't focus anymore, so we broke everything down and headed out. These are all rough draft images, the next awesome part is I get to take my time editing. Meghan is going to work up an image package for each model while I am out to sea, I get to just edit at my leisure and post the finished versions when I am back from my next trip.
So, awesome afternoon of shooting, got some great shots, spent time with friends laughing and playing while making art, and I don't have to do any follow up. Not sure how many days like this I will have in my career as a photographer, but these are the ones that make me think it's worth pursuing and putting in all the less fun hours.
Thanks again to everyone involved, especially Meghan for setting it up, and Jess - who apparently isn't going to kill us after all for driving a motorcycle into her aerial studio ;-)
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