Sea Diamond, pure jewel...

Once or twice a year I have assignments in the luxury business, and this time I had to shoot a very beautiful ship, a 105 feet Mangusta if you're a boat aficionado. The job was to shoot her inside out, to create all the documents to market this boat. With a hefty bit of money, you'll be able to rent her for luxury week-ends around Cannes and wherever you may want to go in the Mediterranean Sea... The perfect Mare Nostrum wanderer.

Usually you have to shoot boats from a helicopter, to make the boat look as long as possible, get a clear view from all the decks, and give the perfect impression of speed. Slow shutter speed can also be an option. But the client said otherwise so no chopper, just a tiny boat to turn around the ship and get all angles. I decided to go with no polarizer, as modern software allow for any highlight and shadow recovery, and to keep some cool reflections on the water. And anyway, it was slightly overcast, so it would have been useless. And polarizers are so past, no ?

Hopefully, the morning light was low enough to give some shadows, and as usual I went shooting backlit for most of my pictures, a habit I'll never get rid of... for the best of it, I sincerely believe. Some pics are just gorgeous. You may be more into sailboat, but this is starting to be a serious ship with a history, from a well known italian maker and talented hancrafters. You tend to respect that, not its price.

Work at sea level... Or just a little bit under.

Just wanted to share some pics on a small project I'm working on between assignments. It's been a long time I wanted to do this along the coast close to my place, and the surprise good weather from the past days just allowed us to shoot.

Stand up paddle is growing fastly, and I'm not talking about the wave riding version. We are all aware it's gonna get big in the fitness-well being area, with more and more people turning to this relaxing way to travel on water, lake, sea, whatever. And actually, it's quite a pleasant way to train your upper body on long distance laps.

I met Severine, who is an actress, and she's working on a TV show project about that, traveling in beautiful places and meeting people on her board. I decided to help her a little bit, hence this set of pictures. A few more and we're ready to be published ! So that'll be a few other photo sessions in my wetsuit and camera in water housing to get some pretty angles. Wouldn't bother for a few degrees more in the water, though !

Shooting in an emergency...

Hi ! I'ts been a while since last post. And still I haven't been this busy. Actually, these days I have shootings that last less than the time spent to prepare them !

Small exemple is that little slideshow I did for La Compagnie des Alpes, in Tignes, France. We spent 4 to 5 days to set up everything, and, I should not say it, I only needed 2 days to snap all the pictures, and one (very full) day to edit.  Due to the lack of time, I shot more journalistic, and to my opinion, it worked. I already did this kind of job, and last time it took me 2 weeks over one month ! But I had to cover the whole resort people and their work, I used many flashes for each picture, and the result can't really compare. Just check this previous post :

http://stefcande.blogspot.fr/2011/01/keep-trace-your-business-is-beautiful.html

Fun to be able to be in spots where no average users of ski resorts will ever have the right to go. And a good way to discover how hard work it is to run such a business. Which more or less explains the price you pay for your lift ticket, and the pleasure to ski down for the rest of the day. Enjoy...

November Jib Anniversary...

Action pictures rarely age well... That's why I take the risk to exhibit those pics before they get too old. A lot of them have been printed, or used on the web, even if not enough to my taste (I'm always complaining about not enough coverage... Photographers are like this by design...). Whatever, the heavy snowfall of these last days just reminded season is now definitely on, and those pics are just something to pump up your energy.

Anyway, that jib session happened 2 years ago, with a heavy snowfall covering very early all the low altitude parts of Rhône-Alpes, from Lyon, to Grenoble, Chambery... All around the Geneva lake it was pure magic, heavy white blanket of snow nearly stopping any human activity..

Except of course for a bunch of riders, who wanted to use as much of this white gold as possible. Jibbing the city, whatever the period of the year, is not so frequent, and no time had to be lost for the search of the perfect steel handrail.

As shootings almost always happen at night, it's time to play with flashes : from the sides or from the back (my favorite, no joke...), many of them. If you're not flashing in this occasion, better sell all your equipment. Unless you shoot with crazy guys from PVS movie production, bringing their own power generator everywhere, at night, in narrow streets... Enough light to shoot a Hollywood movie ! And believe it or not, we encountered no hassle from anyone, in the neighborhoods where we shot, who was exasperated by the NOISE ! That must have been our lucky star effect.

Enjoy those pics as much as I still enjoy them, it was a particularly good time for shooting and incredible actions. And no bones were broken for the whole week... Except Louis Josephe arm, of course !

Italia.... Can be just around the corner...

A few weeks back I had to shoot in an italian restaurant downtown Annecy, on the wrong side of the Alps if you want to hear the pizza cooking in the oven in its original language. The pics were to be used in the new version of the restaurant, due to a complete make over in the coming weeks. And as usual, time was short... Makes it even more difficult to try to shoot something with a good and happy fettucini mood.

What can save you when details are not spot on, is blur and black and white, of course. I had prepared a crazy flash set-up in the beginning, but everything was too sharp and in focus, so I turned my new cam up to 5000 iso, cranked the aperture down to 1.2 and started to shoot for good. Thanks 1Dx for the  performance.

One of the character was a 4 years old kid, who did not want to wear a hat at first, and I did not want to force him. He played with it a couple of times, though, and I think they're the best pics of the set.

One of the details was perfect, part the wonderful classy old school Vespa : check carefully and you'll see a Panerai watch on a model wrist. Can't be more classic Italian, and still goes smartly under the radar of bling addict. Cool stuff I want for my fifties, not a Rolex, OK Jacques ?