About three weeks ago I got a call from Todd (creative director) asking me about photography service for a large project that he is in the final stages of putting together for a casino cruise line. The project is to shoot a promotional calendar for a casino boat in West Palm Beach, FL. The calendar will include some of the promotional girls (models) that work on the boat, as well as some models that I was able to provide.
Myself, Kevin (my business parter), Yuliya (our Makeup Artist / Stylist), and my assistant Brett all went to meet with Todd on the boat, so we could get a better feel for what they were looking for.. I brought my camera along so I could also take some "collateral" shots of some locations they had in mind for the shoot (this was for my notes, and planning). The shooting time was going to be a challenge because the cruse ship is always at sea.. and we needed to shoot this with the boat docked. The times the boat is docked was from 1AM - 9:30AM. This meant everyone had to be ready to start shooting at 1AM, and each day we had to be finished before the boat left for sea (9:30AM)!! In addition to the general shooting times.. we only had a window of about 45-min to allocate to each model... this also had to include moving all of our lighting equipment and getting it all setup from one location of the boat to another! There was no time for error.. nor any time to "play" with the lighting.. everything had to move along very quickly as they came out from makeup and on set.
The lighting was meticulously planned out weeks before the shoot. I actually drafted up lighting diagrams for each model / location.. and made my notes based on the initial meeting we had with the client. Everything from what lighting I was going to use, to the over all timetable was planned in advance... I even had my camera settings all marked off and ready to go. I still needed to be able to think very quick on my feet during shooting.. but all the planning helped us narrow down any "grey" area that might have come up.. and now looking back.. there was no other way to do this project... planning was the key!
The actual shoot was done over two days. About half the models were shot day one.. and the other half shot day two. Our makeup artist Yuliya was amazing.. she was able to match all the looks perfectly to the costumes.. and kept the models coming out on set right on time.. she was such an integral part of this project, and give the models the professional look we all wanted!
We are all so very proud of our results and hard work on this one.. the shots came out exactly how I planned : )
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