A semi-glamor shoot in Batanes

I must admit, I rarely shoot glamor. I’m not that intimidated really to shoot glamor as its a strategic combination of light and location. But when you add a concept like “Fishing” into “Fashion” that’s when everything goes a bit haywire. Admittedly that’s a challenging concept for me, especially when the location is rugged Batanes.  C’mon it’s a bit easy to do location shoots and just let the model pose in but add in fishing?

The Concept
Good thing Seair Inflight Art Director Jocas had some pegs to help out. Otherwise I had these crazy ideas of just doing a creative shoot of lady emerging from the water or a dyesebel (mermaid) on the rocks or a rogue Ivatan toughly carrying an 8pound amberjack on one hand while wearing a pretty dress and smiling on a camera. But no we didn’t do something as drastic as that. We just need a nice fishing setting, a model and the beautiful back drop of Batanes.

Our Itbayat model, Suzie Alcazar

The Mahatao Port

The Elements
The day before the actual shoot, we scouted around Batan Island for a good location. We had two options, on was on boat at Mahatao Port, the jump-off for deep sea fishing and the other is the rocky shores of the Marine Sanctuary. Though I have to state that we didn’t do fishing on the latter but to recreate a popping scene, one type of fishing. That night we also met with our model Suzie Alcazar, a native of Itbayat and scheduled our shoot ealy morning. We won’t be using any lights or reflectors for this since we will be shooting on a boat so natural lighting condition is critical.

Glamor shoot in Mahatao Batanes

The Shoot
First part of the shoot is in Mahatao Port. We have Suzie on the boat and we also have to add the fishing poles as props. I wasn’t on the boat here as I’m on the port ledge shooting from afar as I need to shoot part of the boat, the model and the backdrop. The tricky thing here is I need to direct both the model and also the boat to go do several rounds inside the port. I’m using my 70-300mm Zuiko for most of my shoots here since I’m shooting from afar. All things went well until there was an unfortunate incident of the boat propeller hitting the breakwaters. That ended our shoot there.

Shoot at the Marine Sanctuary in Batanes

Rains can easily spoil a shoot

We moved on to the Marine Sanctuary to shoot another option. But unfortunately come almost midday the rain started to spoil our shoot. We just got a few shots here until the rain continuously poured. While we like the dark and moody shots there, I could already see rain drops on the picture which isn’t really good.

The Output
So here I’m sharing here the results of those shots. This are actually cover options for the June-July 2009 issue for Inflight but wasn’t used as is since I think the cover title  “Desperate Angler” doesn’t really go well with these images so one of my other images was used. I don’t think these images are really that spectacular for a semi-glamor shot but it’s quite an experience for me. I hope you enjoy them.

Fishing on the rugged shores and waters of Batanes

Suzie Alcazar Poses for Seair Inflight