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 Emma and I had an amazing trip to the Maldives a couple of years ago that had a real impact on my photography (and indeed our ability to travel anywhere less beautiful :) So in December last year we set out again for those tiny little islands, carrying just a few pairs of shorts and t-shirts, some Lady Lucie latex and... about 50kg of camera and lighting equipment.
This time the weather wasn't as kind to us; it rained for 11 of our 14 days - but when the sun finally came out, we took the opportunity to shoot some images that are still making me feel warm several weeks later :)
 The main innovation this trip was using two flash heads synched together and firing into a shoot-through umbrella to create more light, allowing me to overpower the sun more easily. The strobes are fired in manual mode, and I used about 1/2 power on each so that I could shoot more quickly (shooting on full power means that the recycle time is too long). Heat is an issue while doing this, of course... especially in the hot sun!
I tended to use this as the key light, generally to the model's front and side. A further strobe into a small softbox provided a cross-light, though the sun often played that role as well.
 You'll also notice in a few of these that I've included a couple of Emma's favourite creatures from the island - one of them "dressed up" in Lady Lucie's latex (courtesy of Photoshop of course! No hermit crabs were harmed in the course of filming...). There is another one of a heron biting Emma's bum, but you'll have to ask nicely for that one lol.
The fish is a trigger fish - one of the ones that we fed just outside our villa in 2008 (in fact I used a photo from back then to create this little chap).
 And finally here's a behind-the-scenes photo of Emma and some of the camera kit hiding from the rain that interrupted the shoot!
See the full set in the Gallery, but I hope you enjoy these in the meantime!
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June 10, 2011