Water Babies - a New Pool Project

I took the image below a couple of years ago - it’s the child of a friend & it’s my take on the famous Nirvana album cover. I’ve wanted to do more, but it’s a bit difficult getting the models! Well my luck has changed & I’ve started a project with a swim school, Quackers, to photograph their baby classes. I did my first shoot last week & I’ve got lots to learn for sure, but I just know it’s going to be great fun.

I quickly realised I needed to build a backdrop - the tiles of the pool just kill any artistic feel & I didn’t fancy loads of Photoshop work inserting new backgrounds. Up to now we’ve used material for backdrops in the pool, but they come with problems, not least getting them dry after the shoot.

So this time I’m trying a vinyl backdrop. It’s 3m x 5m so I used a large banner printing company to produce it. They were a bit disappointed when they got my plain blue artwork - they usually print much more elaborate designs. A quick trip to B&Q to buy some plumbing pipe & we now have a frame to support it in the water. I’ll go in next week & try it out before our next practice shoot in a couple of weeks.

I love a project!

Nirvana

First shoot in the pool

The new backdrop

Back in the Pool!

It was great to get back in the pool this week and it made me realise just how much I’ve missed it. We resumed with a straightforward project just to get back in the swing as it were - Jane diving in off the side.

I first tried this shot around 18 months ago but on that day I was more interested in Jane’s reflection on the underside of the water surface. I’d decided I wanted to use reflections as an element in my Serenity images so I was learning about the camera angle & lighting I needed to get a good reflection - capturing the dive was just a means to an end. But I did like the result, so it was added to the ever growing list of future shoots… & that’s what we attempted on Monday.

It was a fairly simple shoot to set up & I’m pleased with the results. If you’d like to see how I went about it there’s a very short video below.

Water Dance Shoot Resumes

Just before lockdown I’d started a new swimming pool project - Water Dance. We had just one shoot and then Covid bought everything to a shuddering halt. Well I’m back in the pool tomorrow!

The main objective is to get some shots of Jane diving in from the side - but I’ll also be testing the stand I’ve had built for Water Dance. As you can see, it’s pretty substantial, but that’s necessary because the models will be jumping up & down on it. The idea is to have the top just 1 cm below the surface so it looks like they are standing on water. If the test goes well I’ll plan the first shoot with Jane in a couple of weeks.

UPDATE;

Tried the stand in the pool & it worked great! Here’s me giving it a try. Don’t worry, I’ll use more attractive models for the real shoot!

Creating the Serenity Images

I’ve been back in the swimming pool recently developing a new project called Water Dance. It prompted me to create a short YouTube video showing behind the scenes at my first major swimming pool project, Serenity. It was a great project, full of ups & downs, and there were many times when I wondered if I’d ever get a decent image. In the end it all came good & we got a few we were all happy with. Sincere thanks to my model Jane Riley & constant photographic companion, Marlies Chell.

First Shoot of the new "Water Dance" project

Yesterday I was back in the pool for the very first shoot of a brand new project which I’m calling Water Dance. The idea is to try to create the impression of a model standing on water, using high speed flash to capture water droplets which she / he will either kick up themselves - or we might throw it at them! As with any new shoot in the pool the technicalities of the set-up gobble up shoot time. We were there for 3 hours & only got 30 minutes shoot time, but I’m used to this based on my experience of shooting the Serenity project. Here’s a little video showing you the set-up & one of the first trial images. All the flashes are battery powered so there’s no chance we’ll electrocute our model! I’ll post the development of the project, including all the highs & lows, here as I go along. I love projects as a way of focussing the mind to create a vision, but I’ll admit they always frighten me too, because after all this effort we might fail (it’s happened before). Nevertheless, it’s still really exciting to be back in the pool.