Photography takes you many paces. I am sure that at least 50% of the interesting places I've been to are due to shooting something there, either for productions I've worked on or with friend for fun. In the case of these photos, Its a mix of both these things.
A friend of mine that I have mentioned before in my posts called Peter is a professional fashion photographer. Usually he works in studio but for that shoot he wad to shoot an exterior session for a creative clothing brand. He needed some help cause exteriors require a bit more work and assistance than most studio shoots and I was happy to join and help out. He even paid me :D and that's what made it both shooting with a friend and a professional engagement.
I really want to start this post with a shot of the location. So there we go, Start:
Looking at it now i want to shoot there again. The guy in the middle was our mine guide (He is awesome) but more on him in a bit. The rock/sand there is white, like super white and reflective. This is amazing from a photography point of view, because as you can see in this shot, when you expose for the white ground it is so bright that the sky comes out darker. I haven't seen this happen naturally in any other place, ofcourse you can replicate it with powerful lights but... for free, all natural and totally organic.. it's sooo great!
The location is vast to say the least. what is visible here is around one third, if not less, from the whole place and it looks as stellar as this everywhere you turn to.
The experiance of being there in a hot summer day is a whole other story. The reflective ground acts like a mirror for the sun rays and basically cooks you slowly but evenly, from all sides. Literally you get sunburn under your chin :D. Another factor is that being in a hole- cause that's what open mines are, lets no wind to touch your skin...none at all. So shooting inside is like shooting in a very beautiful oven.
This mine is used for kaolin extraction. Kaolin is the material they use to make fire-resistant bricks and probably other stuff I'm not familiar with.
The mine's manager was with us for an hour t see how we do and even took us for lunch in the facilities cafeteria. Everyone there was really friendly and actually happy to see us there. The guy that took the competition for biggest helper was our safety guy- the one in the photo. He was making sure we don't go places that are not safe and kept a good eye on us. He also helped with setting up a tent for makeup and costumes. I could not miss the opportunity to take a shot of him. He had so much charecter and authenticity. H was actually glad to participate in the following shot :
The way he was looking at the place was the same all of the time. He was happy to be where he is and seemed to really like his job. Also i think he liked our crew and was having fun with us.
I kinda understand him. It's a weird place but it has it's perks and interesting oddities. One of them was this little flower that looked like the the rose in "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
It's crazy that in the dust and scorching heat you can find such a gentle and fragile flower but as they say "nature always finds a way"
And around nature we were finding our way of staying alive. The best part about working in a small crew is that it's always more open and friendly and you can have more fun than on a big gig like a movie or a big budget commercial. And our photographer -Peter was taking advantage of that fact as you can see in this pic:
-fun fact is that he actually met his current girlfriend on that shoot.
I'm trying to hype him on Hive actively for the last few weeks. He has a ton of amazing work and experience he can share here so hopefully soon I'll be able to tag him with his username here.
By the way i would love to hear what you tell your buddies when you want to advertise Hive to them. I think i won him yesterday with the argument of free speech and no censorship as he is a strong advocate of these rights.
After the day was done we all were very dusty, tired and most of all happy. Like when we were kids and played outside all day. It was a good day of shooting and his results are great. Fingers crossed, we are going to see him and some of his results here. When this happens I'm going to edit this post with his username and repost his intro so you can find him quickly. The last shot is of our model after we finished shooting. Thumbs up to her for surviving the day with all he clothes and makeup on, constantly changing outfits, listening to Peter and doing her work seemingly effortlessly even in these condition. A true Pro!
Wish you all a good day and i hope you have the creative powers to shoot, play, draw or write something new today.
Best wishes : Roro