A cover shoot

Waking up on a Sunday morning at 5am is not what Sunday mornings are supposed to be about. However, when new and potentially important clients need you to be somewhere for an early morning shoot, that's what you do!

So, Sunday morning found me in at the Hyatt on Collins for a 7am meeting with my new client. (All will be revealed when the magazine is printed). I brought with me my friend and fabulous assistant, Richard Annable and his lovely and very capable girlfriend, Tamara. Together we sat over coffee with my client to discuss the shoot ahead. This was very quickly followed by a fabulous Hyatt buffet breakfast, which really went down well.

The idea of the shoot was about Shopping in Melbourne. For that, we needed to show our fair city as the sunny summer destination that it is...except that in July - it isn't. It had been raining all day and all night the day before and there was little sign on sunlight for the day ahead. So, armed with a couple of Pocket Wizards and some off camera flash units we made our own sunlight and it seemed to work well.

Our model was Arabella Forge, a beautiful and very humourous nutrionist who also models for various clients. She was great fun to work with, especially considering that her outfits were not particularly made for a cold winter day. Nonetheless, she soldiered on through the various renditions of Richard and I singing "Tropical Heatwave" in a vain attempt to keep her thinking warm thoughts. She was fabulous!

My client had asked me to set the day aside, thinking that the shoot would take the better part of the day. However, I had impressed my client so much by the time 12 noon rolled around that she looked at me eagerly enough and said "I think that's it. I don't need any more. We're done!

When a client knows that the shots are in the bag hours before it was thought that they would be, you know you have done your job. There is also every chance that they will work with you again. And, after the fun we all had, I hope so. I really want to work with these fun and creative people again!

Behind the Scenes images courtesy of Tamara Bodor.