My friend TJ contacted me to do a shoot on Maui with her and her friend Rosemarie the weekend after I arrived back from Japan. I was (still am) recovering from massive jetlag, but since TJ is one of my favorite models to work with, I agreed to do it.
They were staying at a beach house in Lahaina owned by Christian Riese Lassen, who was kind enough to give us permission to do the photo session there. My jaw dropped when I got there Saturday morning, as it was one of those locations I’ve always wanted to see. It was the kind of place you could spend days at and never run out of things to shoot. There was even an infinity pool which has been one of the things I’ve always wanted to shoot, but had to pass on that due to time and equipment restraints (I also had a studio shoot booked that afternoon on the other side of the island).
First setup was in the garden. We started at about 8am, so the sun was just coming in through the trees. I shot a few headshots with the 85mm lens, with TJ holding a silver California Sunbounce micro mini reflector in front of her for a little fill.
Wanted to get a little bokeh off of the sunlight hitting the trees in the background so I used a 70-200mm lens mounted on a Really Right Stuff BH40 Ballhead and a Manfrotto 190CX tripod. Think I was on Aperture Priority mode at the time.
For Rosemarie, I changed up the lighting a little. I setup a white shoot thru umbrella with a 580EX flash and a Radiopopper trigger to add a little light to the front. I also added a second 580EX and Radiopopper trigger on the ground behind her to add a little rim light.
We then moved to a shaded spot near the front bamboo gate. There was some light being reflected into the shadowed area from a large white truck parked nearby. I setup the silver California Sunbounce micro mini reflector on a lightstand and positioned it next to the truck to boost the light going into the spot we were shooting in.
We then moved to the infinity pool. I originally wanted to try getting low enough to make the pool seem to extend into the ocean, but because of the terrain, the only way I would have been able to do that would have been to partially submerge the camera and lens, and I didn’t have a waterproof housing with me.
After we did a few shots here, I walked around the pool to see what else I could shoot without getting into the water. On the far side of the pool, I found I could shoot at the very edge where the water flowed over. I positioned Rosemarie on the other side of the pool, using natural light and the silver micro mini Sunbounce to add a little fill light. The sunlight hitting her hair and rimlighting her was a happy accident.
At this point I had switched to the 1DmkII as it had a slightly tighter crop factor which was useful since I was shooting across the length of the pool. (Plus my 5d batteries were starting to die on me as well).
One of the last shots we did was both TJ and Rosemarie together.
This was a really fun shoot and was over far too quickly. I would be curious to see how a night shoot at this location would work, maybe with the pool lit up with different colored lights.
Mizomi Photography 