Hey there, and thanks for checking out my blog. Well my latest shoot was an absolute cracker. I had the great pleasure of shooting with a professional and very experienced model, and some may say celebrity, Mrs Kate McCracken.

Kate is mostly known from her 4 years as a presenter on Aerobics Oz Style, however Kate has also featured in numerous magazines and TV commercials. After 10 years experience and being represented by Bliss Models, Kate truly is the benchmark of a professional model.

So our shoot found us at Turimetta Beach at 6am carting a ton of gear about 200 meters down the beach. This is where an enthusiastic assistant really becomes valuable. To give you an idea we had a full set of scuba diving equipment including a steel tank, Elinchrom lighting gear, camera equipment, lighting stands, sand bags and so on. My assistant was John Amytage who I happened to meet on a previous shoot at Turimetta Beach. John is an amateur photographer with a keen interest all things photography. You can check out some of his work on his Flickr site. Anyway John was fantastic and didn’t have a single complaint about the amount of gear that needed to be carried, or holding the Elinchrom Battery pack or the fact that the shoot finished late.

Anyway with a great model and a great assistant, we were definitely in for a great shoot! The theme was to be based around scuba diving/skin diving with a bit of a Lara Croft feel to it. We also wanted to catch a few images of Kate in her Jeans, playing in the waves. You know those ads you see with the guy/girl/couple rolling in the surf in their jeans that makes you think, who goes to the beach in their jeans and rolls in the surf? Well that was what we were looking to achieve.

From a gear perspective, I used my Canon 5D MK II and 70 – 200 F2.8 IS USM L lens. Great lens and my preferred choice when shooting people. Lighting was Elinchrom Ranger AS Speed pack with an A head through a Rotalux 100cm deep throat Octabox. Softbox was generally placed about 45 degrees to the model.

We were hoping for a nice sunrise for the background however we really didn’t get much as it was quite overcast. We had a small amount of colour in the sky for a few minutes but it was short lived.

After about 200 shots we rapped the shoot and began the painful task of carting the gear back up the headland to the cars. Both the Kate and John helped carry gear to the car which was a massive help and beyond the call of duty.

Following is a BTS shot of my set up and a few images from the shoot.