The Last Day on Earth

Okay, so it was Saturday 21 May, 2011, the day some lunatics predicted was the end of the world. Well lucky for me I had a shoot that morning, so if the world did come to an end, well at least I was doing something I loved.

It was a strange week before the shoot, weather was playing games and I was praying, come Saturday morning the sun would come out to play. Well I woke up 4am that morning, sighed with relief that I was still alive on this morning that was predicted to be our last day on earth. And then I started praying for the rain to stop. I was meeting the model on the beach, and on the drive there, in that dark ungodly hour, when we are meant to be snug in our beds and our little eyes shut tight, it was pouring outside. The roads a shiny black and I could see the sun struggling to rise, against the thick clouds.

Just as both the model and I parked our cars at the meeting point, the rain had stopped, the sky now looking like itself was now waking up, but it was still a cloudy morning, which I didn't mind, as long as it didn't rain!

Well, I didn't get the perfect sunrise that morning, on the last day on earth, but it was still a beautiful start to a day. It's amazing to think I can actually get myself out of a bed that early for a photoshoot, but ask me for anything else and I'd probably be hitting snooze like 20 times.

So met the lovely Tahnee, who has done a bit of modelling before for friends, but in my opinion, she is a natural - modelling almost seemed like breathing for her and I've been wanting to do for sometime a more natural looking shoot. So we didn't do any makeup or hair, except for my lame attempt at putting some lilac shade of eye shadow on her lids which I could barely see in the light.

The weeks before the shoot I started putting together the wardrobe and accessories I wanted to style together on Tahnee. I wanted that white/ nudish look, which is so hot right now, lots of sheer shirts, slip dress/ nightie, with a bit of a castaway feel to it, sort of like she was a siren from the sea, all natural, with shells in her hair. So started going through my shell collection to make a crown of shells for her head, and then it was around the time Pirates of the Caribbean, On Stranger Tides was all the hype, and I thought, hmmmm, maybe a little pirate theme with the shirt, a nickers and some ugg boots and an eye patch, so then I found this perfect shell, with a tiny whole in one corner of it, which I placed over my eye and it fit perfect, so then I strung it up with some pearls, to be Tahnee's eye patch! hahaha

So here are some of the photos we did on that day, and towards the end we mixed it up with a crochet bikini I bought from the Cararra Markets. All the other clothing were bought at Op Shops for average of $2, so I think I did pretty well on a shoe string budget styling this shoot myself.


Hope you like, I was experimenting with different styles for each change of wardrobe in the shoot.

And thank you Tahnee for being such a beautiful model, you made it so effortless to shoot that morning even in the crisp cold.

(for better resolution quality, some are now up on my website - www.emmanuelphotography.com.au )

In a nutshell, one of the stories I used for this shoot is a romantic one, its from a song I love in spanish, not sure if I remember the translation very well, but its by the Mexican pop rock band, Mana (song is entitled En el Muelle de San Blas) and it goes something like this. She stood on the Muelle de San Blas, waving goodbye to her fiancee, who embarked out to sea on a fishing vessel. She waited there at the same time every day, dressed in white, with her veil, waiting for him to come home to her, the days grew into years, and word had come that the ship had crashed, sunk and there were no survivors. The years showed on her face, she had grown old now, waiting, waiting for her lover to return to her, until the day she uttered her last breath of life, she met him once again.

Hasta luego!