A Festive Cirque du Soleil – Style Shoot…
Those who know me better may remember that sometimes – to get away from garden or architecture photography – I shoot art oriented images with various models. I rarely post here comments from such shoots (if you want me to do so, please write so in comment box below!).
However, this time I had such a response to my last shoot from fellow photographers and models, that I decided to share this session with you. I am fascinated with perfection in performance. I admire dream-like setups and decorations. I enjoy fine music of top stage performances. And – I find it all in Cirque du Soleil. Yes, I guess I can be called real fan of them. I do have several DVDs with their performances, and I was lucky to see them live on couple of occasions. Amazing! Pure magic! Perhaps they are the best thing Canada has to offer.
So – when a friend and a talented make-up artist Alecia Repp from Vancouver asked me to shoot a happy, Cirque du Soleil – inspired series, I was immediately attracted to it.
She is working on expanding her impressive portfolio, and this shoot has had a special importance to her. Whatever are her ambitious plans about it – it is not up to me to say. Anyway, this supposed to be a Cirque-inspired, but surely not copying it but kind of impressions through her own eyes of imagination.
We all prepared for it on a very short notice, but it was clearly a “lucky shoot”. We quickly found perfect models – Daniel Corbet and Robyn Pasutti-Chari. Alecia found at last minute a talented hair stylist – Sofia Pastro.
And I was very happy to have lighting assistance from a photographer I admire for long time, Mr. Jon Hoadley.
Jon’s images have that special “aura”, they touch me deeply. I considered working with him was a treat, and I knew it will help our project a lot.
The shoot went very smooth and was so much fun. I usually don’t care much if a shoot is “fun” or not. What is important to me – is the quality of work.
But from the beginning it was clear that quality of this one will be great, and we had that ” comfort buffer”, that feel that all goes our way – which gave us all an extra sparkle and spinned our imagination to do more.
I felt like transferred into Varekai, Corteo, or La Nouba – all in one package. Talent of our models did put Alecia’s characters into a vivid life. Flame clown (Daniel) had such self-control of movements and expressions that it really felt like photographing one of the Cirque artists. Robyn, with her shocking, pink hair balanced Daniel’s performance well, creating a Crazy Butterfly person. Together they created a colorful, dazzling duo, and I still feel magic of that afternoon.
As I expected, Jon helped enormously with background lighting, creating the whole mood of the shoot. constantly changing patterns, colours – he simply added another dimension to the whole shoot.
A floating trick, really fine performance…
So, here we are – with a bunch of amazingly vibrant, colorful photographs. A week ago I did not even expect I will shoot this, and now it looks like one of the best model shoots I’ve had pleasure to do.
I need to thank here all people involved. It was such creative fun, and it is such a joy to see ready images. I will add them to my art print selection available for sale and to my limited editions. I think – they deserve that.
Today I am shooting another fine garden, so – stay tuned for our next post, it is coming very soon.
I thought you may enjoy this totally unrelated to gardens or architecture post – for the colours and its festive, happy feel.
Thanks again all, live long Cirque du Soleil!
Until next time!
Derek
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you can view some of my other works at my web site
www.artphotographyservices.com
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