I felt so lazy in Mission Beach. There was this calm about me that was indescribable. I think humidity does this to me, the feeling of the surroundings literally hugging you and making you feel all warm inside. I think the images I made here were tapping into that. I kept wondering how I could create a haze in my daze. I want to go back… now.
Madame Bink…I can’t say enough nice things about her talent and dedication as this story will show. It was one misadventure after another. We shot all day one day at Mission Beach and Dunk Island. We started with sunrise shots at 5:30 AM around the Eco Village resort by the rocks and beach. As stated in earlier blogs, one of my goals was creatively using over and underexposure. We got some lovely shots with the light framing her by shooting into the sun and also some awesome silhouettes. For the ones attached here, I did split processing with them and love the subtle hues of the rocks and her body. We took a breakfast break and then headed to the water taxi for a ride to Dunk Island. Except I went to the wrong departure point. So we raced the 10 KM and barely made it in time for the 20 minute ride to Dunk Island. Once there we hiked over to Muggy Muggy Beach – where The Island and its Critters were waiting to do just that – Mug us.  She spotted a cool formation of three rock outcroppings lined up in a row going out to sea…So she waded out to the middle one for some shots. I noticed after we finished that she was limping and she had cut her foot open on the rocks. Poor Binky’s red blood was spilling and I was really concerned. We applied pressure and wrapped it in a towel and then the rain started. So we limped over to the near by jungle to get under a canopy of trees while we waited about an hour for the rain to stop and her foot to stop bleeding. I thought we should stop shooting, but she insisted she was fine and to continue. After the rain stopped, we limped over to an alcove where the sun was highlighting this rock outcropping. She gracefully lay on the rock as I waded out to sea a little to get the right perspective. Suddenly she jumps screaming! A crab had crawled up on the rock and had bitten her OTHER foot while she was posing. So we took another little break while we got her shoes on and decided we’d take a lunch break and limped the 2 KM back to the Dunk Island resort. I was ready to call it quits, but she keep insisting we should keep shooting. What a marvel! The only condition was, she couldn’t take off her shoes anymore to protect her feet. So the rest of the day we either shot around it or incorporated her boots into the shoot. So we limped up the trail to Mt Kataloo. We stopped in one place where she put on my NZ bush hat (some pictures attached) for some jungle fashion shots. Then we found this marvelous huge tree with all kinds of cubby holes and root extensions coming out. The light was really even and I focused on slightly underexposing it to have her meld into the tree. As you can see, she also expertly used her green wrap to frame her face and body, blending in with the natural surroundings. I love the results we got. The pictures have a feel of pictures taken a century ago. I think part of it is the lighting and use of her wrap…but also her darker looks from her Gypsy ancestors. Of course, this being OZ, all day long, the bitey things were nipping at us in swarms.  All day long it was the Mayfly slappy dance and exclamations of “SOB, leave me alone”, “Will You Please go away”, etc. I was laughing because if anyone came up on us, I was afraid they’d think she was cursing at me. Well, we made it through the whole day, had an adventure and came away with some awesome images…..and I came away with great respect for this dedicated and talented artist.
Vassanta and I hiked the full circuit of trails on Dunk Island (about 10 KM) up Mt Kataloo, down to Coconut Beach and back to the Jetty. There wasn’t much to shoot with along the hike (but did see some snakes and turkeys), except on the beach. But the view from Mt Kataloo over the Coral Sea was stunning. But we found this really cool tree with a cross hatch growth between the two main trunks. Vassanta managed to climb into the tree to capture one image attached here (how does she do that??). The rest we shot on the beach. More gritty figure work incorporating the roots of a palm tree. I haven’t done a lot of figure work…so I’m loving the results. Also, we found these awesome boulders with some stepping stones that she posed on. Great work by her using the rocks and I did one in color and another in BW. I have a few more images from our trip to dunk Island that I’ll post and then I’ll be working on some other model sessions.
