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ZoeFest 2009 Australia Mission Beach

Sun, sea and sand with Zoe

I love working with Z. It’s awesomely refreshing to work with a female photographer. Especially a model turned photographer. It means the mood is relaxed, easy going and creative.

We started our shoot with mocha, I don’t think we have ever started a shoot any other way. Next we wandered down to the beach, ambling down with all the time in the world. Chatting and catching up after a years distance between us. The beach was empty and beautiful – as it was every day.

When the photos began we were both in the water, trying not to splash too much moving between poses. Coming out and drying off (thanks Mr Sunshine) before rolling around on the hard sand, allowing me to arch my back trying to mimic the view of the island behind.

A little more exploring found us interesting trees to work with. But these are some of my faves from the shoot – I still haven’t been able to narrow it down any more then this. I love them all!

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ZoeFest 2009 Australia Mission Beach

More for Oz :)

This post includes several of what I consider some of my favorites that I had just loaded on my blog and not this one…I was trying to balance it out between this one and my personal one.  So for consideration for publication….here you go!!!!!!

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ZoeFest 2009 Australia Mission Beach

Bink: Beautiful Ending to Oz

I’ve reached the end of the trail with the images from my trip to New Zealand and Oz.  There may be odds and ends that I edit from time to time, but these pictures of Bink represent  the last of the best.  It makes me a little sad to wrap up this creative journey that started a year ago starting to plan the trip and ending now editing the last pictures.  In between was a lot of hard work planning a New Zealand trip for 4 fun companions to eventually join more than 20 talented creative souls from OZ, Scotland, England, and the USA in Mission Beach, Australia.  And though the sights were incredible, the unforgettable thing for me is the bounds of old friendships strengthened and the  new friendships made, the unselfish sharing of talent by some amazing photographers and the intrepid spirit of the models as they climbed rocks and trees, waded in muddy pools, greeted the dawn in warm tropical breezes, balanced on logs, fought off swarms of jungle flies and wild killer birds.  Of course all of this made smoother with the local lubricants of Toohey’s and Murder Point. I’ve never seen a 30 pack of beer before. 🙂

And in the end, I am blown away by all the incredible images I’ve created from the trip with the help of such talented, creative people.  I felt like I was able to experiment with new technical aspects of photography – becoming a better photographer as well as new directions in editing that have expanded my creative abilities.

Well, Back to the final images.  As you may notice, you don’t see Bink’s feet in any of these shots.  As told before, the poor lass had cute her foot on some rocks and then had a crab bite her other foot and she could barely walk and needed to keep her shoes on.  So we shot around her boots.  In spite of all that she kept going as we hiked and limped up the Mt Kataloo trail on Dunk Island with me worrying if we should stop.  We made it half way up the mountain not seeing many shooting sites until we came upon this massive tree,  which I believe is a Banyan Tree.  It was so huge it must have been 100’s of years old.  Bink expertly used her famous green shawl to create some classic images complimenting the dark brown bark and green moss on the tree.

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ZoeFest 2009 Australia Mission Beach

Binkventureous

Is that a word?  Well it applies.  As Bink mentioned in her posting, it was a day of adventure.  Here’s a few more from our morning session at Mission Beach. I believe several of these are some of the best fine art images I’ve ever created thanks to a beautiful sunrise, a tropical morning and a very talented lady.  To see more go to the posting “Bink at the Beach” on my blog  http://figuremodels.org/ericscott

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ZoeFest 2009 Australia Mission Beach

My time with Eric ….

My time was Eric was an all out adventure.  Including starting at sunrise, going over to Dunk island, crazy (and loud) looking birds, crabs nipping toes and so much beautiful scenery and imagery. This post is focussed on the start of our shoot, sunrise at Mission Beach.

Sunrise at Mission Beach was magical, it’s one of those moments where time seems to stand still. Silently waiting for the sun to come up and peoples days to begin. Or at least most peoples. I think I speak for all the models who attended when I say that there were plenty of early starts! But they were so worth it, every time. A beautiful place, sharing the experience with a wonderful friend and on top of it all, being able to capture some of that magic on camera.

I chose these three to show you all because the first two are  just so classical looking and the third makes me feel calm just by looking at it. I was obviously feeling very content when that photo was taken and it’s one that definately illustrates how happy I was at Mission Beach. You can read Eric’s version of events here! Big thank you to Eric for a wonderful morning and I’m sure I’ll be posting more about the rest of our day soon!

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ZoeFest 2009 Australia Mission Beach

More than just Pictures!

I don’t know about anyone else. But, there were countless times I was happy for the video capability on my iPhone. Below are a few videos from our time together.

The grounds at Eco Village Resort were situated directly in the rain forest which ran right into the ocean. It was a spectacular setting and I had to walk through to show everyone.

Zoe and Bink conquer the Rainforest in flip-flops –

Our first real night being at our get together we do a print trading session. Michael Marlborough is speaking about his prints that he’s offering for trade. (I’m sure he’s loving me for this)

5 nights of our stay we held nightly slide shows of our work. Stephanie Anne helped me by being my voice for the evening since I loathe talking in front of people, bonus was that she entertained us with Shadow Puppets!

Here is a mini-segment of Stephanie Anne’s slide show she presented on Wednesday evening.

And just to remember how calm everything is – here is still video of the view from my house I rented.

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ZoeFest 2009 Australia Mission Beach

Maintaining Focus Upside Down

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.

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ZoeFest 2009 Australia Mission Beach

Madame Bink – Dunked and Bit

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.

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ZoeFest 2009 Australia Mission Beach

New Finished OZ Images

Here are some finished ones…three I already showed on Saturday night in Mission Beach of Joceline, Bink and Stephanie…..but some might not have seen them before.  Also some new ones from a Dunk Island beach shoot with Vassanta…I really like these becuase the high key beach look and color has kind of a  “fashion” feel to them.  Vassanta picked up a shell  and was playing with it…so I got the idea of putting it on different parts of her body creating the black and white series. I then edited it to give it a dark, contrasty look… Feel like I was channeling Vernon Trent…lol

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ZoeFest 2009 Australia Mission Beach

Some Finished Work

Oh all the Polaroid Negatives to wade through… All the 120 and 35mm to develop. My lab will rescue me. But, in the mean time… here are a few finished works from me. Thank you to the models. More coming soon…