Wedding photography can be a grind, a working study of risk assessment in practice.  The mind of the photographer on a hectic wedding day is constantly weighing the probability of disaster in achieving a more creative image. “If I put that bride in the gnarly dead tree on the beach for that dramatic shot, what is the statistical likelihood of her falling out or tearing that Vera Wang dress to shreds or breaking an ankle”? “Will I lose 10 safer, sure shot images in the limited time that I have to put her in the tree and get her lit”. “Will she even want my peyote induced vision of matrimony in dramatic black and white, or will she prefer the safer shots with her comely aunt on the sand with that tried and true sunset”? As photographers, we walk a fine line between creative vision and commercial viability; the trick is to sell out just a little bit while maintaing your style.

All bets go out the window on a shoot where you trash the dress. More Gothic fashion photography than anything, the trash the dress trend allows a good photographer to stretch the legs a bit – to take that risk of failure and destruction – to allow a half hour to be allocated for that one specific shot – to damn to hell walking the line with those safe as milk images that we all regurgitate endlessly that come to define us stylistically. We can create an unbridled vision simply because any woman willing to disregard a fine silk and lace keepsake from her most cherished day by rolling in sand and wet leaves is exactly the woman that wants something different, something that defines her. She doesn’t care if her daughter wears her dress in 20 years because she is cool enough to understand that the daughter would prefer to see photos of Mom looking hot and stylish, like a Helmut Newton model, then to wear her dress.

I generally have a easy touch with lighting and Photoshop, like a chef that has a delicate fish and doesn’t want to overpower the subtle overtones with something strong. For this shoot, I had a very heavy handed approach to lighting, the opposite of my normal technique. I wanted a visual sledgehammer, big studio lights outside doing big studio light things. I wanted to overpower the sun, to send enough watt-seconds of flash power towards my subjects to ignite nearby insects. Natural be damned. For me, a successful trash the dress shoot is a balance of glamour and profanity, a high middle finger to convention. I think that this shoot succeeds in letting the personalities of the models and the photographer penetrate the viewer.

Lindsay was perfect for this shoot. Not many people are willing to endure 2 second exposures in a shifting tidal pool, unblinking, while some lunatic with a camera hammers out his artistic vision at the expense of her comfort, safety, and sanity. Thanks Lindsay, you were great.

So come to Costa Rica on your honeymoon, and bring your dress. You can pay me to destroy it for the sake of art. I will smash your cell phone on a rock and key your car for free.

]]> http://seandavisphotographic.com/blog/trash-the-dress/feed/ 2 http://seandavisphotographic.com/blog/tamarindo-raft-up-2010/ http://seandavisphotographic.com/blog/tamarindo-raft-up-2010/#comments Mon, 13 Dec 2010 18:49:10 +0000 admin http://seandavisphotographic.com/blog/?p=799

Thanks for the fun day in the sun Tamarindo!  Enjoy your photos.  -Sean

If you want to download anything go here

Password: tamarindo

Raft Up 2010 (password: tamarindo) – Images by Sean Davis

Click on Image for High Resolution

At some point in their lives  most people dream of owning an island in the Carribean, and Belize seems the perfect location with her turquoise water and endless barrier reef. The above photograph shows the dream incarnate. You can almost imagine slipping into the  bathwater warm lagoon, sans clothing, and feel alone in the beauty of the world in your own tiny island while you sip a tropical drink far from the bustle of the main-land world. The trouble is, once you have your little island you might want to make a couple of changes. First, you just need to cut down all of those mangrove trees. You can’t really have a house in the prime spot of your island with these damn scrubby trees everywhere. Then you need to make the island a bit larger!  There are not many real estate opportunities where you can actually increase the size of your lot, but with an island and a dredger you can do a little digging and scrape away some reef to make room for your boat while using the material to make a powdery soft white beach for those days in the sun sipping mojitos. Your investment just grew a little, no harm, no foul, right?. The trouble is, this plan of yours is an ecological disaster. The Belize barrier reef is not designed to sustain your little dream. The mangrove that you cut and the reef that you scraped away is where the fish breed, and is the most important part of one of the most unique ecosystems in the world. The reef in Belize is the second largest barrier reef on earth after Australia, and it drives the culture and economy of this tiny nation. As with so many small countries that are developing, Belize lacks the financial ability to study and properly regulate improper and harmful development. If this continues the reef will die, and the economy and future of Belize will perish with it. Belize is the reef, period. Developers are literally killing the proverbial goose that lays those golden eggs. Click on the above photograph and see the dredging boat scraping away reef and pumping it with a hose to make a couple of more homesites and you can observe how that dream becomes a nightmarish exercise in selfish and pointless greed. Try to forget how pretty the photo is, and view it objectively.

This is where CAVU comes into the picture. CAVU is a non-profit environmental organization that creates compelling documentaries and aerial photographs that persuade government regulators to change policy, and educates the people about the value of their natural resources and how to protect them for future generations. It is a big job, a thankless and daunting task. Creating an aerial photograph is complicated. Obtaining all of the permits to pilot a modified Cessna across several countries with a camera bolted underneath, wired with GPS’s and laptops to fly to a known and plotted location over open ocean with pilot and photographer wearing life vests to shoot ACTUAL environmental destruction as it happens in perfect light is a hell of a task, and the above photo was literally months of planning and research. There was no reading material available on how to pull this off, and we literally wrote the book on this type of photography. We created the “First-ever Comprehensive, Geo-Referenced Aerial Photographs of Belize Reef”. We planted a flag on the moon, and we will effect change and protect this reef. The  team at CAVU is driven, talented and competent, and I am honored to be working with such like-minded people. Anyone that knows me well knows that I have a passion for flying, photography, and exposing bad development practices, so working on the Belize Reef Project is like a dream come true.

It almost looks microscopic

I want a square island

A 7 photo montage of the Monkey River

Another multiframe montage showing every kind of bad development practice possible. Note the dredging, cut mangroves, burning, dividing and general eco-horror. Impressive...You can clearly see where they plan to expand their investment by the sea walls on the top island.

The office. We spent about 30 hours here working. The view was phenomenal.

Pilot Alex Caveletti and I flew from Costa Rica to Belize direct in his Cessna 172, barely missing controlled airspace over Honduras, putting a wingtip into Mexico, and logging many hours of precision flying and photography, shooting over 3000 images that catalogue the threatened areas of Belize. The landing strip in Belize municipal was surrounded by water on 3 sides, tiny, and had a vicious crosswind that made am aircraft carrier landing seem simple by comparison. It was a blast.

Abstract Natural Art. The Barrier Reef, Belize.

A young campesina girl studies English with a coloring book at her simple home in Costa Rica. The house, considered old at about 50 years, is a simple wooden structure without windows and with garden fence covering as room dividers. The photo is composed in the style of Emmit Gowin series that was shot in the early ’70s depicting home life in Danville Virginia that he shot with an 8×10 camera with a 4×5 lens that gave a strong fisheye effect. Lighting was natural for this photograph, and the girl was unaware that I was shooting her as the camera was pointed in the center of the room. She looks so calm, and it is easy to imagine her in any setting no matter how modern or urban. The house is located very far off the beaten path on a mountain near Playa Negra, and the family commutes primarily on horseback. These people are truly the salt of the earth, and possess a morality and simplicity that is graceful and lacking in our modern connected world. Studying English is the best way for her to insure a prosperous future with the strong demands of multicultural tourism just miles away. That being said, the photo depicts a subject and setting that is universal, despite the simple and impoverished surroundings.

I was contracted by the American magazine Healthy Living for a cover-shoot story of an organic ginger and turmeric farm in Costa Rica run by New Chapter, a supplement company in the States. New Chapter has an amazing farm in The Children’s Rainforest near San Ramon where they grow quality ginger for export, preserve native plant species through their “sacred seeds” project, and teach biodynamic farming to international students. The core of the project is run by a Tom Newmark and Steve Farrell, a couple of like minded geniuses that combine cutting edge biodynamic farming methods with folk farming, Costa Rica style. Their farm is a beautiful expanse of primary rainforest with a view of Arenal volcano with boilogical corredors for native puma, and sweeping expanses of pristine jungle with pure rivers, and a food farm that feeds everyone on the compound very well.

I was beyond impressed with everyone involved with this project. These guys are down to earth, and we had conversations ranging from world politics, to what is the most sexy fruit (mangostine is the winner).

We wanted to find a location where we could link these guys with the natural beauty of the rainforest. The jungle is an amazing place, but it is brutal for portraiture. There is just so much visual noise with the density of millions of plants that I suggested that we go in the river for the cover. I stood in the torrent of water waist deep with my camera and a monolight on a partially submerged lightstand and began shooting. Somehow, I always manage to find myself in the unholy combination of water and cameras despite my better judgement, and this shot was a slippery rock away from dunking thousands of dollars of gear in the bitter cold creek. I used a long exposure to blur the water and add action, and the flashes kept the scientists tack sharp.

When the shoot was over, we drank several beers and retired to our rooms and the nighttime cacophony of the insects or the rainforest. It was great fun.