Daily Archive for: ‘June 4th, 2012’
We’re back!
Yes! Absolutely. We have finally returned and this is the first MOMENT I’ve had to actually write a quick update for you guys.
We actually landed from Barcelona in Montreal at 6 PM Friday night. We hit the ground literally running – on my end, recharging all batteries and emptying memory cards to prepare for a wedding bright and early the next day with a 6AM wakeup!!! Erwan, sharing a ridiculously brief 24 hours with his Fiancé after a month of absence before saying goodbye to her as she prepared to catch her own flight back to France to prepare to give birth…
Despite the ridiculously little lack of sleep, the creativity from my Eurotrip carried over and we still managed to come up with some pretty epic images. Here’s one of my favourites from the day:
Anyways back to the Eurotrip!
Our last update left you guys hanging after an amazingly epic shoot with the fantastic crew of the Underwater Realm. Before moving on, they actually made a pretty exciting video update of their own giving you a small sneak peak into the work we did together. I’ll be fine tuning the group photo of them when I get a chance and posting it up for you guys tonight… honestly, it looks absolutely fantastic in full screen… !!
Following our watery adventure with the UWR, we headed off to see Natasha Baker, olympic level para-dressage rider. Things were off to a weird start when we first tried to find her since she currently lives on a hidden farm in the middle of suburban Uxbridge that… has no address! Natasha finally had to come hunt us down and save our poor lost selves but once that was out of the way we took the time to sit down and plan out how our shoot would be put together the next day. We had a quick tour of the farm, introduction to the horses and I sat down with Natasha and we doodled out three shots we wanted to accomplish the next day. For those of you who want to admire my impeccable drawing skills:
Bright and early the next day, we were up and running preparing for an exciting day with the horses. Fellow fan and horse photographer Dan Foz Foster actually dropped in to assist us for the shoot which was quite cool since he had a lot more experience on how to pose and direct horses. Since we were shooting in bright sunlight in the middle of a field, we made great use of the Linkstar studio flashes and Innovatronix Mini Explorer battery packs that were provided to us by Lovinpix.com
Overall, the shoot went extremely well and by the time we actually wrapped the entire shoot and interview it was already 11PM. The interview with Natasha was actually one of the most interesting interviews for me, personally. I was fascinated to see how enthusiastic, passionate and simply happy of a person she was. Natasha is one of the first paraplegics that I have had the opportunity to get to know on a personal level and it was a really enlightening experience for me to see her take her disability and transform it into all sorts of advantageous situations. If anything, I was astonished at how, in her mind, it was almost as if she had been given the gift of being paraplegic!
The next day, it was back in the car to slowly make our way back to catch the eurotrain, down to Paris, and off to Toulouse.
Although we had initially planned to make it to Toulouse that night, we finally caved in to relax one night in Paris, France with Niko Vallet and Andrey Das rather than go out for a straight 13 hour drive. We also took the opportunity to drop off the 8500$ worth of sponsored equipment back with our sponsors from Lovinpix.com…… though we did keep a couple pieces of equipment I plan on reviewing such as an awesome travel tripod from Sirui and a set of Pixel Pawn triggers I had fallen in love with.
We also picked up an old friend of Erwan’s – Alejandro, who we kidnapped to be our translator in Spain. After a late night in Paris, “sur les Quais de Senne”… we were back in the car driving down towards Toulouse…!
In Toulouse, we wanted to do things a little differently and organized a photoshoot… for ourselves. Francesco and Jean Christophe took it upon themselves to give us a tour of Toulouse as well as the amazing opportunity to shoot at an old aviation museum. This was great because it gave us the chance to actually catch up in and get a bunch of polaroids shot as well as prep the envelopes to have them sent out.
From there, it was back on the road to head down to Burgos, Spain where we met up with leather mask/corset designer Cecilio. You may recognize his work from the 2012 superbowl intermission with Madonna… check it out –>
Despite his father falling ill and being stuck in the hospital over the last couple weeks, he still managed to put together an amazing shoot with three first time models in an amazing set of ruins in the middle of the countryside of Burgos.
Things went very efficiently though the harsh sunlight really really made lighting our subjects hard especially given the fact that we had no more light stands or studio lights! Nevertheless, things went beautifully and we even managed to get a little bit creative with some smoke grenades I had leftover from my time in Paris 
!
From there, Cecilio ended the day by bringing us out for some awesome Tapas around the city and a couple small tours around the cute little city of Burgos giving us the chance to shoot some more polaroids!
Finally, after a rested night in Burgos, we headed off towards Barcelona where we had the chance to check out just a little bit of the nightlife in the company of photographer, architect, fan and now friend Pere Cortacans. Although we were graciously offered a place to stay, we decided that sleeping on the beach was much more exciting of a proposal. Although not quite as romantic as one would have imagined with an army of indian people trying to sell us 1 Euro beers and drunk people prowling the beaches all night long… it did allow us to enjoy an absolutely fabulous sunrise.
so that’s it… that’s a wrap. The trip is over but… we have hours and hours of work ahead of us editing, sorting, updating…!!
Thank you guys all, supporters, fans, sponsors for making this trip happen. We’re still sorting through all the receipts, insurance claims, etc… trying to figure out how much we still owe the bank but it’s really really been an amazing couple weeks.
Once again, a shoutout to our official Sponsors: The SLRLounge for helping us make this trip a possibility and Lovinpix.com for sponsoring us so much equipment. Thanks to Mateusz from The Workshop Factory and Olivier from Sylights. Thank you, our fans, family and friends for believing in us.
We’re working as fast as we can and very soon we’ll have photos and videos for you… !!
I’m speaking in Toronto!
I want to hear from YOU!
