Here’s a bunch of images from a shoot I did at the back end of last year for the good people at P&O Cruises, having done my first job for them 9 months ago they asked me back to shoot a suite of promo images for their ship Adonia.  As usual the brief was pretty comprehensive so after a recce of the ship in Southampton we got down to casting models in London and working out a shoot schedule that would allow us to make all the images we needed in the week that we would have on board. With these types of flyaway jobs there’s always a fair degree of planning, it’s vital I have a firm idea of how I’m going to make the images as this dictates the kit I’ll need to take; there aren’t many branches of Calumet in the middle of the Mediterranean so if forget a widget or a whatnot I’m up plop creek with no loo brush.

Below: Mark Flood & Susan Walker

With four models, stylist, make-up artist, two clients and my assistant (the human dustbin that is Alex “Hollow-legs” Cornes –) we pitched up at Gatwick with 38 pieces of luggage and an ironing board!  5 hours later we joined Adonia at Livorno, Northern Italy; over the coming week we would visit Portofino, Sorrento, Rome, Florence, Sicily and Malta.

2 days of pretty rotten weather and lumpy seas caused some problems with the schedule (not to mention my constitution) but with a bit of tweaking and a couple of late nights we were back on track and it was plain sailing (sorry, couldn’t resist that) from there.  Below are some of the images from the shoot and a few behind the scenes pics of them in the making.For the lighting sets we used a mix of Broncolor Mobil Packs, a Pulso Head with P70 Spill dish and Chimera softboxes. Above: Michelle moves in for a make-up tweak, the finished image from this set-up can be seen below.

I like to keep a scene looking as natural as possible so I use the lights to balance or highlight part of an image.

Below: Dave & Me with my arm around my imaginary friend.

In some of the scenarios we just popped in a bit of light as a filler to balance the effect from the perennially mega California Sunbounce reflector.

Above: Janie McDowall & Russel Kilmister

Above: I’ll let you decide which one was taken on an i-phone!

Below: “That’s two stops down on the lens please Alex!”

At the end of the week we left the ship at Malta with the job finished, brief completed, four tired models and two happy clients. The the prospect of checking in 20 plus pieces of excess baggage with Easyjet for the flight home was not filling me with glee but at least we managed to leave the ironing board behind!