Today I bring you Melissa and Derek. They’re a couple from Colorado who went on a cruise and basically had a couple of hours for a photo shoot before their flight back to Colorado. This was like the epitome of a last minute shoot but I had fun either way. They were referred to me by Evan Rich, the wedding photographer I work with on occasion.
I got to South Beach a little early to scout out potential locations. They reserved a room at the San Juan hotel on Collins Ave. right across the street from the Delano Hotel. South Beach was a little hectic because the American Black Film Festival was going on and basically all the hotels had some sort of party or event going on. I walked around the Delano and headed out to the beach to look for places to shoot. I also had to take into consideration that it’s been raining like crazy due to a tropical storm’s feeder bands just slamming us basically all week. I could see more storms on the horizon so I knew we didn’t have much time to shoot.
I went back to the San Juan hotel and met up with Melissa and Derek. As we walked to the beach we were discussing what shots they were looking for etc. It literally was a last minute shoot so we really didn’t get a chance to go into specifics via email. Melissa is also getting into photography so we were talking about the challenges and the competition of being a photographer as well as their cruise they just took.
As I mentioned earlier the rain was imminent so we moved pretty quick from location to location. The beach wasn’t packed but there were enough people out there that I had to wait for them to pass by so they weren’t in the shot. We shot in the sand and in the dunes then made our way down to the water. As Melissa and Derek made their way out into the water to pose I tried my best to avoid the incoming waves from washing over my sneakers. Needless to say that was not going to happen.
After we shot on the beach we made out way back out to the side street next to the Delano Hotel. There was this shot I wanted earlier but people were in the background so I decided to try again later. The shot was to have them silhouetted under this canopy of shrubbery next to the drive way of the Delano Hotel. It caught my eye on my scouting trip as something that would look great as a black and white photo.
We had some time left so I suggested we try to sneak into a hotel and try to grab some shots on a rooftop patio. Since I’ve been kicked out of the Delano many times for exactly that we headed two doors down to the Sagamore Hotel. As soon as we walked in there was this event for the American Black Film Festival going on. They had a photographer taking photos of guests at a step and repeat banner etc. I wanted to shoot in the side room of the Sagamore but the event had rented out that room as well. So we meandered through the hotel till we got to the rooftop patio. It was great. Melissa and Derek had the whole place to themselves which made my life easy as well.
Hopefully Melissa and Derek aren’t being affected by all those wildfires in Colorado right now. It’s crazy out there.
