Alternative Urban Shoot with Queen Esoteric
On Tuesday I had the pleasure of working with Chanel a.k.a Queen Esoteric after spotting a last minute casting call on Monday evening.
I'd been aware of Chanel's work for a little while after seeing some of her striking portraits on Instagram and had made a mental note to get round to organising a shoot with her at some point, so I jumped at the opportunity to work with her when I saw her ad in a Bristol Models group on Facebook.
We didn't really have a solid plan or theme for the shoot due to the last minute nature of the casting, aside from a few inspo images I sent from a Manny Ortiz shoot where he shot a model on a basketball court wearing some retro clothing.
The shoot was to take place in Keynsham, Bristol as Chanel said she knew a few spots where we could shoot similar to the location in the inspo images. I took along my trusty Sony A7III, a couple of prime lenses (Canon 50mm 1.4 & Sigma 85mm 1.4 ART), and my Godox AD200 flash unit with 100cm Octabox.
On the way to the shoot I received a text from Chanel asking if I wanted her to bring her "highly docile chicken" along as a prop, which aside from being one of the stranger questions I've ever been asked before a shoot, made me laugh and set the tone for what was to be a super fun shoot.
We shot for about two hours split between a skate park and a tennis court. Chanel had put together an awesome outfit and brought along a couple of cool props which really added to her look.
I decided to use the high speed capability of the flash unit to really cut down the ambient light creating a moody set of images that I felt enhanced the edgy vibe of the shoot. Luckily my assistant Craig was available to boom the large octabox overhead in various positions to create some dramatic lighting.
I really enjoyed the shoot, at times forgetting that I don't have full use of my left arm which resulted in some pain later that evening but all in all I'm really happy with what we produced in such a short timescale from the casting to the end of the shoot.
Thanks to Chanel a.k.a. Queen Esoteric for an awesome shoot, to Craig for doing the heavy lifting and to the old guy that kindly lent us vintage tennis racket (if you see this, I appreciate it)!
See you on the next shoot,
-Craig