had the wonderful opportunity to shoot this fashion spread for Glamour South Africa back in March while I was in Barcelona. Right before the trip, I did some research and had asked some locals for some location recommendations. There were so many fantastic, beautiful locations in Barcelona that it made it incredibly difficult to decide! I also contacted Barcelona based stylists through Instagram and email to find a team to work with. In my experience when trying to organize a shoot overseas, getting a stylist first is while the most difficult, would make the process of putting together a shoot the easiest. Once you confirm a stylist, they would usually have recommendations of makeup artists and model agencies to work with and their advice is consistently on point. Locals always know best.
With my list of location suggestions, I came up with a few moodboards for Glamour SA and they agreed on a neutral olive toned moodboard shot in Barcelona’s cactus garden, Mossèn Costa i Llobera Gardens. Coming from a country with no such thing as a natural cactus garden, I was thrilled.
We went through a few model compcards and decided on Liza for her very modern look and chic hairstyle. We had to make sure the model we chose fit the moodboard that we had in mind. It's important for everything to go well together.
I was in Barcelona for more than a week this trip and everyday has gorgeous natural sunlight. As you see as a theme when it comes to my photoshoots, I seem to attract cloudy boring weather. It also didn’t help when my stylist mentioned “Oh, it hasn’t been cloudy and rainy for the last 3 months!”. That made me very sad indeed!
However, it is what it is. We couldn’t postpone the shoot as the model was unavailable the next day so we just went ahead and did what we could. Gloomy skies meant really flat lighting so at least I could enhance the light any which way I wanted without having to fight the sun. This was me being as positive thinking as possible.
As for most fashion editorials, I always make sure to shoot in as many interesting angles and compositions I could come up with to keep the story interesting. The above image actually did not make it into the magazine but it's definitely one of my favourite shots from this shoot! The model actually had to strain her neck a little to keep it looking like it was floating naturally above the ground. The things we do for art!
I absolutely love shooting overseas and try and do it whenever I can as it exposes me to new locations and other creatives.
Photographer: Shavonne Wong
Model: Liza Veta (Blow Models)
Makeup: Kristiana Zaula
Stylist: Rox Delgado