Song: "Electric Feel" by MGMT off the album Oracular Spectacular
Note: click on the panoramic images to enlarge....
First of all, this album is ridiculous. Buy it. Its really good. You're on your computer. you have itunes. Why are you still reading this?
Anyways, we did a vogue shoot recently in Mallorca Spain which is an island off the southeast of the Spanish coast. Four day shoot, two stories, three shoot days. Quite typical for our traveling vogue shoots. The assistant and I flew out late one evening to Zurich and had a 4 hour layover before our flight to the island. The flight to Switzerland departed right at sunset which I always enjoy and, per usual, one glass of bourbon and I was out like a light.
After I also managed to sleep all the way through our layover in Switzerland (much to the assistant's chagrin and despite drinking two espressos) we boarded our german tourist filled jet and made the short trip to Mallorca. I slept the whole way.
Arriving in the late afternoon, I cruised quickly through customs with my 9 cases and literally felt the cobwebs being scraped from the part of my brain that contains the fragmented memory of 4 years of spanish classes. They looked confused at the complex official documents that make up the counterfoil and reimportation papers of a carnet, but after a few minutes of my terribly accented attempts to convey the actual simplicity of the whole process, they signed, stamped and sent us on our way.
We were met outside by our local PA, who was a tall soft-spoken man that had moved here from Germany a few years prior. We loaded the 17 bags into his dark blue Eurovan and lumbered onto the freeway that led to our hotel. We wound through the narrow streets of the city that were framed with brightly colored buildings and barely left enough room for our oversized car to fit through.
Upon arrival we found that it was nearly dinner time, and a hotel staff more than willing to help us with our copious amount of baggage. I immediately left to explore the downtown, only to receive a phone call from my favorite prop stylist saying that dinner was in half an hour. I did a 180, went back to my hotel, showered and went straight to dinner.
Meeting up with this crew is always like a family reunion. Family that may or may not consist of alcoholics. Per usual with these shoots (If the blog about Miami a few months ago you might have an idea of how we like to spend the evenings on these shoots) we ordered a number of bottles of wine that went well into the teens, and followed the tradition of our photographer who has a penchant for toasts. I believe that by the end of this trip I made a total of 15 toasts, the superior being "To a job that is better than most vacations." At least thats the only one I remember.
The first shoot day was a mildly hungover one, and we did a paparazzi style story all around the streets. I went quickly, the imagery was beautiful, and it was filled with good light tests and bizarre encounters with prostitutes (long story). I even managed to capture my general awkwardness around models in a three picture series. Note: I really like this blog called the failblog (http://failblog.org). If you haven't ever read it, I suggest it....it always gives me a good laugh.
The next day our model wasn't scheduled to arrive until 11 am, so we had a late call time before we headed to this beautiful sailboat we were shooting on for the next two days.
The shoot was the classic story of a yatching couple and we did 9 shots from 1pm to 7 pm before heading back to the hotel. I love these shoots because we try to keep the pace slow, and the vibe relaxed, and we continued that trend throughout the boat story.
We dined on cured meats, olives, and saffron infused seafood and drank mojitos in-between shots. That night we went out to a sushi restaurant and kept the alcohol bill to about 60 euros per person. I fail to remember what time we got home.
The next morning we headed back out to the boat around 10 to finish our remaining 6 shots. We drove out of the bay and along the coast for about an hour and a half before being escorted by dolphins and anchoring off the rocky shoreline among aquamarine sand patches and emerald grass patches on the ocean bed.
I immediately flipped off the side of the boat into the water which, despite being the Mediterranean, wasn't as warm as you'd imagine.
I swam for 20 minutes and dove down to the grass bed with a snorkel and mask, but no one else decided to join me. We did some great shots in the early afternoon, one included hoisting the photographer 35 feet up the mast.
We finished shooting around 4 and spent the rest of the time sipping mojitos and laying in the sun. On the ride back everyone hustled to pack everything and finish our work so we could enjoy the last night in Spain.
Speaking of that last night in Spain, it pretty much never ended. Being that I had to head to the airport at 5:30 am, not to mention pack up all the gear I'd set up over the past three days, I decided not to go to bed that night. Unfortunately I forgot to take into account the heavy and drinking that usually occurs on the wrap night and my hour long task of packing up and preparing files turned into two hours of me bumping into things, misplacing items I needed, and watching the sun rise with my now dwindling supply of cigarettes. The hair stylist had to leave around 4:30 so I hung out with him for quite a while as he joined me in my quest to stay awake despite getting an average of 4 hours of sleep each night we were here. We left for the airport with "plenty" of time according to our producer and were on our way home.
At about this point I sent the assistant up to get ready to check in while I tried to deal with the carnet. This proved to be very difficult when you're drunk, exhausted and speak Spanish about as well as you can perform a gel electrophoresis (I studied Biology in college FYI). After 45 minutes of arguing with all the gate security who didn't understand that I needed to get BACK through security to get my papers signed, I enlisted the help of a suspicious police officer who helped me convince them that I knew what I was doing. After the strip search (I really don't want to talk about it) I rushed to the customs office, forced them to sign it ASAP (I'd gotten very good at explaining my cause by now) and ran as fast as I could upstairs to check it. Surprise, we'd missed out flight. Things got a bit hazy after this, as I kept falling asleep standing up, and the assistant (who'd been sleeping while I was dealing with customs) took the reigns and got us new flights back to NYC. Special shout out to the paris office of our photographers agency.....you saved our asses that day. Everything after that was perfectly smooth...almost as smooth as this mural we found while eating breakfast.
Upon arrival in Madrid, we ran into the photographer who was utterly shocked to see us (especially since we were supposed to leave Mallorca 4 hours earlier than him) and was even more hungover than I was. The flight back was pretty hazy, but I do remember waking up briefly to a plate of foi gras and nearly vomiting. Upon arrival back in NYC customs was ridiculously easy, with a customs officer I can only dream of having every time I have a carnet. After that it was back to the office (now around 9 pm) so I could finally sleep horizontally before waking up at 6 am the next morning for our next job. Thank god I'm just getting off a vacation because from here on out we are booked every day till August 2nd. And I leave August third for a month long backpacking vacation through eastern Asia. Expect some good stories in the near future. And buy that MGMT album for gods sake.
