We have snakes in South Africa. They would just as soon bite you as stick their tongues out at you. And if they bite you, you die. When I was about 8 years old I made the mistake of throwing stones at a Cape Cobra that was being kept in a snake pit by the herpetology department of the school where I grew up. (My dad was a teacher there so we lived on the school property). The snakes were not happy but the master in charge of them, Mr. Armstrong, was even less so. He threatened to make me go down into the pit and fetch every stone I threw in there. A fate exactly equal to a death sentence by poison! Suffice to say… I have not had a very close relationship with the slithery suckers since.

Until Friday that is.

Bond was to be shooting Scylla`s TTD/Vogue Bridal/Fearless Bride session and asked me if I wanted to tag along. There were going to be smoke machines and serpents involved… how could I pass that up? I decided to film it from Bond’s point of view as a “Behind the Scenes” kind of video. I wanted to capture the way he works and try to get the feeling of his photographic style translated into moving pictures.

Scylla was fearless, the pythons were perfect and Bond was brilliant as usual.

Check it out…

Click to watch the video on Vimeo

I was not perfectly satisfied with the previous version of the Fearless Bride shoot in the earlier post.

The opening part dragged a little and there was too much emphasis on the gravel pit session and not enough of the painting. I wanted to show more of how the dress actually got dirty. There are some beautiful slowed down shots of the paint flying. I also decided to mix up the timing a little and go non linear in some parts.  It makes more sense artistically and it fits the audio a lot better.

I have used several different feels for the images. The high contrast for the eyes is a fav. The blue really stands out against the dark eyeshadow in those parts. For the interview and some of the other field shots I have used a softer, warmer more film-like feel. For a lot of the other shots its B&W or slightly over-saturated colour and heavier contrast…I feel it makes the images stand out a lot more.

What a fun day of shooting and what a blast it has been editing. Thanks again to the Freyers and Angers’s.

click to watch video on Vimeo