This was another job through a connection. Pan De Muerto is a Wellington Bar/Restaurant specialising in Mexican cuisine. They also sell a range of clothing and the owner wanted to showcase a new range.

The shoot was set for a Sunday afternoon with a very fixed time as the bar opened at 4.00. Trip is a biker who has a very strong resemblance to Jessie James, and he told me that he had organised a motor bike to be part of the shoot. I was amazed when this beautiful customised Harley was brought it. That was therefore going to centre stage for at least some of the images.

The restaurant had amazing murals on the wall so we knew that we were going to get some great images. The crew were also great to work with and it shows in the final images.

Casey is an incredible athlete who swum Cook Straight in under 4 hours, and my client definitely wanted him for the website. In scoping graffiti locations I had found a stream that ran under the Hutt Road and came out by Belmont School. I thought that it was an interesting location as it also meant we could combine water and graffiti without the need for Photoshop.

We shot on a Saturday morning in bright sunshine around the base of the pond. I thought Casey was very brave to actually get his head under the water.

We then scaled the sides to shoot in the drain itself. Using a bare flash certainly brought out the muscle definition that Casey had.

The Ministry of Swimming range also includes some kids gear so John arranged for three of his younger, but no less talented students to come down to the pool.

There is an adage in showbiz “never work with kids or animals”. Well that certainly didn’t apply her. The kids were great and followed instructions well. They didn’t seem to mind repeating things until we got the shot.

Sarah is an accountant who likes to model on the side who I met through model mayhem. I asked her to help me with three separate elements that would be shot on the same day.

I met her by the Te Aro shops where there is an old petrol station that is covered with graffiti art and also has a high wire fence perfect for what I wanted.

We then moved on a carpark in Vivian Street. I wanted a shot of a girl in a bikini walking towards a large motorbike. Motorad kindly loaned us the bike.

We ended up shooting Sarah wearing a hoodie over the bikini because I won’t make models freeze in the name of art, as the weather has turned quite nasty.

John did not want the whole shoot dominated by pretty girls so he arrange for two of his top male swimmers to come into the Nae Nae Pool one Friday night. We shot a range of shots up on the stands, and the diving board and then I shot them in the water.

The shots came out really well. What was surprizing was that the lights in the pool produced a very good blue light and with no one else in the pool the surface gained mirror qualities.

I was always believe that you should be nice to everyone you meet because you never know what their connections are. This was certainly the case when I was approached by the owner of the Ministry of Swimming website to shoot new images of their products.

John was a professional swim coach and Zoe Young was one of his pupils and she had recommended me.

John was looking for new images to be the page headers and profile images on the website. The Ministry of Swimming sold a range of high performance swim gear. He had a specific look in mind and wanted the images to be funky and not at all like you typical swimming shots.

I decided that an urban feel would be the most appropriate and this would be achieved by incorporating graffiti into the images. What made the shooting interesting was that the banner images were intended to be reasonably close so essentially they were to be crops of larger images.

When a tally was done we discovered that there were 48 pages that needed images so a details plan was worked out to get the shots, and a number of models were contacted.

The shoot took place over several weeks and each section of it will be detailed in the blog as they came together.