Message in a Bottle

I've had this shoot organised for a few weeks with a singer, Michelle Hutcheson, I originally met at Torture Garden last year. The idea was to create some images in a nature surrounding that gave a magical feel to them. One of my favourite locations for this kind of shot is Seacliffe Beach near North Berwick. As the shoot date came closer the weather forecast was looking like the only time we would get any definition in the clouds would be around sunrise which meant a 4am start and getting wet feet in the freezing cold North Sea - the forecast also predicted reasonably strong winds.

Having been at this beach before and struggling with the mild wind I knew that the only way to get my lighting to work well was to have an assistant so I put out a request for someone who would get up at such an ungodly hour and help me out. Fortunately, fellow blipper, Giles Guthrie answered my call and did a great job of hanging on to the wind sock created by my softbox and lighting Michelle up for me. We then swapped around later on so Giles could get some photos. Thanks Giles!

Once home, I thought this image was almost Vetriano like and could possibly stand more than the usual amount of post-processing I would usually do. I'm trying to portray a story of Michelle placing her musical message into the bottle so the waves can carry it around the world - hopefully it portrays that or if not it tells another interesting story from your own mind.

This will be my entry for the Weekend Blip Challenge, which this week had the theme of 'BOTTLE' and stimulated the idea of the message in a bottle so a huge thanks to Ian for picking the theme. I would recommend viewing the large version of the image.