Salt Water Sirens: Eclipse

The height of a solar eclipse, where the moons darkness and the suns daylight collide for a brief few moments couldn't be a more fitting shoot day and epic ending to this collection. You find me on the flowing golden sands of Perranporth beach in Cornwall we are doing a fashion photoshoot in the setting sun. A fitting conclusion of my trilogy of shoots for the Salt Water Sirens.

Photoshoot Info:

Models: Anni Koln

Location: Perranporth Beach, Cornwall

Photographer: Andrew James

Camera: Nikon D7100 with a Sigma Art 35mm f1.4

Inspiration: Pinterest Board

Moodboard:

Oddly in all the years I've been a photographer I've never done a golden hour beach sunset shoot so this was the right time to branch out and give it a go. For this shoot I was teaming up with local surfer Anni Koln who lives a stones throw from the beach in a lovely Cornish cottage.

A true salt water siren, Anni moved to Cornwall from Germany a year ago to live by the sea in order to surf and kiteboard as much as much as possible. An active sportwoman, Anni carries several major sponsors with her kiteboarding competitions but is spending the time in the sea at the moment perfecting her surfing to add to her arsenal of board skills. I probably couldn't have found a better person for this shoot as Anni very much inhibits the coastal lifestyle, whenever she's not in the ocean she's hiking along a coastal path or drawing somewhere in the dunes.

I've met an actual Salt Water Siren who's affinity with the sea is matched with a creative heart and a love dramatic landscapes and colours.

The idea of this shoot was to embrace the golden hour well and truly, using the setting sun and the sea as our beautiful backdrop. I'd use the sun to create some dramatic lens flairs and by backlighting Anni most of the time. A skill that is harder than it seems, you need enough light to create the effect but not too much that silhouettes are formed. I is also hard not to overexpose the image as you are looking straight at the sun and as it sets towards the horizon gets lower and lower in the view finder.

Anni has a very natural surfer style to her and she was brilliant to work with as idea's flowed out of her. The shoot has a very ethereal and soft light feel to it that I love, the golden light picking up the environment nicely and Anni's movements and poses extenuated with her sarong wrap. To symbolise the modern and carefree Siren we often had Anni looking out to sea, dancing in the waves or sat on the rocks wrapped in the golden sunlight. This was very much the bohemian siren who loved everything about the ocean.

Anni was great fun to work with, full of ideas and often just dancing in the waves having fun herself. Less photoshoot and more a connection to nature and the ocean. We were only limited by the time of the setting sun, which didn't yield the pink and orange finale we had hoped for with the clouds rolling in.