Underwater has been one of our themes the last few summer’s as the weather in Austin, Texas gets unbearable. This years theme in particular was Mermaids, how fun! We had a menagerie of talented individuals who helped put this all together. Let me thank them now because without everyone pulling together a shoot this scale would not come together.
Hair, Makeup, Style, Pool Owner: Lecia Harkins with Austin Beauty on the Go
Florals: Beau Dawson at Beau’s Flower Child
Producer: Amanda Ervin at 11:11 Events
Camera Assistants: Jessica, Caleb and Ty
Video: Brian Nixon with AzulOx Visuals
Mermaid Tails: Fin Fun Mermaid
Studio Lights: Arri 1k’s from Lensrentals.com
Mermaids: Naomi Loghry, Meganoke, Jenny Lynn Larsen and Cassidy Koranek
Merman: Ryan Saathoff
Safety Diver: Amber Meaux
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We would like to mention that we will be offering Mermaid Portraits as a session that you can purchase soon. Please send an email at josh@azulox.com or leave us a Facebook message if you are interested.
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We tackled this underwater session a bit differently than we have in the past. I had tried to cobble together an underwater strobe kit, but the results have been inconsistent. This year we used 2 1000w video lights stationed on the pools edge to provide our lighting. Our goal was to provide consistent lighting for both the stills and video. The lights were great except that our sunken treasure chest threw off so much particulate into the water that by the end of the shoot I had no way of getting clarity to the images. Lesson learned there. One of the reasons we shoot these large scale productions for our selves is to work out kinks in the workflow before we take them to clients.
Shooting underwater is hard, posing underwater is hard, lighting underwater is hard. Any breakdown in the system and the images are not that great. Add to that that it takes 3-10 times longer underwater to get your shots. With all that said, I am super proud of the gang we had working so that we could capture a few mermaids in action. Where will the mermaids pop up next?
Josh loves a good adventure and some of his favorite wedding and engagement shoots have involved “getting crazy” or going somewhere special to the couple.
Josh is a Texas native and long time Pflugerville resident. He started his photography business in 2009 and has never looked back. His photo business even allowed him to be daddy-day-care before his two sons reached school age. Over the years his business has expanded to include just about every type of photography including automotive, editorial portraits, corporate events, sports and food. Through it all, he has continued to love wedding photography for genuine moment, the fast pace and the diversity of subjects it offers. Josh is a co-founder of North Austin Pfoutographic Society and a resident instructor at Precision Camera & Video in Austin, Tx.