A day at the water park
You gotta love the way things come together sometimes 
.
We drive to and from Montreal on a fairly regular basis. On one return trip shortly after Christmas we had the simultaneous thought that the empty, snow-covered waterpark off highway 417 would make for a great location, and planned to contact them upon getting home.
We feared our request would be either ignored or refused, but the fine folks at Calypso not only responded promptly and positively, but were gracious and accommodating throughout the whole process – merci! There were some hiccups leading up to the shoot. An unusually mild February and a rainstorm the night before we were scheduled to go threatened to melt the snow (which was sort of integral to our concept) and some last minute cancellations almost left us model-less. Thanks to the power of twitter, two lovely and awesome ladies stepped in to save the day.
The concept was to create very colourful, unrealistic vignettes with a touch of dorkiness and soviet propaganda style to them. The Calypso waterpark was the perfect setting with its colourful slides. Add a few props, two fun and willing models and it all came together pretty nicely. We lucked out with some pretty glorious weather, albeit a little sunnier than we would have liked. That said, the look we were going for involved overpowering ambient light to some extent to saturate the surrounding colours and amplify the somewhat “unreal” look. Since we were in the market for some bigger strobes, we took advantage of Justin’s kindness and borrowed his Elinchrom Quadras for a test drive. For all these shots, the settings were pretty simple: one quadra light in an elinchrom octabox, pretty much at full pop. For the tube images, we added some fill light in the form of a speedlight and softbox.
The shoot was a real blast and we are pretty happy with the results – hope you enjoy them too!
Location: Calyspo Waterpark
Models: Lindsay McPhee, Julia Richardson (and Free Willy the 5′inflatable whale).
The ones in the tube are my favourites – also really dig the opening shot.
Great series… Justin commented on what was going to be my question… Strobes inside, or under and very bright?
Thanks gentlemen!
Michel: For the tube photos, the setup is almost the same: quadra in Octabox, 3/4 power, above and to the left of camera, then speedlight at full power in a softbox from bottom right for fill. We contemplated the idea of a strobe inside, but it would have been too difficult to conceal.
I love it! Looks like you had lots of fun and the colours are amazing. Good thing you got it done before all the snow was gone.
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