July 2011 in Hawaii
In summer 2011 I did a fun project on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. It was lots of fun. My make-up and outfit girls from the Colorado studios came along. I had two models with me from Florida, and also hired two girls in Hawaii. Overall it went very good. Perfect weather, great location and lots of pretty pictures and videos. You can see some photos from the Hawaii trip below.I rented this large Tahitian style house for two weeks. Its on 5 acres, has a tennis court, hot tub, 6 bedrooms, Koi Fish Pond, private beach area, a small flock of peacocks or peahens, and five baby peacocks. Its a big beautiful place that we had all to ourselves.
Sharing the property with us was a family of peacocks and peahens, including 5 babies. They would come right up the stairs to us and eat out of our hands.
See how cute the little ones are? They just hung out with us very peacefully.
This is the Koi Fish pond near the back deck.
Grocery store visit number 1. It filled up the full van and we still had to make 4 others stops there during our 12 days in Hawaii.
Once we all arrived and settled in we got to work. The first two photo shoot days were spent with Tessa and Bianca, both of whom came all the way from Florida. We started with make-up at 5:00am, shot until 10:30am, took a break and started again in late afternoon.
After those two long work days we planned a super fun and busy off day. It started at 9:00am with myself, make-up girl Danielle and outfit girl Rachel going skydiving! People under age 18 are not allowed to do it, even if they want to, so Tessa and Bianca just hung around and watched.
Because we are not expert jumpers they have us do what is called a "tandem jump". An expert skydiver goes with you, and is strapped to your back like a giant backpack. You jump out of the plane just like you would by yourself but he runs the controls and deploys the chute right on time and helps guide you right back to the jump zone. I've done it before but it was the first time for Danielle and Rachel.
I got an extra skydiver to go with us that had a camera attached to his helmet so he can float down with us and take photos and video. Its totally cool! He flew so close to us that I could almost reach out and touch him. At that time, the "freefall" part, we are dropping at about 125 miles per hour.
Right after skydiving we rushed back to the house for lunch, then off to Waimea Bay so all the girls could take surfing lessons from our friends at North Shore Surf Girls. The girls spent two hours learning and having fun. They all did pretty darn good and I was glad they put full effort into it!
Right after surfing it was back to the house for quick showers and a snack, then off across the island for an evening at the Polynesian Cultural Center. That was cool. It features a tour that teaches you all about the South Pacific - Hawaii, Tahati, Guam and other areas. Then, there is a large Alii Lu'au dinner and show. When thats over they take you to a big outdoor theater and have this cool show that includes all sorts of characters, dances and lots of flames!
Here is a video from their website, then pictures I took during the evening at the Lu'au and show.
We got home from that event at about 11:00pm, then Tessa and I got up at 3:00am to drive across the island to pick-up new model Gene, who lives right there on Oahu. By 5:00am we are back at the house and they start making her up for the morning shoot. She did great, then we took our mid-day lunch break, and started again and went right until sunset. Great new model and we can't wait to get her in front of the cameras again.
After two more hard working, very long, days and new models, it was time for another day off. This time the girls went shopping in a little surfer village. They rented snorkling gear and went out in the water with big turtles and cool fish.
The rest of that day, and the next day, was all spent being mellow around the house. Time on the beach, doing some laundry and just sort of chilling and letting the body catch-up.
The last day the girls decided to go visit SHARKS! It was pretty cool. They take you out on a big boat about 2 miles where all these sharks hangout. You can see them and take pictures from the boat, and you can go in the big cage and see the sharks from underwater. Being in the cage is safe as long as you don't reach out and try to pet them! Ha Ha Ha...
Thats it for now. Over those days we took around 2800 model photos, and 6 hours of HD video, plus about 2000 fun snapsnot photos. It was a total blast. We had so much fun that we are planning to go back in 2012.
Girls interested in modeling for me, in the studio or on a fun project like this, should email me soon at Jimmy@JimmyStephans.com or call me at 303-339-0730. I'm selecting girls now for 2012 projects.
