The Planets Were Aligned

Ereka, near Newquay, 2009

Hawaaii-based model Ereka Marcelino and I had been discussing shooting together for nearly a year. So when Newquay became a destination on her world tour, we started to put together some ideas for what we’d actually do.

I went driving around the area looking for possible locations and saw the numerous fields of bright yellow oilseed rape that are common at this time of year.

As soon as I decided that this would be the location, the rest of the idea fell into place.

Black & yellow. One of my favourite colour combinations. And you can’t get more yellow than those crops, and Ereka’s hair is amongst the richest black that I’ve seen. Perfect. Choose some black clothes and accessories and Bob’s your uncle.

As the shoot drew nearer some factors came into play that helped make the results something special:

1. Ereka had recently had some (very expensive) hair extensions. I didn’t mind benefitting from this..

2. We switched the shoot day in the hope of getting sunnier weather. As it turned out, the day was overcast and rainy — giving us a wonderful grey backdrop which was far preferable to a bright sunny day.

3. I had feared the crops had all been harvested — this meant we were limited to the fields that remained, which included one which was almost too good to be true in terms of crops height and separation.

I don’t really believe in fate, but together with Ereka’s timing for her visit, those add up to some lovely coincidences…

I’ll post more from this shoot soon. We didn’t shoot a huge amount of images, but we got a nice variety with different feels.