Cruisin' with LMHL Mag

Above are tear sheets from a recent shoot with Lake Mary Healthy Living Magazine. Sure, the images look simple enough, but that was one busy shoot jam packed into a short time period.  It started with Royal Caribbean needing a written list of names, d.o.b, and drivers license copies of each person who would be boarding the ship ahead of time so they could run it through customs.  We provided an entire list of our crew approximately a week before the shoot. Unfortunately, our original makeup artist had to cancel a couple days prior to the shoot day.  She went the extra mile and found a replacement for us.We were asked to arrive at 10:00am, a couple hours earlier than we had scheduled to start photographing, which was 12:00pm.  We had to be off the ship at 3:30pm, which the scheduled time for the ship to set sail.  I'm pretty sure that if were hadn't made it off in time, customs would have just thrown us overboard somewhere in the ocean. They were intense. (Just solved the mystery of what happens to all those missing people.) We went through several check points.  The first being the standard xray machine.  All of my camera and lighting equipment passed the test, but they didn't approve of my Paul C Buff Vagabond or my extension cords.  Apparently those are banned by the ship Captain himself.  It took 30 minutes to get direct approval from the Captain to allow the items on board. Not to mention that our replacement makeup artist was not added to our list in time, and was not approved to pass through security. She had to wait in an non-air conditioned room with the security guard. The next check point was where we had to trade in our drivers licenses for a lanyard and guest pass. We also had to wait here for our customs escort. Our third check point was going through customs. They treated us like we were the biggest hassle of the day. Apparently our provided escort was not the caliber they were looking for, so we were made to wait in customs until someone from Royal Caribbean joined us as a second escort. Customs should take over training for TSA at the airport; flying would be safer. Our fourth and final check point was on the ship.  Customs had us wait on board until our ship escort joined us. It was a process.By the time the crew made it to our staging room it was 1:00pm, one hour later than we had planned. It was a crazy couple of hours, and we almost didnt make the last shot (the image of the model with the ship wheel).  We spent no more than a few minutes on the last look, but luckily for us it still came out amazing.I definitely recommend that if you are going to set up a photo shoot on a cruise ship, to take the whole cruise and do it over a few days in the bahamas somewhere. ;)Fashion Photographer Betsy Hansen
Hair and Makeup Allison LaCour
Wardrobe Styling Style Theory
Photography Assistant Samantha Stebbins