For this first time in a few years, we hopped on a plane last week and cut ourselves off from phone calls, email (mostly), social media (hmm … mostly) and just relaxed with our little family and some good friends we had dragged along with us for the trip. Jo was working on a travel article and I was shooting for it, but the rest of the week was just about swimming, eating, resting and saying ‘Bula’ to the 600 lovely staff at Outrigger on the Lagoon in Fiji. I promised the staff that were kind enough to help me set up photos that I’d share them on the blog, so here they are.
This is our little girl exploring the Kula Eco Park and meeting a Fijian Banded Iguana which happened to be clinging to Jo’s arm!
… and our friends kids discovering that flying is even more fun than swimming.
This is one of my favourite shots from the week, and definately the most fun to shoot. The resort is filled with music, from guitarists and ukulele players providing a gentle backdrop at breakfast to the farewell song which often brings guests to tears. So, I wanted to capture the energy of the singers in a picture somehow and when I asked if I could borrow three restaurant staff for a photo, I turned around and found ten eager volunteers waiting for instructions, including two who helped with my makeshift lighting setup (it turns out that a plastic pillow packet makes a decent diffuser in a pinch!). I asked them to pick a song to sing without really thinking about the fact that I was arranging my own private little performance – it sounded so good that I didn’t want to tell them that they could stop when I finished shooting.
This particular resort is all about blending luxury with traditional fijian culture, so for example, this guy (below) is trumpeting the beginning of a procession around the pool area to light the torches for the night. And below that, fijian dancers take over the main restaurant for some traditional entertainment.
Now that I’m back home, this last photo is a bit hard to look at…
