I think the above image is one of my favourites from this shoot… This post is the pictorial and behind the scenes story of the PMOY of 2013 for Playboy South Africa.
I shot, location scouted and styled this shoot for Playboy South Africa in early 2013. The beautiful model who won Playboy Playmate of the Year (PMOY) is American born Alexis Fox. We did the pictorial about a 1.5 hours drive out of Cape Town at Theewaterskloof Dam which is half way between Franschoek and Caledon.
I shot, as usual, a series of “PR” (non nude) images and a set of nudes which were published as the main pictorial in the PMOY edition later in 2013.
There’s quite a nice PMOY announcement article on IOL here to have a look at.
I utilised proudly South African made Swimwear brand Coco Lifestyle (now closed so I can’t share a link) and gold-only accessories which included bangles, chunky and long neck pieces and gold leaf adhered to Alex’s body with body oil That was quite a process…see behind the scenes images below of us all trying to get the stuff to stick and having a laugh!.
The whole shoot was done with natural light and one reflector board. The morning started off cloudy and freezing and I was very grateful when it cleared up and warmed up about an hour into our shoot which had started with hair and makeup at 3:30am in Cape Town.
And below is a selection of behind the scenes which gives an idea of how the shoot rolled out. We even got drone stills of our shoot as one of the team on location had a drone with him.
Colleen Van Rensburg (link to her work below) did a beautiful job making Alexis even more fierce and beautiful with her hair and makeup skills.
Below applying gold leaf to Alexis’s bum before we started that set of photos in the late afternoon.
Such a great team working with me on this shoot. hair and makeup by Colleen Van Rensburg.
I was assisted by Mickie (can’t remember her surname!) and Sven Kristian (Sven is now an amazing photographer, see his website here).
