My wife gave me a wedding dress as a birthday present – white and long..just like I had wanted. And no, I didn`t fancy walking around in it, myself, and neither would I ask my wife, Ulla, to put it on. I did, however, have a wet dream about the dress, namely to fit a model into it, lower her down to the bottom of a swimming pool and photograph her there.
A friend of ours had access to a public swimming pool. A backdrop was produced to hide the white / green pool wall. A couple of hours were spend, sewing led into the dress in order to try to control the material. (Not my favorite occupation, but my wife backed out). I got in contact with a model, who, strangely enough, liked the idea of being tied to the bottom of a pool wearing a wedding dress.
The deal was that we could be in the pool, while a diving school was having their pool-training, from 20.30 until 22.15.
On arrival to the place of action, the wedding dress was “adjusted” with the help of a few safety pins (or a row of them) on the models back, while I arranged the background and the gear. These processes took most of an hour. The hands on the big wall clock at the end of the pool seemed to move very fast and I started to fear for our time schedule as I dropped to the bottom.
It was quite a sight to see the underwater bride come down – escorted by the brides maid, my wife, who had a firm grip on the brides arm..She didn`t have a chance to become a run-away – less swim away – bride. The bride was breathing through the octopus from Ulla`s tank. As my wife helped our mermaid to take of the mask and helped her get her final portion of air, I picked up my camera from the bottom. The underwater bride let go of her regulator and tried to look into the camera. The wide, white cloth behaved like it had a life of its own. It ever so gently flowed up in front of the brides face. Before we had a chance to move in and fix it, the model very clearly announced that she needed air. My wife zoomed in and pushed the air-supplier into her mouth. We all went to the surface for a short conference. It is a little hard to communicate the finer details for a shoot, when you`re in the water and your model only can see a blurry image of you.
With the students from the diving school as audience we went down again. This time everything fell into place. The dress stayed down, while the brides hair rose, as it should. The model had open eyes, my trustfully Nikon focused and the flashes worked.
There were smiles all around when we reached the surface…And then we even had twelve minutes to pack down and get changed. No worries.
A photo session like this is a teamwork. I had the easy part but I`m grateful that our model, Mona, went through with it.. And without the help of the safety diver, assistant, brides maid and idea-pusher – all in one person, Ulla, the photoshoot would have remained a “wet dream”.