Just in time for the next round of free couple photography contest, here’s the outcome for the winners of 2022, with their mermaid-themed destination couple photography in Jamaica. Not all went well.
Destination Couple Photography for Free!
Mermaids and mermen, meet this awesome couple from New Orleans, LA! They won the first place in my annual free couple photography contest, RomancEd 2022. The prize was a full day of free creative photography. To win my heart and make it to the finalists for the public voting, their concept was striking:
This is our 25th wedding anniversary coming on May 24th! We would like to take some pics in Jamaica. 1. Horseback riding in the crystal blue water, 2. Underwater shoot in ballgown and tux touching fingertips like in the Sistine chapel. 3. Mermaiding in the bioluminescent waters at night. Under the stars, she finds her mer-man! … That would be an anniversary for the books! Fun, sexy, a lil gutsy and memorable!
The second place winners, by the way, did not have a boring concept, either! Coincidentally, it also turned into destination couple photography as we worked on it in Toronto, Canada, with a shorter 2-hr shoot past summer:
Meet the Winners
Meet Stephanie and Terrance Osborne, a married couple of 25 years with two adult children. Some may recognize Steph from my photography trips to Las Vegas in 2020 and to New Orleans in 2021. I also photographed their daughter, a young talented singer:
Once they learned about my free couple photography contest a year ago, they saw a cool opportunity to celebrate their 25th anniversary. Steph is a fabulous yoga instructor and Terrance is a prominent painter with his own art gallery in New Orleans. His art must be in any art lover home, don’t take my word on it! Beauty and harmony are in their nature, and what could be a better way to celebrate than a destination couple photography in an exotic fairy tale setup?
Their choice fell on Jamaica, Montego Bay area. We first planned for their anniversary in May, then pushed to November because of hurricane season and other obligations.
The day came, and I flew in. It was a very business-centric trip for me: arrived late morning, jumped right on the shoot, slept, did the second part the following morning, and flew out in the afternoon. And weren’t we lucky with the weather? See that dry window? That’s the days I was there. Ah, and moving from 28°F to almost 90°F was a bliss.
Horse Riding in the Ocean
For their first day of destination couple photography, they went for horse riding. The images would simply depict a soothing romantic novel scenery. Arrived to Chukka Ocean Outpost and spent just a couple of hours there as we planned for two more ideas that night.
Click images for full size. Kindly refrain from re-uploading images to social media during the first week of feature. Share instead and give credit to @ZorzStudios!
Bummer No. 1
We returned to the hotel, packed the mermaid outfits, and ventured out to one of a local blue wave lagoon. The place is famous for bioluminescent night experience when the algae blooms in the water. When stirred up, they produce a chemical reaction that gives off the blue light. The location’s Google Map listing shows people on the beach immersed in the neon-blue nature’s magic.
Unfortunately, as we realized on the spot, those were user-submitted photos, taken at another location. The place we went to only offers the offshore boat trips. People still jump into the night water from the tour boats, but Steph and Terrance had heavily constrained costumes, making swimming potentially unsafe. I would also be highly limited when shooting from the boat, as opposed to a shore. A bioluminescent beach, where they could lie in the waves, would have been the best option, but we couldn’t rearrange the plan so quickly.
Having enjoyed the blue miracles, at least, we headed back to the resort. The other destination couple photography idea for us was to make use of an empty pool at Secrets Wild Orchid Montego Bay. It was around 10 PM and the pool was all ours, with in-water lighting reminding of bioluminescence. See, despite Stephanie’s suggestions not to bother bringing heavy underwater equipment, I still lugged it behind through the bumps and humps of international air travel. I was eager to go all in and give them that exclusive experience, too.
Bummer No. 2
Perhaps it wasn’t meant that day… I got into the water, tested the camera, and gave them an introduction to underwater photography posing. Terrance snapped this cool behind the scene shot… When they entered the water, my camera wouldn’t focus on them… Totally bummed, I kept trying, until it shocked me to see that my underwater casing was almost full of water, with the $5,000 camera rig inside… This was the first time in over a decade of shooting underwater.
I tried to rescue the camera. It showed signs of life, except for taking an actual shot. Long story short, something did get damaged inside the camera. I suspect the underwater housing misaligned in transit. I took the camera to a repair shop in Manhattan later. The replacement part is no longer manufactured, so they wouldn’t be able to repair it.
I now bought a replacement camera, a slightly used one of the same model to keep using its custom-fit underwater Ikelite housing. Ironically, I upgraded that housing just last year and invested $2.5K into it—also as a result of equipment malfunction during underwater maternity session! Such is the life of a photographer, people. We put one helluva lot $$$ into the business!
I, of course, don’t go to jobs without a full set of backup equipment—flashes, lenses, cameras, even when traveling for destination couple photography. Underwater housing is custom-fit so it wouldn’t fit my backup camera. We called it a day, and I used another camera the following morning.
Mermaid 2.0
With the abundance of ideas that we collected for this destination couple photography, we still had an ace up our sleeves—a mermaid meeting her merman. As they were dressing up in the striking hand-made outfits (don’t miss the due credits below!), I suggested a plot twist: she mesmerizes a man, but instead of giving up her tail and turning into a legged creature, our Mermaid 2.0 uses a magic powder to metamorphose him into a merman. Modern Disney would approve.
By the way, “MerMarried 2” in the title is not a nod to Mermaid 2.0 but a reference to a destination wedding photography blog I wrote in 2016. That bride was an aficionado of Disney princesses.
In today’s story, though, our heroine isn’t a bride but a long and happily married woman—a perfect subject for my couple photography which is open not just to the engaged couples! Photography romance should not stop on the wedding day. Look at this cute married couple from Indiana who flew to NYC for Christmas last year. If this is you, and you’re as adventurous and offbeat, don’t miss RomancEd 2023, my free couple photography contest which is about to open for entries. Guess who will be on the cover? 😉
Behind the Scenes
Here’s a peek at us at work, courtesy of Terrance and Chukka staff:
Credits
Head piece: Magda Nelson (@RainbowAuraArts) and Terrance Osborne (@TerranceOsborne)
Tails: Derroles (@d_thedressmaker)
Bathing suit: Andrea Iyamah (@AndreaIyamah)
