The CNB 95 Grand Bleu Vintage

The CNB 95 (95' / 29 meters long) Grand Bleu Vintage

A great shooting session!
Great boat, top crew, wind and sun, super helicopter pilot ... would be unforgivable to miss this! All shot with a Pentax 645 Z from Helicopter (except the 1st image).

Cannes September 2015
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Nicolas Claris said:

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Beautiful, beautiful !!!
The best one, no doubt !

How many photographs you do in a job like this, Nicolas ?

Thank you Antonio!

To answer your question, it, once again depends of the shooting conditions…
Weather, light…

This was a 2 days shoot including one hour of helicopter (no chase boat that time)…

In helicopter, vibrations from the prop are not my friend so I often double or even triple the shots… In one hour I feel at least one 64 gb SD card (60 Mb per raw file…)

[EDIT] For this 2 days shoot, I delivered 400 low res pics for the client to select 20 (that I will deliver in HD)[/EDIT]

Nicholas, to use some coarse Australian vernacular which I know is not your favourite, but Tom Dinning seems to have left the building so someone has to do it....
You're giving me the shits, .... you sail the best yachts, fly around in helicopters taking awesome shots, (presumably drinking nice champagne, pretty sure that goes with the territory) and some bugger pays you to do it!

Must be some editing job though.

Champagne? Of course!

Andy brown said:

Nicholas, to use some coarse Australian vernacular which I know is not your favourite, but Tom Dinning seems to have left the building so someone has to do it....
You're giving me the shits, .... you sail the best yachts, fly around in helicopters taking awesome shots, (presumably drinking nice champagne, pretty sure that goes with the territory) and some bugger pays you to do it!

Must be some editing job though.

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Hi Andy! you're welcome : ) but I'm not sure that Tom would agree with you…
Too many nice French ladies, good guys, sophisticated sailing yachts and money paid for the production…

However, may I share with you some other images of that very same day?


PS Just to make you eating your hat, I've even been paid to fly from Bordeaux to Sydney to shoot the Sydney to Hobart race on a 145 feet sailing yacht, but this was in 1999…

See!

French champagne and oysters, I knew it......

Andy brown said:

See!

French champagne and oysters, I knew it......

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Hmmm just half of it…
No oysters but mediterranean canapés : ) (sun dry tomatoes in Olive Oil, figs mozarella, olives and so on)…

BTW Champagne cannot be anything else than French!
Otherwise call it sparkllng wine, eventually "Méthode Champenoise"

French champagne, yeah, I know it's a tautology of sorts.

Just my way of saying " the real thing"...cin cin

Wow, Nicolas, these are fabulous! Are these the real owners and guests, or is this a publicity shoot to sell the boat? Everyone looks so handsome!

Hello Maggie
This is a commercial shoot, not to sell the yacht but to sell charter cruises on board…
The boat crew is the real crew of the boat.
The four guests are models.

You have many more to see on my Facebook page… https://www.facebook.com/nicolas.claris.photo

And do not worry, you won't see there personal stuff, cat, grandchilds or moralistic sentences! This is a pro page and very useful for my marketing…

I could tap of the sails and the water, but there's something more important first!

Nicolas Claris said:

The CNB 95 (95' / 29 meters long) Grand Bleu Vintage

A great shooting session!
Great boat, top crew, wind and sun, super helicopter pilot ... would be unforgivable to miss this!

Click to expand...

Cannes September 2015





.........and fabulous French models! This you missed out! However these pictures are especially well done that we must put aside the incredible pictures of the boat cutting through water wind in its sails!


What, I really like, Nicolas, is that there's no artificial barrier between us and the models, as you would immediately see in the brilliant pictures that Frank Dorhoof will make of a classy model in front of a villa with his powerful strobes overpowering the sun and making the sky dark as night! Your pictures here lack that beautiful pretense seen in high end fashion shots where we are showing the magic of something almost unobtainable.

Here, what we see is the life we can expect to normally have on board a boat like this if we rent it. These girls are reachable as the girl next door or one meets for coffee.

Next, artistically there are some clever inclusions. These involved leveraging the fluidity of the very boldly photogenic white rope, the lines that rig and shape the sails. In the first picture, there's a loop hanging with zero tension. It is a motif symbolizing "relaxation" and freedom from constraints and that motif goes well with a campaign for advertising this boat for a vacation. That relaxation also corresponds with the pose of the model. This is not an accidental occurrence but part of the innate build up of skill over decades of professional image making.


In the second picture, below, the rope figures well too! above the strong diagonal of the piston-fitted ultra modern boom, there are numerous overlapping pendulous loops of white rope. This motif mirrors the slight but ample exposure of the models figure. Again an extraordinarily subtle strengthening of the experience of vacation and departure from the strict rigors of day to day work. I'm not suggesting any lascivious planning in the picture, but rather this is poetic expression that is the natural by product of years of making compositions that are inherently externally rhetorical and complimentary internally in the composition.






These are much more "sexy:" because everything we see is "happening for real" it seems and it does not look at all staged! When you can do that, pat yourself on the back!

Asher

Well Asher, it took me sometime to assimilate your comments…
Wow!
You nailed perfectly my way of working and how i work…
This time the models were not pro (captains family and friends) as the client had no budget to pay models.
This does happen sometimes and I don't like it as you never know how the people will behave in front of the camera…
However this time I've been very lucky and Constance (that's her name) did a perfect job (as well as the three others).
The thing is that none of the four amateur models, where not shy and happy.
Also they were so happy to have a full day at sea on such boat that their fun, joy and energy blew out from their personality…
I'm not a fashion photographer as you mentioned, but I'm sure that my approach would work well also…
Happiness, smiles, joie de vivre are the best sellers!
I don't like these fashion campaigns where models seems to be bored or angry or sad. It just doesn't make me dream!
So wether with pro or amateur models, I direct them very simply, i want them to play what they are doing, enjoy a drink enjoy sailing, enjoy reading and sunbathing.
Enjoy.
Then my work is to capture that.

I'll end that post with an invite…
An invite to you to share a good Cognac (or Brandy or whatever brown golden drink you prefer) with one of your friends in the cockpit tonight while others are enjoying the crowded Cannes and its lights…


After all you desserve it! You spent around 40 000 € to charter Grand Bleu Vintage for that week…

Well Asher, if you prefer a cup of tea, it's not a problem!

Nicolas Claris said:

Well Asher, it took me sometime to assimilate your comments…
Wow!
You nailed perfectly my way of working and how i work…
This time the models were not pro (captains family and friends) as the client had no budget to pay models.
This does happen sometimes and I don't like it as you never know how the people will behave in front of the camera…
However this time I've been very lucky and Constance (that's her name) did a perfect job (as well as the three others).
The thing is that none of the four amateur models, where not shy and happy.
Also they were so happy to have a full day at sea on such boat that their fun, joy and energy blew out from their personality…
I'm not a fashion photographer as you mentioned, but I'm sure that my approach would work well also…
Happiness, smiles, joie de vivre are the best sellers!
I don't like these fashion campaigns where models seems to be bored or angry or sad. It just doesn't make me dream!
So wether with pro or amateur models, I direct them very simply, i want them to play what they are doing, enjoy a drink enjoy sailing, enjoy reading and sunbathing.
Enjoy.
Then my work is to capture that.

I'll end that post with an invite…
An invite to you to share a good Cognac (or Brandy or whatever brown golden drink you prefer) with one of your friends in the cockpit tonight while others are enjoying the crowded Cannes and its lights…

After all you desserve it! You spent around 40 000 € to charter Grand Bleu Vintage for that week…

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I did everything but rent the sailing boat, LOL! I don't normally drink Cognac, but did that very evening and clinked glasses. It was so loud, Webdy thought I would break the crystal, LOL!

I wish I had the spare change to rent the boat too, but need to seek one bid sculpture to pay for it!

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

I did everything but rent the sailing boat, LOL! I don't normally drink Cognac…

Asher

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Oh, so you where guest!

Nicolas Claris said:

Well Asher, if you prefer a cup of tea, it's not a problem!

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Soon available the book of photos on the CNB 95 Grand Bleu Vintage, available at Blurb:
Hard cover - 8'×10' - 20×25 cm - 84 Pages
A nice gift for Christmas!