Category Underwater kids

Three Generations

Vanessa Clementson Leave a comment

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Anouska decided to do an underwater photo shoot to use in a Christmas card to send to family and friends around the world. I think this is such a great idea, especially when you are living in tropical Singapore while your family is in cold, wet England : ) It is something unique and fun to capture your lifestyle in Singapore. They also live in a beautiful condo on Sentosa overlooking the sea so it was a great way to capture their surroundings as well.

It was going to be a fun, challenge to include three generations of their family which included Anouska and her husband, his brother, their two young children and his parents. Not everyone felt like getting wet which was fine and we did some over under shots to start. I like to do this anyway showing people’s legs underwater and the rest above.

Then the family of four jumped in for some fun underwater shots…

And some more over/unders for the two year old girl who couldn’t go under…

This was on Christmas Eve morning and I managed to edit a selection of the best shots to send to Anouska just in time to send to family for Christmas!

Mermaids

Vanessa Clementson Leave a comment

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I was asked to shoot some mermaids for MermaidMe mermaid tails. My eight year old daughter already had one of these tails which she loved and was very excited to be involved in the shoot and try out their gorgeous new designs and material. It was a super fun shoot with four gorgeous mermaid girls in a lovely, deep swimming pool (not easy to find in Singapore).

These cleverly designed mono fins allow the wearer to glide gracefully through the water and channel their inner mermaids.

Here are some fun digital montages showing the mermaids in their natural habitat of the ocean : )

The Kids

Vanessa Clementson Leave a comment

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Luckily my kids are all water babies. They have been swimming since they were a couple of months old and swim every other day. My daughter is pretty amazing at posing underwater and looking natural so I take advantage of that by using her as my guinea pig for testing out costumes, backdrops, video shoots etc. Often we are just having fun in the pool and I feel like taking photos so i’ve ended up with quite a few of them.

We have quite a good fancy dress collection now and I love to use them in my shoots. It just adds another level of interest and the colours really pop.

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I love bubbles and splashes and experimenting with the effects they make for a more abstract underwater image.

Underwater photos are also a great opportunity to do themed shoots such as Christmas, Halloween or Mothers/Fathers Day,

Henry and Family

Vanessa Clementson Leave a comment

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I love an underwater family photo shoot and especially with a little one this cute! There is always a bit of apprehension and uncertainty about how the shoots going to go as there are so many variables eg what the conditions of the pool are like, how comfortable the child is going underwater and how they react to my big scary camera! Not to mention how the parents are underwater, as sometimes they can be the ones to struggle while the child is a natural.

Not in this case though. This family was a joy to shoot and although Henry (14 months) was a bit apprehensive on my camera, he was a little superstar underwater and I loved how the family interacted together. We got some many great shots in our 45 minute session and it didn’t matter that it was grey and drizzly outside (at least in Singapore it’s never that cold!)

I usually get them warmed up with some over under shots so their head is above water. Some of these can turn out to be the best ones. It also helps when father and son are wearing super cute matching board shorts…

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Then we work on getting the family shot, which usually takes a few times of 1, 2, 3 and down for 2 seconds with a break in between. Then we do some different combinations of father and child, mother and child etc.

Then we try some more challenging shots such as passing between each other (a bit like a rugby ball 😉 and coming in for a kiss.

A few more over water shots and then it’s a wrap and I get rewarded with this big smile at the end!

Swish Swimming Video (March 2018)

Vanessa Clementson Leave a comment

How cute are these two? They are swim school besties and have been learning swimming together for almost 3 years. I was super excited for this project as I hadn’t had a chance to explore the video function much on my Canon 5D mark iii, but the quality is amazing!

I have worked for and at Swish Swimming school before, for one of my first underwater photo shoots, doing some of their earlier marketing shots, shooting at a pool party event and using their fab pool for some of my personal work. They have now expanded and have a fabulous new pool venue nearby called Laguna so this became our theme. I also adopted their colour scheme of yellow and turquoise and sourced some props and costumes, including pineapple swim shorts, straw skirt, sunglasses and flowers.

I put together a storyboard which included the kids demonstrating different skills in a fun way, such as diving in, picking up an object from the bottom, blowing bubbles, floating and climbing out of the pool. These two were such superstars and seemed to really enjoy the experience, which makes my job much easier! The main challenge was the clarity of the water which was very cloudy because they had lessons all morning. It is normally very clear so this was a shame and detracted a bit from the final product.

I did my best using the Wondershare Filmora video editing software, which I loved and it was so easy to trim the clips, add transitions, text, special effects and audio. The final Swish Video is a 30 second clip.