Oh man, what a day it was…
In my head, I had the whole photo shoot perfectly planned out. And so waking up to a beautiful sunny morning I knew everything would go as planned.
When I knew Miana was heading back to the island from Japan, I asked her if she would like to model for me and she said yes! Since she is a super cool skater girl, I knew I had to capture her doing what she loves, whilst wearing the Sora Set. So the location was simple, at a skatepark in the middle of denpasar. The vision was capturing Miana’s day in the life, skating and chilling around a bit, during golden hour.
We left Canggu at 3pm, however at that time, the weather felt a bit odd to me. Because throughout the morning I only saw one ‘tiny’ grey cloud. The voice in my head told me “hmm should i go ahead with the shoot? Maybe not…” but my mind said ‘it's just a tiny grey cloud that wouldn't do any harm’.
However, once we turned onto the big road leading into Denpasar, that ‘tiny’ cloud suddenly wasn't so tiny anymore… Matter of fact, it was covering the whole damn sky…
In the car, I was with the photographer Tijs, his girlfriend Samily and my mom. The model Miana was gonna take a gojek and meet us there. As we had to drive 40 minutes towards the location, halfway coming from the opposite direction I saw multiple people driving their bikes wearing raincoats and then… Yep, you guessed it, it was POURING down. So much for just a ‘tiny grey cloud’. The photographer and my mom tried to reassure me that we can just wait until the rain stopped and maybe make a ‘moody’ type of vibe out of it, definitely not what i had in mind but okay, let me just trust the process i guess.
At this point we hadn’t even reached the location yet cuz we got stuck in traffic and so I texted Miana saying that if she’s on the bike to just stop somewhere cuz obviously i wouldn't want her to arrive super drenched.
When we finally reached the location, part of the road was flooded. I was able to have a peek of the skatepark, however at this point it was more of a waterpark… Local kids were sliding down the ramps, having the time of their lives. I tried texting Miana again but I still didn't get any answer back and then I realized she probably didn't have any internet… The rain was coming down even harder so we asked the Grab Driver kindly if we could stay in the car a bit longer so we could think of a solution or even find some shelter. However, he said that he had another order scheduled after us. Just great…
After some fast thinking we decided to get shelter at a local warung, we hopped out of the car and the place was not only crowded but also flooded. All four of us stood in one line squished up in the corner cuz that was the only part where our shoes would stay dry. My mom took the chance to order some sate babi and we kinda just laughed off the situation that we found ourselves in. Finally Miana and her friend arrived, luckily partly dry. We talked about how Canggu was still nice and sunny when we left and so my mom came up with a quick solution and figured out a place which was an abundant building by the beach! I guess the sate babi fuelled her up nicely.
I quickly ordered another Grab car and we started to chase the sun. As we were getting closer back to the coast, it was as if the grey cloud followed us because, surprise surprise… It rained again! Luckily the rain slowed down as we got to the location but it was already 5:30pm, so we rushed to the entrance only to get stopped by the security… Here we were facing yet another unexpected issue. He asked what a group of 6 people were doing here and we said we quickly wanted to take some pictures. The security immediately said no but we said we can be very quick with it. So he called the big boss and gave the phone to my mom. Mom did a few “ya pak… just a few pictures, it’ll be quick… okay makasih pak”. And then we lliterally only got 30 minutes to shoot as much as we could.
Miana quickly got changed and Tijs and I scanned the place to get the best lighting/corners to get the most out of it. In all honesty, this location was even better than the skate park and the sun came out just during golden hour to make it even better! Miana got onto her skateboard whilst wearing the Sora Set and suddenly everything fell into place! The colors were popping perfectly, Miana and Tijs did their thing with ease but time was ticking cause the security kept on asking when we were gonna leave.
As we made the last few shots a rainbow appeared in the sky and that made it a wrap.
We headed to a beach warung, ordered some drinks and enjoyed the sunset. We were all stunned with how crazy the day turned out but it ended so beautifully and the pictures turned out amazing. I guess you really do gotta trust the process, and maybe you gotta go through some unexpected turns, only to find yourself somewhere even better.
I truly had the most amazing people around me that made it all possible.
After the rain, there’s always sunshine!
