Professional photography crew arrange fashion shoot in Brazilian wilderness
Colombian swimwear brand Baobab shoots collection in the middle of a national park in Northeastern Brazil with support from Story’s Spanish-speaking production crew
With its sweeping dunes and emerald-green lagoons, Lençois Marenhenses couldn’t be a more dramatic backdrop for a fashion shoot. Set within a national park, the dunes cover an immense 1,550 square kilometres, including along 70 kilometres of Brazil’s northeastern coast.
Sand stretches as far as the horizon in every direction, making the setting appear, at first glance, like a desert. But rain falls here in Brazil’s summer months, forming a series of lagoons that transform this desert-like setting into a unique landscape, like nowhere else on the planet.
The sheer beauty and remoteness of Lençois Marenhenses is what caught the eye of the creative team behind Colombian fashion brand
Baobab. Rooted in sustainable practices, Baobab bikinis and swimming costumes are made from recycled plastic, taken from the ocean and transformed into a high-tech fabric.
With such a strong connection to nature, Baobab saw Lençois Marenhenses as the perfect setting to shoot its latest swimwear collection. And that’s how the conversation with Story Productions started.
Our multilingual photography production crew includes native Spanish speakers, facilitating the communication with Baobab.
Their brief for us was to produce the fashion shoot, arranging a location scout, photography permit from the park authorities, a local crew (fixer, local producer, make-up and hair and a local guide) as well as transportation. Shooting in such a remote spot has huge cinematic potential, but also a whole set of production challenges, too.
The nearest city, São Luís, is 250 kilometres away, so the crew had to be driven to the location along with all the necessary equipment. We picked up Baobab’s photographer and photography assistant in São Paulo and flew together to São Luís from where the entire crew travelled by private van to the park.
Despite its remoteness, Lençois Marenhenses is a tourist attraction and so on-the-ground knowledge from a local Brazilian fixer as well as a local park guide helped us to plan in advance when and where to access the park. We needed to escape the tourists, but without getting too far from 4x4 vehicle access to make it mission impossible.
Images by Baobab Swim
After all, climbing sand dunes in the blazing sun, laden with equipment and changes of clothes, is no easy feat. The crew spent two days in the park and captured some stunning images, including drone imagery.
Story Productions has worked on a number of fashion shoots in recent years, usually with concrete rather than sand underfoot, in urban settings like the fashion shoot we produced in São Paulo for
Sik Silk with football star Dani Alves. That said, Story Productions also has plenty of experience filming in remote locations,
from the Amazon to secluded beaches on Brazil’s coast. So the same planning and production rules applied of being ready for all eventualities and having an experienced Brazilian crew on board.
Want to arrange a photography or film shoot in Brazil? We speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and German and pride ourselves in being the go-to production company in Brazil for helping foreigners.
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