Bendable Beauty

I love doing Yogatography because it is fascinating and so very artistic seeing the limitless ways a body expresses itself.  I get to just go along for the ride and capture the essence of the mind, body, and spiritual experience.  Recently I got to shoot with Kiki Attonito, one of my wife’s yoga students, who is beautifully fierce on her mat and wanted to get some shots that capture her at her physical best.  I got about 700 shots because I got to watch her work her spineless wizardry and I had no idea what I was eventually going to get.  I just wanted to make sure that whoever saw these photos could feel her ferocity and grace at first glance.

Thankfully I had my wife Shanté the Yoga instructor there as a creative director.  She was able to support both of us with the best way to capture Kiki’s bendiness, as well as be my model for test shots for exposure...

As thorough as this shoot was, I was sweating profusely throughout because Kiki was giving her all with beautiful poses but with our limited space I was clearly missing a lot of shots because of my limitations in getting good angles and not much backdrop to work with.  Here are some of my misses or great poses but not great angles…

We eventually got into a rhythm and I got the idea during to shoot to capture the evolution of each pose and somehow I can put them together artistically.

I also began to see that if I can somehow combine the sequence of some of her poses that could be a cool artistic shot... if I can get it to work...  

Overall the shoot was about 700 shots, so it is a good thing that my Yoga wife was there for input on the peak of each pose and support me in what Kiki was looking for.  Here are a few final products!

Overall Kiki was just awesome to work with.  She was simply incredible on her mat, she was very patient as we worked out the shot with our limited space, and she has loads of energy and stamina.  I am now looking forward to see where my "Yogatography" takes me next, thank you Kiki!