Key West Photo Shoot - Michael Allen Photography

Key West Photo Shoot - Michael Allen Photography - Southern Bride Magazine

Earlier this year the editors at Southern Bride flew us all down to Key West for a major fashion photo shoot on Duck Key. Flying with 250 pounds of photo gear has it's challenges, but with our Media Pass the airlines made accommodations and we got to Miami in record time. Getting a large rental car from the airport was also a challenge, as the rental agents all spoke fluent Cuban, but after a while we figured out how to communicate that we needed room for lots of gear. The drive down from Miami was supposed to take about 1.5 hours to our first destination, but due to Islamorada having a festival that had traffic to a standstill for hours turned our 2 hour drive into a 6 hour drive. But in the Keys we were simply happy and no challenge seemed to dampen our spirits. When we finally got to our first location, we were scouting at last light, almost dark, so that was another challenge trying to find just the right spots for the best light. Did I mention we had a few umbrella drinks in our hands, so we were having fun. We met with the entire crew, about 15 of us, and settled in for the night. Early the next morning we woke up to a monsoon rainstorm, with dark clouds and wind, heavy rains to say the least. Ah, that did delay us for a couple of hours, but we managed to shoot in some covered areas that no one would ever know about pouring down rain in the background. Our first day was a bit overcast, but by the afternoon we did see some sunshine, The first day of the shoot was a success! The rest of the shoot went like clockwork for the next few days. Our hosts in the Keys included the resort management team and the Key West Visitors Bureau. We were treated like celebrities the entire week, and our stay in Key West for the last 2 days was more like a vacation than work. Our stay on Sunset Key was over the top. (We kept hoping we would run into the crew of Bloodline, but never saw any of them.) Our models were Merritt and Josh, we've worked with them before and the editors flew them in from New York just for the shoot. They both did a killer job even though they thought we were rained out the first day. Here's a few images from the Southern Bride blog that just posted. Be sure to pick up a copy of the new issue that just hit newsstands the other day. We shot over 5000 photos, so we will be posting the rest of this year as we have time. Here's the very first shot of the rainy morning. (I love it when the first shot is just amazing!)