Sunseeker Cruise to Careyes

Maybe I shouldn’t have declared to the bloggy world that I will work solely for the sake of adventure ‘cos the offers are flowing thick and fast while the rent remains upaid!

Last weekend was a ripper, though. I’m a sailor by natural inclination not a stink-boater but it’s been so long since I had any high-seas adventures that this was not one I could refuse. Any excuse to go boating.

The vessel was a humungous 82′ Sunseeker powerboat called ‘Machiavelli’ and the trip was from Puerto Vallarta down the Jalisco coast to Careyes and back. The purpose was to document in photos the trip with a view to publishing the story in a soon-to-be-released magazine called ‘Costa Vallarta’.

The storyline was of three couples ‘getting away’ from Vallarta and at a rate of US$4500/day I guess the couples were presumed to be fairly well off. The people involved were mostly French with a Canadian and a Brit thrown in for good measure. (You could tell they were French because the word ‘rabbit’ was never mentioned once during the 3 day voyage.)

The trip was organised by John who runs the Producciones Viva empire http://www.virtualvallarta.com/ and who will be responsible for the new mag. As such, the trip was organized on the basis of an ‘intercambio‘ or exchange, whereby John fills pages of his magazine with an attractive enticing story in exchange for advertising space for the boat’s charter business. Free and willing models/subjects; free and willing photographer and a very expensive mobile platform for the exercise.

Somewhere down the line though the purpose of the exercise got lost in translation and we ended up being catered to in casual, paper plate/plastic fork style which needless to say didn’t make my job any easier (or tastier). So there’s a paucity of table-top settings in the photo line-up but plenty of others. http://www.callananphoto.com/machiavelli/

Catherine (the token Pom but fluently in French) was beautifully pregnant and as always the consumate model. Her husband Etienne did his best to stay as sunburned as possible for the duration of the cruise (I suspect as a means of escaping the camera’s probing lens). John and Florencia were more than happy being host and hostess with nothing much more on their agenda other than having a good time, and Christian and Corinne, both hard-working parents also enjoyed the escape from everyday reality. All three pairs were in love and very comfortable in present company which helps when trying to photograph happy couples enjoying themselves, ‘cos they are and don’t need to bung it on for the camera.

The passage down the coast traverses open, undeveloped coastline without many photogenic features but thankfully clouds always provided some interest to otherwise plain scenes, Cabo Corrientes being an obvious exception.

The Careyes coast during the dry winter months is less obliging; dry scrubland is hard to translate visually into a paradisical scenario (even with Photoshop!). Tight or otherwise selective crops on landscaped backgrounds or waiting for late golden light was the only way to make the stage as ‘luxurious’ as the story demanded.

But most of the time, while we weren’t trying to get specific shots I just shot people doing what a group of friends do on a big boat in a beautiful place; enjoying themselves, relaxing and righting it all off as a business expense. Viva el intercambio!