The Shu QI Shoot.

I was off to Hong Kong to shoot Taiwanese star Shu Qi again for a cover story after the call came in to put it together. We had worked in Beijing on a movie 'Beijing Rocks ' and she was real easy to work with. She was always nice and professional which made life easy. I got some jewelry from friends at Cartier, some clothes from the stylist and we were all set for the cover story. 

She walked into the Grand Hyatt suite all happy and started with her makeup and hair. It was nice chatting with her again after a while and also explained to her what I wanted.

My main shot was of her in the master bedroom. We tried shooting her lying around in bed but felt it was the usual shot. So I suggested to her to jump on the bed, an inspiration maybe from the famous Beatles shot I remembered. She went for it and had so much fun doing it! We felt we got it.

I then took her out into the Grand Hyatt garden after we did the shoot in the hotel suite just to get some loose daylight and playful shots. There's something about hand holding a camera without lights that allows me to get these natural playful shots of her which she had fun acting it out for just a different look for the feature we were doing. Both the subject and photographer feel liberated shooting in daylight with a tripod and lights.

All I can say is that you can never get a bad shot of Shu Qi!!! She just turns it on when the camera points at her. She also happens to have a great work ethic.

Photo : Shot with tungsten film and so the blue tint. Shot with a 80mm f2.8 lens and lit with a 1K strobe that was bounced on the ceiling at 1/500 sec.

Photo : @russel wong