Home » Blog » Behind the Scenes Band Portrait with 'Cafe Largo' on a Wet Scottish Beach in Winter, by Photographer Kim Ayres - 3 min read

Behind the Scenes Band Portrait with 'Cafe Largo' on a Wet Scottish Beach in Winter, by Photographer Kim Ayres

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Café Largo were a fun-loving covers band with a latin-jazzy feel, and needed a promotional photo.

Ideas were bounced back and forth and the one that grabbed my attention and enthusiasm the most involved shooting a scene on the beach, with a slight nod towards Jack Vettriano style paintings.

Of course outdoor shots are notoriously difficult to set up in Scotland, especially in Winter, and even more so because of the sheer number of wild, wet and stormy days we'd been having over the previous weeks. So looking for a dry day when everyone would be available had me fearful it could have been May the following year before we'd be able to go ahead.

However, we provisionally set a date and amazingly, in a week full of even wilder, wetter and stormier weather than usual, it turned out to be the only dry day.

We set off for a small beach at Mossyard, near Gatehouse of Fleet, which we had to ourselves for the morning - apart from one woman walking her dog who hurried past and didn't ask what we were up to.

Although it wasn't raining, it wasn't sunny and it wasn't particularly warm either. So I did all the test shots with everyone still wrapped up in coats and scarves, and it was only when I was pretty sure of my composition and lighting set up did we move everything into place and do the actual shoot.

Test shot for Cafe Largo

While I would love to say it was planned this way, the reality is we were extremely lucky with the tides.

Just as we were ready to do the shoot for real the water had dropped back to reveal a flatter area of sand, that was still damp enough to create partial reflections of the band.

It did mean the sand was particularly soft, though, and to be honest, I don't think Ruth's shoes ever recovered (if you look closely, you can see her foot sinking in)

Cafe Largo

Suspecting it might be a good opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes video, I took my old camera along and thrust it into the hands of Liz, the wife of Alex - the waiter in the photo.

She very kindly shot some footage for me which I then edited down to 2 minute video, overlaid with "La Bamba" performed by Café Largo themselves. It's quite fun and really does give a good sense of the experience of the photo shoot.

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Kim Ayres is now doing a weekly video podcast on Facebook Live at 7.30pm (UK time) every Tuesday evening, called "Understanding Photography with Kim Ayres"

A Facebook group of the same name has been set up (copy and paste it into FB search) where people can leave photos for critique and ask any photography-related questions (please note glamour, erotic, adult images are not suitable for that forum), and he will answer them in the next podcast.

If this is something you are interested in, please head over to
https://www.facebook.com/groups/240842990388815/
and tune in on Tuesday evenings.

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You can find Kim on other social media outlets here:

Website I Facebook I Instagram I LinkedIn I Personal Blog

YouTube channel is youtube.com/kimayres

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