The three yoga shoots we had over the past weeks have been a blast. We live in Sydhavn, which is sometimes described as the Danish Venice, because of the channels between the houses and the general proximity to water. It's perfect location to meet with yogis and have an urban photoshoot - of course during sunrise, cause we like to torture ourselves.
The April weather hit us with close to zero degrees and even a bit of snow, but our models rocked so hard and luckily had brought appropriate coats!
I've never done yoga, I can cross my legs with the feet up, but that's it, can't touch my toes when standing, nothing.
The yogis we had in front of our cameras had some outstanding strength, flexibility and control of their body that can only leave any viewer in awe. During shoot 2, we noticed some returning poses, but we're still far from evaluating what's a "real pose" or what comes out of a random yoga pose generator.
What we did love is that we could tell our models things like:
The left leg a little higher
and they could remodel their pose quickly and hold it there, seemingly effortlessly, even though they currently were in a handstand.
Since the shoots were at sunrise, we barely had random observers.
Get an insight into the shoots by watching this short video we made:
Yoga and Body Positivity
It's become a bad meme that a picture is shared with the caption:
Thank god for yoga pants
and in a way mock yoga as an "women sport", reducing it to appearance. To us, yoga is a very body positive mix between sport and meditation, that also looks incredible. It's more of a celebration of the body, rather than a shallow exhibition.
Photographing yogis is fantastic, and tight clothes actually make the silhouttes stick out and makes sure the poses are visible. It's a bit like photographing dancers or fitness models that have a lot of control and can maintain a lot of tension, just upside down or with limbs going into unexpected directions.
Obviously, we can only recommend the classes of our amazing models (they're all yoga instructors), we'll link them in the bottom of the post, please go check them out!
As lenses we used were anything between 24mm and 85mm, mostly sticking to shorter focal lengths to have the flexibility to frame our shots, stay close to the model and to fit especially the legs that often were in a split, into the shot.
I've used my 35mm for all shoots and I'm really happy how well you can fit the models' full total into the frame and have some fitting compositions. Longer focal lenghts can be beneficial when you want to compress something on your locaion into the background, but for interesting perspectives and a clear separation from model to background, 35mm and 50mm have worked really well for us.
Jessie
Check out Jessie's Instagram account here.
Camilla
Check out Camilla's Instagram account here
Kirstine
Check out Kirstine's Instagram account here
Are you an athlete or dancer and would like to get some epic photos of yourself, make sure to reach out to us!