Lake Tahoe
Until recently I’d never traveled America. Somehow, other places and projects always seemed to come first. But, just like with Afrika Burn in March – James managed to convince me, last minute, to join him. Before I knew it, I’d finished the last of my summer shoots, and we’d packed up and waved goodbye to London. Five films later (James slept the whole flight over as always) and we landed in San Francisco and drove straight up to Reno, in Nevada, for the night to meet our wild / adorable burner friend, Bianca. The next 8 days was a Burning Man blur but after a good night’s sleep (plus several showers to get the dust out) we got back on the road and zipped south to Lake.
Lake Tahoe is STUNNING. It kind of reminded me of Lake Como. But rather than being surrounded by little Italian cafes and restaurants it is engulfed by mountains and forests (featuring the occasional Starbucks). It felt much more wild and just BIG. It took us hours to drive around the lake which sits on the Nevada and California border.
On our first morning we left our cute little cabin in the forest and headed to a beautiful spot up the road, Emerald Bay, to shoot content for our Hamilton Watch campaign.
I love this image as we got to play with foreground (the rocks), mid ground (James wearing the watch) and background (the water). I wanted to create a white bokeh effect in the water to give the feeling of movement. It took us a few goes to get it right as James had to really kick his legs in the water to create the right amount of splash. I’m really happy with how it turned out!
Our next shot involved me getting IN the water; which was VERY cold (especially as we were shooting at sunset to catch the golden light).
My favourite images often involve playing / manipulating light in interesting ways. In this, I love the sort of dappled, broken effect of James’ reflection in the moving water.
We spent the next day enjoying the sun by the lake. I’m a water baby so spent most of the day swimming / in a bikini.
Whereas James prefers dry land to swimming (he does not float) and spent most of the afternoon making up his own boulder problems and flaunting his back muscles.
If you’re visiting Lake Tahoe I really recommend sunset at Zephyr Point. It’s about a 10 minute walk from the road and the view over the lake is absolutely stunning – just be careful of the sheer drop!
