Bikini Blake Belladonna — Kelly Dun Photography

A beach film shoot to finish off summer!

This shoot has been in the works for quite some time. In the spring I really had the urge to do a beach film shoot. I wanted to recreate those sun drenched moments along the sand and surf. For this type of shoot I was really adamant about using Fuji Reala 500D cinema film. I'm grown quite fond of this film and really like its look despite the higher grain.

I collaborated with Lady Aurora and we decided on the swimsuit version Blake Belladonna look from a fan art. It definitely had the theme of fun in the sun. With the look down, the largest problem we encountered was finding a suitable location to shoot. While Northern California has many gorgeous natural places to visit, white sandy beaches with lots of sun aren't really amongst them!

After visiting many beaches practically all summer, we settled on Pomponio State Beach in Half Moon Bay, CA since it satisfied most of our requirements. It had clean white sand, clean water, reasonable amounts of sun, and not a lot of people.

We lucked out on the day of the shoot. It had recently rained so the sand was moist and there was no wind, so sand wasn't kicking up everywhere like last time. Also being so late in summer, the beach was practically empty since kids were back in school.

Leica M6 TTL, Summilux-M 35mm ASPH v1, Fuji Reala 500D film shot at ISO 500, C41+1 developed

While the shoot itself went off without a hitch, the development of the film didn't fare quite as well. The first batch of film that I developed turned out a bit color shifted and massively more grainy due to an error on my part. I had heated up the chemicals too much; specifically to 43C.

Most of the shots came out fine thanks to exposure bracketing though. Next time I would like to go towards the middle of summer rather than the tail end and enjoy the sun more!