Barbara The Fashion Blogger | Underwater in Blue with Jummai Shaba, Tolu Ajayi, Deji Olatunde & Obijie Oru

4.12.15


As weird as it seems, my circles run across quite a lot of creativity cutting across music, fashion, beauty, branding, art, content creation, video production, photography etc. and there are times when all these come together to create such awesomeness that even we are astonished.

Such was the case with this underwater test shoot project that myself, Tolu Ajayi of Lucid Audiovisual, Deji Olatunde of Fotolighthouse Photography, Obijie Oru of Bygeoru and Jummai Shaba decided to execute on an utterly busy Saturday afternoon with the support of Trino Studios as the pool is in the studio. To show you how crazy how that Saturday was, I'll tell you what some of our schedules were:

- I had dropped my Dad on the mainland and needed to go pick him up at 4pm
- Jummai was red carpet host at Miss Nigeria and had to be there at 4pm
- Tolu Ajayi and the Trino studio guys needed to go visit a new born baby etc.

Oh, and we discovered these schedules at 1pm in the afternoon while the photography crew were still setting up. I'd literally re-ignited the fire of this shoot when I randomly said to Mr. Ajayi on the Friday before 'this our shoot eh, na wa for the tin sef' and he'd replied 'but why can't we do it tomorrow? What's stopping us? Let's even try and do something first and then we'll know what improvements need to be done'. 

We had no stylist, weren't sure if the studio was free, had no backup photographer, couldn't find the huge black backdrop, didn't have enough lights, I'd never been in the water past my waist before, Jummai's schedule was uncertain, I had not a single thing asides cream eyeshadow in my kit that was waterproof and the list goes on. Fast forward to Saturday afternoon at 1pm and we were all at Trino making sure we made it happen. And make it happen we did.




I discovered that my inability to swim or go under the water was borne more out of the fact that I was unable to open my eyes under it than anything as I could go under the water with the googles on. Jummai is a fish and was diving into the olympic depth side of the pool with no inhibitions wahtsoever while I could barely go past the 5ft level even though I'm way taller than 5ft. SMH.

Obijie was the hero of the day. We'd spoken for the first time ever on Friday night at about past 10pm and she had no idea what I looked like. She knew Jummai and had the perfect outfit for her. We met at 1pm on Saturday afternoon and after looking at me for a couple of minutes, she began cutting up some fabric while I did my makeup....normally. All the pieces of fabric she was cutting up created this awesome outfit which was perfect for the water. Have you checked out our mini fashion shoot before I entered the water?

why on earth do I look like a tall, graceful, super thin model here? 
Yes, that's us without Jummai who had to run off the minute she was out of the water.

We ended up creating all this awesome test images within just about 3 hours in all and I'm so looking forward to the next one and praying i get to learn how to swim before then so I can enter the water fully *grin*

What do you all think?
Barbara & 1923. Beauty & Life © . Theme by STS.