Client Stories | The Strand Cruise | Commercial Hospitality Photography and Video Production | Myanmar

In March, 2018 I was contacted by Cecile from GCP Hospitality as she was looking for a photographer and videographer to shoot The Strand Cruise which travels between Bagan and Mandalay in Myanmar.

The journey between Bagan and Mandalay would be 4 days and as there was a lot to cover I decided to team up with my colleague Colin Elphick who was living in Vietnam at the time.

After a few emails back and forth and a conference call with Cecile everything was looking good but Cecile came back to us with news that the project had been put on hold until the next cruise season at end of the year.

Cecile was in touch again in December and she was keen to go ahead. By this time though Colin had moved back to Sydney but he was keen to come out to Myanmar for the shoot so we moved ahead.

The brief for the stills was to shoot 20 images including one of each room type and the ships restaurant, the bar, it’s sundeck, some service images and aerial images of the ship sailing.

For the video Cecile wanted a 2 minute video focusing on the facilities and services of the cruise and also the destinations that we would visit along the way.

The cruise would be sailing with real guests onboard and Cecile had arranged a couple whom we would have access to for filming some of the excursions. Cecile also arranged filming and drone permits for Bagan.

We prepared an initial script but we kept it pretty loose with a lot of room for movement as we couldn’t be sure exactly what we would come across during our excursions.

On arrival in Bagan we spent the morning scouting the ship and its facilities and then we spent the afternoon scouting the temples of Bagan to work out the best locations to shoot our location footage the following day. Day 1 and day 4 involved a lot of excursions so we decided that I would dedicate day 2 and day 3 to stills photography so that Colin and I could work on the film together in the key locations of Bagan on the first day and Mandalay and Mingun on the final day.

The following morning we were up early and on location before sunrise to shoot the temples and we then we spent the day shooting around the UNESCO World Heritage site.

On day 02 Colin continued with the video and Cecile and I worked on the stills together. One difficulty that we had was that as the boat was moving the sun direction was changing constantly and so was my background but this actually turned into an advantage in the end as it allowed me plenty of lighting and background options to choose from in post production.

Cecile had brought along plenty of props so as that she could style the rooms and she turned out to be an excellent stylist. It’s amazing what a few props can do liven up a living space and I recommend that all hospitality clients consider taking a little extra time to style their images as the before and after results speak for themselves.

It’s not just the props that makes an image though as sometimes the entire furniture needs to be rearranged so that the eye flows effortlessly through the image. Each location is prepared before we arrive on location and the composition is usually more or less decided during scouting but it is fine tuned on arrival. The camera is then locked off on a tripod and it is controlled remotely via either my iPad or my laptop until the end of the shoot. We then walk around the space with the iPad and rearrange the furniture so that it looks its best from the camera’s point of view.

On a normal day the tables and couches of the ships sundeck are set up in a way that allows large groups to sit around and have a meal together but the large couches blocked up my image so we moved them out of frame and arranged the foreground with three smaller tables. The timing of each shot is also thought about very carefully and this image was taken in the mid morning while the guests were partaking in a cooking lesson in the ships restaurant.

Once the furniture is rearranged I start lighting the image. In our reception image I shot many frames with the lights in my frame but I moved them around the room to light different areas and then I removed them in post production by compositing the images together.

In this case after taking my first frames of the receptionist I then moved my lights so as to light the reception desk. Afterwards I moved the lights to light the left hand side of the image. From there I took a series of bracketed images without flash and I used these to bring detail back into the windows and any areas where the flash is a little too strong. The final step in post production is to remove any distracting elements such as air vents, lights and sprinklers on the roof and to correct the verticals.

The shooting process takes about an hour per image and I encourage my clients to shoot no more than 10 images per day so that we can shoot each image in the best possible light. Shooting 10 final images per day usually allows for some spare time to reshoot some images if required as well.

During the The Strand Cruise shoot we reshot the decking shot as after we packed everything up I realised that I had forgotten to take a shot with the blue mosquito net down so that I had a clean roof line to work with and could remove the net in post production. We decided to reshoot the same setup in the afternoon (from the opposite angle so that the sun was setting in the background) but by this time we were coming into Mandalay and the background was really busy. The wide shot didn’t have the same appeal so we also shot a tighter version with the background out of focus and I made sure to get one wide shot with the net rolled up and one shot with it rolled down so that I could use them to retouch the shot that we had taken earlier that morning. In post production I was able to flip and combine the two images that we took in the afternoon and use them to seamlessly remove the net in the shot that we had done in the morning.

One of the biggest challenges that we had with both the stills and the video was with our drone shots. We had my Mavic Pro 2 with us on the shoot but we didn’t bring a backup drone as the client had limited us to 25KG excess baggage and this meant that we had to leave some equipment behind. We ended up regretting this though!

Colin shot some incredible drone footage of Bagan on the first two mornings and then we had dedicated the afternoon of my first day of stills shooting to shoot aerial stills and video. The problem though was that the cruise ship was moving and this would mean a difficult take off and landing. We had hoped to take off from the roof of the ship but unfortunately the magnetic interference from the ships antenna was too strong and the drone would not take off. The only spot that we could get signal to take off was from the sundeck at the ships stern and we could not stop the ship to take off.

We attempted the take off regardless and we instantly regretted this as the drone clipped the railing surrounding the sundeck on take off. Thankfully though it did not crash and we were able to get our first shots of the cruise ship sailing at sunset. Landing the drone was just as difficult as Colin had to bring it down slowly ahead of me so that I could catch it as the boat caught up to it and then quickly shut the motors off by turning it upside down.

The ship docked for the evening shortly after sunset and Cecile asked it we could try a shot of the ship at dusk with the lights on so we had the staff go around the ship and turn on as many lights as they could and then we prepared for take off. The take off went smoothly from the docked ship and we set the ISO to 400 and the aperture of the camera to f/2.8 and found our composition. We took a number of long exposures and hoped that we would get lucky with a shot where both the drone stayed completely still during the multi second exposure and the cruise ship didn’t drift in the water. Many of the files had some movement in them but we got lucky and the below 3 second exposure was pin sharp.

The next morning things took a turn for the worse as Colin was up early to shoot some aerial footage of the ship sailing. He was attempting to take off as I finished my sundeck shot and the drone would not take off. The motors would start but each time he attempted to take off it would rise a few centimetres off the ground and the motors would cut out. We thought it might have been due to the fact that the drone had clipped the railing during take off the previous evening so Colin went to change the propellers.

Twenty minutes later he came back to me with bad news. After changing the propellers he had managed to get the drone in the air but it only made it a few meters before the motors once again cut out and the drone disappeared into the Mekong River. It was never to be seen again!

The ships captain offered to turn the boat around and look for it but the chances of finding it where slim to none so we pushed on. We still needed drone shots so we did a quick search online and we found a store in Yangon selling the Mavic Pro 2. We organised quick payment and had the drone shipped to Mandalay so that we would have it by the following morning.

Over days 02 and 03 Colin had shot stunning footage of the chef, the restaurant, the rooms and some beautiful images during the horse and cart excursion at Ava. We had reserved the final afternoon for aerials so he wanted to stay on the boat and perfect some his service shots and Tuan An and I headed out on the day’s excursions alone.

Our first stop was the U-Bein bridge which I had visited previously and we arrived early to capture some scenics. The couple then joined me and I shot a sequence of them walking on the bridge. From there we moved onto Mahumuni temple where I had to don a traditional Longyi to visit some areas and I shot lot’s of details of the temples beautiful inscriptions. We then moved to Kuthodaw Pagoda where my best shot happened as some children serendipitously ran through the back of my frame as I was preparing I was preparing for another and it turned out to be a really strong shot.

We headed back to the boat at midday and then we sailed to Mingun for the final excursions to the white Hsin Phyume pagoda and the nearby Mingun Pahtodawgyi unfinished pagoda. At Hsin Phyume I got lucky as I found a monk resting at the top of a stairway leading up to the pagoda so I shot a quick tracking shot through the stairwell leading up to him and before he moved on I crept up the stairs to take a second shot of the temple stupa with his silhouette in the foreground. At the unfinished pagoda I had to contend with a busload of tourists who arrived and stood in my frame at just the wrong moment but I got my shots and we headed back to the boat.

Colin and I teamed up again to shoot the drone shots but this time we had the ships speed boat take us to shore a few kilometers ahead of the boat. Our plan was fly a full 30 minute flight from the shore and then bring the drone back and catch up via the speedboat so that we could get another flight in before the ship arrived in Mandalay. The first flight went well and we captured a fantastic aerial of the unfinished pagoda and then a some lovely aerial stills and video shots of the pool.

We landed the drone and chased after the cruise ship and we were just catching up when disaster struck again as the speed boats motor came to sputtering halt as some rubbish had got stuck in the motor. It was the 14th February and Colin and I couldn’t stop laughing at the absurdity that we were stuck in a boat watching the sunset together on Valentines Day. After about 20 or 30 mins though the driver got the boat going and we made our way back to Mandalay, it was too dark to do any more filming but I was able to get one final aerial after the sun had dipped below the horizon with a golden sky in the background.

A lot of things didn’t go our way and we learned an expensive lesson with the drone but despite all the challenges we were really happy with the result.