awards 2020
Nov 2020
DAVID MITCHENER
Australia
Title: Six Senses Con Dao, Ocean Villa Living Room
"This shot was taken as part of the initial pre opening shoot for Six Senses resorts, and the Indochina Land company, who built the resort.
It is an image of one of the gorgeous ocean front living rooms in one of the villas, which look out across their own private pools to the South China Sea.
Just a short flight over from Ho Chi Minh City, the beautiful tropical island of Con Dao is quite close to the equator - which made for a pretty hot and sticky couple of days shooting at the not quite finished resort.
For this particular shot, I wanted to be there very early in the morning, to capture the sunlight streaming into the space, as I felt the hard shadows would accentuate the simple clean lines of the architecture.
Not a lot of styling was required, as the fairly minimal, uncluttered design is an important part of the relaxed feel of the resort, and I wanted to stay true to that aspect of the design.
I used my trusty Phase One medium format camera for the shoot, which involved me dragging the large, heavy Pelican case up and down the long beach in the heat between shots as none of the paths were finished!
Needless to say, shooting resorts is rarely as glamorous as actually staying in them!"