I love Puerto Rico because of the convenience of the island, which I think plays a major factor in deciding which island to visit, because in the end, they are all the same sand and palm trees. I am a lot more familiar with parts of Puerto Rico the more I visit, and this was my second trip back to Luquillo Beach for a model shoot. It’s about a 40 minute drive from San Juan which means less tourists and more locals and less crowded. The second location was in Hotel El Convento in Old San Juan.

This was my first shoot with my Pocket Wizard Plus II and Canon Speedlite, which was setup on the beach with a small light stand. I only used the fill flash for the black swimwear, as I still do not like artificial light. The beach shots were shot with a Canon 24-70mm with a circular polarizer to darken the sky and minimize water reflection.

Jestina is one of the easiest models to work with and has a lot of experience. My style for the beach shoot was a mix of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit and black & white glamour nudes. She had no problems running around splashing in the water completely bare in front of local people. That’s what I call professional.

One great thing about island countries is that all cars including rentals are manual transmission only. That means any car I rent will be a fun driving experience through the curvy, narrow, scenic, aggressive, and dangerous roads across the island. I decided to rent a Nissan Frontier pickup truck for this trip with two models. Our destination, Barahona, was a 6 hour drive from the airport, far away from all resorts and toursists. It was undeniably one of the best drives of my life. Weaving in and out of the opposite side of traffic to pass slower cars, crawling through massive speed bumps that would otherwise destroy your axle over 10mph, climbing up and down hills in local towns, passing bullet-ridden road signs, enjoying the beautiful coastal scenery, two girls in bikinis trying to get a tan through the windows.

The hotel we stayed at was Casa Bonita in Barahona. The view was magnificant, the location was quiet, surrounded only by locals. We drove around the area exploring for locations to shoot and found more than enough places with little to no people. One of the beaches had a perfect inlet of calm, shallow water, with the exception of sharp and painful pebbles.

My outdoor style is usually inspired by Sports Illustrated swimsuit photos. They are clean, bright, and soft tones, with limited dynamic range. My two main lens for otudoors is usually the 24-70mm and 70-200mm, and I don’t use fill-flash since I can’t carry studio strobes with me. Indoor dimly lit photos are always taken with prime lens – the only way to capture enough light. Make sure you take a lot of photos while shooting with primes wide open, as there is always a chance of your photos being misfocused due to the low light, and you won’t find out until you view it on a computer.

Click on the panoramic photo to download full-res version. These were taken from the room balcony.

Yet another beach set, same secret location. This was also taken with a portable AlienBee strobe, B400 with umbrella. With so much space on a beach, I always try to shoot with 70-200mm. If I had a 300-400 I might even use that. The more telephoto, the better for models, the more proportionate. The weather was also perfect for the first set. Dark storm clouds adds a lot more dramatic than a clear, solid background color. The bright orange lighting is when the sun peaked through, a completely different mood.