During January 2012, AUP went down to Carmel to shoot some products on location. This is a written timeline from AUP Marketing Coordinator Scott Roeder.
4:00 am – Usually I would have trouble waking up at such an undesirable hour but the excitement building up had prepared me from the night before. Don’t get me wrong, the headquarters is an awesome place come to work everyday, but there’s nothing quite like going out to the beach every once in a while. I grab all my batteries off the chargers and head downstairs. All of the camera and lighting equipment is already lined up at my front door and ready for a final check before throwing it all in the car. My small car is already full of products that had been pulled from shipping the day before because there was no getting into the warehouse at 4am. I squeeze the camera equipment in the little room that was left and then head over to Nick Hollis’ house.
4:30 am – It is still dark as I arrive at Nick’s house with no signs of daylight anytime soon. However, this is good because we need to make it down to Carmel before the sunrise. We quickly transferred the camera equipment and products to Nick’s truck. Once the female models arrive we hit the road.
6:15 am – Before pulling arriving at the beach we get a call from the art director Chris letting us know that he is a few minutes behind us. We stop by a gas station and picked up a few snacks for the shoot.
6:30 am – We arrive at the beach to find that the parking lot is closed. Up the road a little bit was a shoulder wide enough for us to park on and only a short walk down to the beach. We pull up and begin unloading equipment for the first “early morning” shot. It is cold and the first shot only includes Nick so the ladies stay in the car for now.
7:00 am – My feet are freezing. Taking off my shoes was definitely a mistake. Everything is set up and Nick is suited up in a toasty new Lavacore long sleeve. Now we are playing around with a few different angles and poses. The scene looks cold but fueled by exploration and adventure. Being the first one out in the water is always a good feeling, especially when you are nice a warm in a Lavacore base-layer. You can see from the photo below how dark it was when we started shooting.
After dialing in the lighting and camera settings we end up with something like the photo below.
7:30 am – We are finished with the first shot and now its time to plan for the next one. While everybody is back at the truck changing into new gear for the next photo, I am down on the beach looking for our next location.
We wanted the look of water glistening and some lens flare which is a little hard when the sun is rising from the east and our ocean is on the west. Luckily for us there is a river area facing east and now that the sun has risen above the hills I see great potential. 
8:30 am – Now we had everybody outfitted with the proper gear and all of the camera/lighting equipment has been moved to our new location. This next shot is featuring the new AERIS A300AI dive computer. The light is awesome and we are working our way through this next set seamlessly.
10:00 am – Two shots down and three to go. We needed to get a “snorkeling” and a “scuba” shot for some mid-day Lavacore shots. We first shoot the scuba scene with the models up at the truck. We have them in their Lavacore tops overlooking the beach with their scuba gear prepped and ready to go. By now it is bright and sunny outside which delivers a great warm-sunny-beach feel. Chris describes the shot to the models in the photos below.
11:00 am – We follow that up with the Lavacore “snorkeling” lifestyle shots. Some shots are posed and some are walking down the beach with AERIS masks and snorkels.
11:45 am – Last on our list is to get a few Hollis sidemount photos. Just as we are setting up the equipment we get kicked off the beach for lacking a permit. I snap off a couple shots and then we rush to get packed up. We had already been very lucky up till now and didn’t want to push it.
12:00 pm – All packed up and heading out. I guess you can call that a wrap.
Look out for some shots from this photoshoot in some upcoming ads!
