HBA-Indigo Bangkok

In mid April, our team was invited by HBA to shoot one of their latest designs: Hotel Indigo Bangkok. Coincidentally, it was the Thai New Year also known as the Songkran. The people splashed water to celebrate their traditional start of the year and walked the streets with water pistols in hand. The city was full of a festive atmosphere.

 On the second day, we spent the morning doing a recce, picking shooting angles and sending them to client to choose the angles they considered the best. On this occasion, the hotel had previously invited another photographer to shoot for them before us and the client wanted us to shoot different angles. So after reviewing the photos they already had we chose different angles.

 With the New Year came a plethora of tourists meaning we had to choose a good time to shoot, especially in lobby, the restaurant and the exterior while not affecting the hotel’s business. Inevitably this caused issues such as when we shot the rooftop swimming pool, we wanted to capture a dusk mood but this was the busiest time in that area so in the end we had to compound sections together with Photoshop.

The funniest incident was when we shot the exterior, it was the last day of Songkran and everyone had tried their best to splash us with water! The camera once set up can’t be moved as it’s bad for layering when we doing the retouching. When people on the street looked at you with a lovely face, you knew something terrible was about to happen. You could not shout “NO!” because the splashing is seen as blessing. We used my backpack to cover the camera when we were not shooting. At the end of this shot I had been splashed three times while Scott was splashed only twice thankfully the camera survived!

Thanks to everyone who offered their kind help during the shoot, thank you to the hotel Indigo and HBA crew. If you are going to travel in Thailand, I highly recommend you to try the restaurant in Indigo. Here are the photos we shot this time!  

今年四月中旬，我们团队受到HBA邀约去曼谷帮他们拍摄他们新设计的INDIGO酒店。碰巧的是，当我们抵达曼谷的时候，正好是泰国的新年，也是所谓的”泼水节”。整个城市充满了过节的气氛，也看到路上的行人都拿著水枪。

到达的第二天，我们花了一整个上午去踩点，选角度。最后把照片发给客户，让他们选择他们满意的角度。我们这次拍照遇到一个难题。这个酒店之前已经有请过另外一个摄影师拍过一系列的照片，客户那边希望看到不一样的角度。所以我们在选角度的时候就要对着之前摄影师的照片，去寻找不同的角度，达到客户的需求。

我们拍摄的那几天，刚好是他们的假期，所以游客还是挺多的。我们在拍摄大堂，餐厅，或是酒店外景的时候，都必须选好时间，在不影响酒店做生意的情况下拍摄。不过有时候麻烦还是难以避免，当我们在拍游泳池时，那是个露天的泳池，我们想要拍到黄昏的感觉，可刚好那个时间段人特别多。最后我们就用后期把不同可用区域给拼接起来。

我们遇到最好玩的是，当我们在拍外景照时，当天是最后一天泼水节。全城的人都卯尽全力地泼水！拍摄过程中，我们机位一架设好，就不能再移动到相机了，不然做后期时我们的图层就很难对上。但是街上的人又都是虎视眈眈，而且你还不能跟他们说不泼你，因为这是人家帮你祈福的一种方式。当下Scott就拿著我的背包，在没拍照的时候就把相机套著。最后我被泼了三次，Scott被泼了两次，然而相机安然无恙！

最后还是要感谢所有这次拍摄中给予我们帮助的酒店和HBA的每一个人！如果你有机会去曼谷的话，一定要去INDIGO的餐厅试试。很推荐他们的餐点！以下是我们这次的照片！