The shoot was scheduled for one week in June and the goal was to shoot the whole catalogue of fashion and lifestyle plus kite, surf and windsurf action – ideally in perfect turquoise waves and in the pro-model shorts and bikinis. Not many places are suitable for all this, but Barbados works! The Caribbean Island is more known for the months between December and March, but according to Brian, June is one of the windiest months. You can sail just in shorts no matter the time of the day and some of the beaches could make it into the top 10 in the world. When Barbados came up as an option, we searched the Internet for flights. A bit over 500€ per person, relatively cheap for long haul to the Caribbean as high season was over, bargain! It didn’t take long until 8 tickets were booked and Brian’s beachfront house right at the Silver Sands beach was reserved for us.
The shooting crew was a very mixed group of people from Germany, Austria, Spain, the UK and Guadeloupe. Chiemsee uses their team riders for photo shoots, so I met UK Kiteboarder Hannah Whiteley, as well as Max Mattissek, the innovative freestyler from Austria, plus the photo and video crew at Frankfurt Airport to prepare for the best part of travelling – the check-in. “Yes that bag is around 30 kgs. – no need to weigh it… oh you really have to? Uups 48 kgs. ? Something must be wrong with my scales…” In the end we got it all on the plane somehow and landed around 10 hours later on the Action Island.