Kaya on the sand

"I was a bit scared to sent Tom a message. But his works were so original and beautiful that I knew I would regret it if I didn’t. As usual, I showed a lot of friends and some family members Tom’s website. I was surprised that all of them told me to do it. I messaged back and forth with Tom and I could ask the questions I had.

The hardest challenge for me was to be comfortable with the fact that I was alone in this huge empty field. I had done a few nude shoots on location before. But normally I was there with a photographer.

I also decided to take a friend with me, who was also really excited to see how a drone shoot would work. I’m very grateful that she wanted to join, she helped out a lot with placing the 360 camera and handing me my clothes after posing for a while.

When we arrived in the area we wanted to shoot at, these doubts went away. It was a moment to do and not to think about it. It helped that Tom told some stories about shoot he had done where people would walk by and would react interested rather than shocked. What also helped me was that Tom and my friend were able to stand underneath a nearby tree.

I had no idea what to expect when I first laid there. Tom took me through the process. How I had to lay completely still at first and after the drone moved back down, take on different poses every few seconds. I just moved around with my body. Hoping there would be a few nice shots. And there were! Tom already showed me some of the pictures and I was very pleased! I never expected it to look so surreal.

I suspected that it would be incredibly cold, but the weather was perfect. It was a bit rainy, which made sure that there weren’t that many people. But it was pretty warm and even sunny at times. Tom brought some heat packs, those really helped to lay on when I was posing.

We also talked a bit about the technique and what you could do with it. Other than me laying down, we tried a bit of running. Which created completely different shots, and are amazing in film. When Tom asked me what else I wanted to try out, was the drone flying 360 degrees something I was really interested in. This was still really difficult since I had to stand in the middle of the circle the drone made. It was still really fun to try out, so I could also pose a bit standing up.

Tom asked me to do another shoot with him and if I could think about new ways to use this technology. I’m excited for our next shoot together!"