George Kamper Shoots Tennis Star Caroline Wozniacki for The Sunday Times Magazine-London

I was excited to have the opportunity to photograph Caroline Wozniacki! I love the game of tennis and appreciate the discipline it takes to play any professional level sport. Caroline was an amazing person to photograph. As you’ll read below, we had very little time to achieve our seven shots at two locations. Caroline stepped up and gave us what we needed almost immediately! She knows what it takes to be a pro and I’m sure she’ll be #1 in the world again soon! Oh, and did I tell you she’s drop dead gorgeous!? I was also very happy to have had the opportunity to work with one of the distinguished editors from the London Times Magazine. I’ve been following their work and it’s always rewarding to see my work published internationally.

In our conversations, mostly via email, I was given a few of the parameters of the shoot. The magazine gave us roughly seven images they would like to have shot, three on a tennis court, the rest in and around a pool. The shoot would take place within a two hour time span, on Easter Sunday in Miami, with a internationally ranked tennis star avoiding paparazzi and a writer who was being dispatched from London to interview Caroline immediately following our shoot. Additionally and quite common when working on editorials, there was a very tight budget.

Along the way, we were sent a few sketches and a few photos to give us an idea of articles that had been published prior, as well as overall direction regarding wardrobe.

The first challenge we had to overcome were the locations. We needed an isolated tennis court so we could set up and control the lighting as well as have Caroline in a space she felt comfortable in, and that was away from onlookers.

We also needed a pool area where we could control and secure privacy and that was very close to the first location. We didn’t have a lot of time for changing locations or money for paying location fees, motor-homes, etc... We also didn’t have time for moving in and out of hotels on Easter Sunday.

We were very fortunate to have use of our Make Up artist’s residence and pool in South Beach. It worked out that it was only a few blocks away from a friend of her hubby’s, who had a tennis court! We were only allowed 2 hours for this shoot in total, as Caroline needed to be interviewed and catch a flight the same afternoon!

A couple of additional challenges we had to overcome included our original wardrobe stylist finding out that after she had accepted this project and spoken to the editor, received last minute notification that she had two weeks to move out of her home. The same week of our shoot! Sometimes what feels like a bad situation can turn into an opportunity. I had been talking about and researching a new wardrobe stylist that was doing great work so fortunately and with the help of her Agent she was able to jump in and not skip a beat. I greatly appreciate both of you- Katherine Lande, an amazing wardrobe stylist as well as her agent and friend, Carole Ann Belle of Belle & Co.

I also have to give a great big Thank you to Leslie Munsell, our go to make up stylist. She not only hooked us up with the locations, but when the hair artist showed up late, Leslie stepped in and took care of things! Thank you Leslie, you somehow manage to make my life better on every shoot!

I rely on a top team of professionals for both my Advertising as well as my editorial work. I know and appreciate that every time we do an editorial, they are all kicking in part of their well-deserved fees to help me out on a shoot that has a challenging budget and usually difficult timing!

You can catch the Behind the Scenes video and credits below.

Many thanks to Christine Craig, my retoucher and editor, for always doing amazing work!

Behind the Scenes!