Night Time Underwater Mermaid Photoshoot

Mermaid Ondine reports:

Avid followers of the Merlesque Twitter feed (@GrumpyMermaid) might have seen that last Monday evening, our mermaids were tweeting live from a night-time underwater photoshoot. Our photographer was the talented Vanessa Mills, who also shot our last underwater photoshoot. For this shoot she had a beautiful vision of mermaids swimming in moonlit waters, so the shoot took place at night, under the cover of darkness. It was pretty magical - we can't wait to share the photos with you.

Lorelei silhouetted against the pool

We travelled over to the Hydro Active Scuba pool in Bedfordshire. It's a great pool, with good depth - and even better, it's heated. This proved to be extra important on this particular shoot, as we had to have the doors open to the outside world in order to achieve the beautiful moonlight effect;
it was pretty cold! We quickly discovered that the trick to keeping warm was minimising exposure to the cold air, by remaining submerged up to our chins... all evening.

Mermaids don't have roadies, but we do have streamies - and streamies Sophie and Ian more than proved their worth at the shoot. From helping with last-minute costume alterations in the dark, to filming clips of swimming mermaids, to updating our Twitter feed for us (damp mermaids and electronic equipment do not mix!) they were absolutely brilliant - thanks for all your help guys.

Mermaid Lorelei was the first guinea pig (or fish) in front of the camera, and nobly soldiered on as the lighting was adjusted and readjusted.  We each took some individual shots, and then brave pool owner Craig joined us in the pool in full scuba gear for a group photo! Finally, we finished off the evening with a quick filming session - we didn't leave until around 11 o'clock, so it was a very long shoot, and by the time we finished, all three mermaids had terrifyingly red vampire eyes from the chlorine - as you can see from the picture opposite.

I have to confess to being the designated clumsy mermaid of the evening, as I managed to hit my head on the ladder we place over the pool to hang lights off. I was fine at the time, but mid-morning the next day started getting very headachey... turns out I had a mild concussion! So be careful out there, mermaids and mermen.

Ondine x

Very tired mermaids at the end of the shoot