KOH LIPE CASTAWAY RESORT PHOTOSHOOT: FATIMA BAKARE

I LOVE photographing abroad. I love photographing generally, but there’s something about being abroad and being somewhere new that makes it all the more exciting and inspiring. For this shoot, I had the pleasure of photographing someone that I have known for over twenty years. Fatima Bakare, a level-headed, gym bunny who shares my love for kizomba dancing not to mention a kick-ass solicitor-turned-barrister. We have travelled together quite a few times abroad, including a few days in Eindhoven in The Netherlands and Brussels, Belgium which I’ve blogged about previously but last year (2017) was our most ambitious trip lasting two weeks and spanning two countries, four different cities and an island.

At the time, I was living in Taiwan, so we decided to meet in Bangok, Thailand, where we attended Kizobasa, a kizomba dance festival. After a few days, we flew to Kuala Lumpa, Malaysia where we met our mutual friend Safrana. From there we headed to Penang, Malaysia for a wedding and sightseeing for a few days. We then, finally made our way over to the Thai island of Koh Lipe via coach, ferry, a little fisher boat.. as well as a motorbike taxi once we’d climbed out of said fisher boat into the ocean and walked up to the shore 🙂

We stayed at Castaway Resort Koh Lipe, which is a lovely resort made up of wooden houses that are dotted along the island’s Sunrise Beach. The views were amazing and literally a few meters from the water front. The resort is also in the middle of Thailand’s oldest National Marine park and surrounded by the best reefs, islands and beaches in Thailand. This was the location of the photoshoot.

On the day of the shoot, we had just come back from a snorkelling trip on a very overcast day. Fatima didn’t particularly want me to take her picture, you in the same way that most grooms don’t really want to have bride and groom portraits, but I was I really wanted to do a shoot and I can be persuasive, so she indulged me 🙂

I asked Fatima to change into something white and she pulled out this shirt dress which was just perfect. I think white always looks so classic in pictures and is very versatile against different backgrounds.

After a few shots inside and around our beach house, we continued a few steps further onto the beach front as the sun began to set which was a nice end to the portrait session.