Photographing Hiba and Shayan on their first visit to Romania
It looks like I am becoming preety popular in Lebanon as this was the third time someone from there wanted me to photograph them. This time it was Hiba and Shayan, a mother and daughter from Beirut. They were travelling to Amsterdam, but because they couldn't find any direct flights, they decided to stop in Bucharest and while here, get a photoshoot done.
They were only here for two days and because it was their first time in Bucharest, they wanted to see as much as possible, so in order to save time we agreed that we wouldn't go far away from the hotel where they were staying. Therefore I took them through the Old Town and showed them around a bit as we were shooting.
Shooting in the Old Town so early in the morning, around 9.00-10.00, was a good opportunity to get access to some cool little places which are usually buzzing with people. In our case all we had to worry about was the vans and small trucks making their way through some pretty narrow streets to make deliveries to the various shops, restaurants and cafés scattered around everywhere.
One place which they really liked was the Carturesti Library, which I shot in before, albeit only architectural photos, so I never thought of it as a great location for photographing people, but it was amazing and this is where I took some of my favourite photos from that day. Again, shooting there just after it opened helped, as this is another place frequented by a large number of people every day.
Before we met for the photoshoot, Hiba told me how much she loves nature and trees and that she knows Bucharest has some really nice parks, so for the second part of the photoshoot we went to the Cismigiu Gardens, which is one of the nicest parks in the city and the closest to the Old Town, which was perfect given the amount of time we had.
I guess it's pretty obvious in the next photographs, just how much they loved it!
