Bikram Yoga! It's HOT!!!

My friend Maura has been dreaming of opening a yoga studio in Chicago for a few years now, and it's finally come true! Bikram Yoga Chicago South Loop opened its' doors today, and had a special VIP night last evening for friends to preview. I had been asking Maura if I could photograph her doing yoga a few times, and she invited me to capture the event. I brought a fellow photographer, Mac Petras, to help. The thing about bikram yoga is that it's done in a hot room, at 105 degrees. Not only were their physical challenges, but equipment issues as well.

Since this was a special event for Maura, I wanted to try a few things to capture not only photographs, but video and timelapse as well. We put our camera in ziplock bags and stuck them in the hot room about 40 minutes before the event so that the cameras would get acclimated to the room. Seemed to work fine, as we didn't have any fogging issues, only sweat pouring, and we weren't even working out. I only did one lens change, and stepped out of the room to do that and didn't have any issues with fogging. I'm still previewing the pics, and grabbed a bunch of favorites and whipped out a few time lapse sequences and video. One of the GoPro cameras was mounted upside-down, and attached to a lawn sprinkler timer and Gorrillapod to get a slow panning time lapse of one pic every 2 seconds. Then upload to Animoto,and Viola! Just love how this service takes the effort out of creating interesting fusion sequences. Enjoy!

Click below to preview video: