For all those women out there who are suckers for finding “love” in a reality TV fantasy world, it’s that wonderful time of year again. We are in the midst of yet another steamy and intense season of The Bachelor— the popular ABC reality show where 20 beautiful women relentlessly claw their way to one lucky guy, all while hoping to discover that he’s “the one.”
This season features Juan Pablo, the muy guapo Venezuelan who has been quite the hit with viewers and contestants alike. Although Tokyo-based editorial, corporate, and commercial photographer Christopher Jue is not one of those fans, and in fact has never seen an episode of The Bachelor, he is a fan of beautiful Seoul, South Korea, where he was sent by Disney ABC TV to capture all the blood, sweat and tears of Season 18/ Episode 4.
Although this was only his second time shooting reality TV, Christopher shoots news work regularly for the EPA wire, including press conferences, celebrity events, political conferences, and the like, and through this he is accustomed to shooting somewhat uncontrollable situations such as The Bachelor. Christopher shot for Disney ABC a few years ago and was a good fit for this shoot.
Christopher flew into Seoul later than the other crew members because he was hired directly by ABC and was only set to cover certain filming locations. His main challenge was arranging scheduling and transportation on his own:
Because there was already a production company in place to do the filming, everyone in that company had a set schedule. No one was really watching over me as they were busy with their own tasks, so it was me making the necessary phone calls to the production staff and talking with some of the crew members on set to give me the call times and so on. Shooting news is sort of like this, so I have to just be flexible and go with the flow of things.
The crew worked long hours with lots of moving around to different locations, and Christopher’s flexibility was key.
Christopher caught the below shot as the night wrapped up— a candid moment of Juan and Nikki Ferrell meeting lips. He was positioned back behind two other cameramen.
Christopher wasn’t sure what to expect with this assignment, but by trusting his instinct and outside experience, he captured all the right moments:
As always, my intention in photography is to do my best to create pictures that can act as a standalone. After all, photography is a form of storytelling that possesses its own sense of place and feeling at a given time. I got the job done.