Airsoft reportage for Sexy Magazine
Going to the battlefield with no press helmet or vests and actually getting shot
When SEXY Magazine staff called me for one more assignment, I couldn’t deny it. “Leo, we have a crazy reportage to photograph and reminded of you”. “The way I like. Let’s go!”
The reportage, for the 23rd anniversary issue of the adult magazine and already reached the newsstands, is about airsoft, a kind of paintball game with a smaller ammo and without ink.
The staff gave me some instructions of what would be important to photograph but left me free to create. A freedom I conquered in more than three years photographing to the magazine. And as with freedom comes some responsabilities, my field task was to get not only the airsoft game as they expected but to generate photographic content dynamic enough for them to illustrate the reportage with versatility, as well as feed their website and social medias.
In one more reportage partnered with the great reporter Juliano Coelho, we went to an old factory in an immense land near the Castello Branco Hwy, a hundred miles west of São Paulo city.
I had half an hour reconnaissance walk into the place, with a lot of woods, some dirt roads and a couple of immense warehouses spread over the land. Then I got back to the start base where the crew and players were. I brought studio lights and battery to make some individual and group portraits.
Soon the crew briefed the game mission to the players and everyone went to the battle fields.
I lent a mask from the goods shop set up in a large table in the place and also went to the woods. I went kinda prepared to get dirty and properly dressed all in black, what coincided with some players’ clothes. Not bad, so I could walk undercover and freely through the woods to photograph the game without handing the players over to the opposite team.
After about an hour later, I came back to the base with memory card full of photos, a little dirty and a little scratched. I took a lot of shots, I don’t know if unintentionally or by pure evilness. I believe the second option. The bullets are a bit painful on skin and the players usually dress themselves with thick camo clothing and sometimes “bulletproof” vests. I, dressed in jeans and cotton tee, got a burst of shots on the ribs that left me burnt. Photos below taken by Juliano Coelho.
