Post Haste Productivity: Previsualising your photos

The other week I had a wonderfully challenging assignment: Shooting some Scania V8 trucks for their annual "Legend" lifestyle magazine. I was pretty excited, since in addition to getting some good daylight pictures of the trucks and owner Warren Good, I had to deliver a technically and logistically demanding shot. I love a photography challenge. This one had me sweating bullets though.



The theme for the magazine article was "productivity", and the designer had a fairly specific image in mind - one of Warren's trucks on the highway at night, making easy time on a challenging road. Warren owns trucks that do runs for New Zealand Couriers and Post Haste, that travel between Invercargill, Dunedin and Christchurch every week night. First were the logistical challenges: the when and where.



A Sunday night was the only time one of the trucks wouldn't be on the nightly 1,400 km round trip, and there wasn't really anywhere on the main highway close to town that had both the visual requirements and the ability to easily turn the truck around for several passes. I had a location on Otago Peninsula in mind with a high vantage point and a great coastal backdrop. Better yet it was just below the brow of a hill for open shade. There, I'd have plenty of time and shooting options as dusk fell, but after my initial shoot with Warren in the truck yard, I realised that the trailer was so long there was no way we were going to be able to turn it around for another pass in anything less than half an hour. We're talking about the world's most powerful V8 long haul truck with a motor capable of producing 730 horsepower.

My backup location was the quarry at Blackhead, just out of Dunedin. It had a decent background and section of hill road I could shoot the speeding vehicle on. We were all set, and I figured we'd be able to turn the truck around on a section of gravel road not far away, allowing me several passes during the half hour or so of ideal twilight needed to give me a decently lit background and still show up the truck lights. When we got there though, it was apparent that the truck was too big to negotiate the turn into the side road, and would have to go all the way back to the highway to turn around once it had passed - a 15-minute round trip.



Then came the technical challenge of shooting a moving truck with some motion blur, some sharpness so it's still easily recognisable and enough exposure to retain a bit of colour in the sky. Thank goodness I'd arranged for us all to meet early so I could get a couple of passes in before the light was optimal. One thing I didn't factor in was the power of the truck or the fact that it would be empty. I told the driver to floor it on the way up the hill, expecting it to lumber past like any other big road train labouring up a slope. Nope. On its first pass it shot by at what seemed like close to 90, nearly sucking me and my camera off the road in its wake. Pass two would have to be slower, about 50Kph.



So the shot I'd previsualised was coming together. The ambient light was getting into the zone, I had my frame, my exposure figured for the combo of ambient light and slow shutter for motion blur on the truck, and an additional off-camera flash, just to freeze the shot so recognisable details would be apparent. I had my assistant Mark hop onto the road between passes, to get the flash power right, and guessed rightly that I'd also need him to flag the bottom of the flash off from illuminating the road rather than a bit of subtle light on the truck. I set it on manual on 1/2 power and we waited. Shooting passing cars and checking the shot helped calm my nerves. I was worried that opening up my aperture to keep some colour in the sky would make my depth of field too narrow, but since the truck was to be motion blurred and the background was supposed to be pretty dark anyway, it didn't matter too much.



After a few passes, I wasn't quite getting the shot I'd previsualised. Shooting in the Canon 7D's fast burst mode was a great idea, it let me capture the truck several times as it came into the zone where I wanted it, but the long exposures delayed the time between frames, and the flash couldn't recycle quickly enough to pop on every shot. Looking back I could have ganged my flashes together at lower power to make that work.  The light was going, I had one last pass before everything went too dark. Then we nailed it. We stuck around to get some more shots - full darkness shots, just for variety, but I felt I had what I really wanted already.

FYI: 1/8 sec at f/4.5 on a Canon 7D, 10-22mm wide angle lens at 15mm. Single hand held 580EXII flash at 1/2 power.



Boy was I relieved when I got back and saw it all on the monitor. Just the shot I had in my head, give or take a little digital sweetening. I couldn't have done it without a lengthy planning and previsualisation process, a bit of luck, and of course, my mate Mark.

Road Trip!

I love the little opportunities road trips bring. Having enjoyed the Warbirds over Wanaka event over Easter, I hit the road with the team from Destination Content for a mixed video and stills shoot. Our client was New Zealand Venison and the job involved visiting and shooting on some farms in the Wanaka district.

                  

First was Criffel Station, owned by Gerry Bell. It's in a beautiful spot just over the road from Wanaka airport and the hill paddocks have a great view of the Wanaka basin.



Driving up to one of these paddocks, I spotted a New Zealand falcon sitting out in the rain. It's a bird I've been wanting a decent shot of for ages, so hopped out of the vehicle, shot, stepped forward, shot, stepped forward, until I was right on top of it for a fairly decent portrait. Bonus!

                 

The low light meant I was close to wide open at 400mm on the Canon 7D, so the pics aren't as super sharp as I'd like, but I'll take 'em.



After Criffel station we moved on to Minaret station near the head of lake Wanaka. The station has no road access, so one of the owners, Jonathan Wallis was good enough to fetch us in his boat. We got some good footage of antlered stags running around with hinds in the paddocks there. Frame grab from the video below.



I also managed to snap some shots of our Production Assistant Holly in the afternoon light. Next time I need a female model I know who to ask. The camera loves her.





Next day we headed up the Cardrona valley road over to Queenstown to get a bit more variety in our farmed deer shots. Central Otago is stunning in Autumn and there's no better place to see that than the Cardrona valley.



Along the way, my Destination Content co-director and CEO James Hacon stopped to get a picture of the monster truck he'd driven over Easter. James is an off-road driving fan. He says as soon as Destination Content has the budget for vehicles, we're going to get some Landrover Defenders. I'd actually be tempted to get the big bus. Great off-road trip vehicle for shoots.

                         

We also stopped to pick fruit from some roadside apple trees. That and eating roadkill while on assignment is how we keep our costs to the client nice and low.



We found some more deer paddocks (and hay bales) on the Crown Range road - New Zealand's highest sealed road, and James even managed to demonstrate he has a good eye and get a pretty decent picture of me in action before we headed down to Queenstown for a spot of lunch before heading back home to Dunedin. All in all, a pretty productive trip, with some great bonus shots. You just never know what's going to present itself on a road trip.

Warbirds over Wanaka

Warning. This post contains pure aircraft porn. If you like this sort of thing, you can click on through and browse around the other images on my flickr stream. Otherwise, you might want to turn away and come back for the next post. It'll have real birds. Well, one anyway.

I am now a convert to the whole Warbirds over Wanaka thing. In previous years I might have thought of it as a waste of a perfectly good Easter break better spent on fly fishing or shooting pictures, but now I'm a believer. I attended last weekend's event with my family and business partner before embarking on a few days shooting for a big client. Being with others, I didn't really devote myself to capturing all the scenes, that would take a few days dedicated shooting, but I came away with a few keepers, and plenty of ideas for next time.



There's plenty to see and hear. For the pure armed conflict enthusiast, there are displays from various re-enactment groups, complete with the noisy firing of blanks from automatic weapons that slightly freaked Miss C(8). Then of course there's a contingent from the New Zealand Armed Forces. This year my nephew was there representing the navy in his Kaman Sea Sprite, an armoured vehicle accompanied by some army personnel, and my nephew's fiancee and her new air force helicopter. That's the Sea Sprite below. The nephew was pretty stoked to be plotting a low level scenic route from Queenstown all the way back to Taieri airfield the next day. He's got it good.



One treat was that we got to go inside the RNZAF C-130 Hercules, so I hopped into the cockpit, matched my flash to the ambient and got a nice little shot looking out across the valley.



And then there are the warbirds.




WWII is always well represented, this year by Yakolev Yaks, Supermarine Spitfires, Mustangs and Kitty Hawks among others. This is the Corsair, which I have a bit of a soft spot for because I had a model of one as a kid.



I actually liked the WWI aircraft more than the stuff from my Dad's era. Possibly because their slightly slower airspeed makes them easier to get a sharp picture of!





That's not to say that the newer machines weren't pretty cool too. The Vampire and Hawker Hunter were two early British jets that made an appearance, accompanied by Air New Zealand's new black Boeing 777.








Around 40,000 people attended this year, and in a couple of years time, there's a good chance I'll be among them again.

TRY!

Yeah yeah, it's been a while. It's all work, work, work in this new video business. Between that and fronting my band, I haven't had time for a lot of stills shooting. Hopefully that'll change this weekend - I'm off to the Warbirds over Wanaka event. Definitely some good photographic material to be had there. I'll also be staying on for some video shoots that'll hopefully generate me some good stills as well. So what have I shot lately? Well, I did happen to be at the Weet-Bix Tryathlon the other weekend.

 

It was a 7.30 am start so I managed to get a few nice sunrise shots of Miss C(8) getting ready to participate with her teammate, a friend from her violin class. I was a little concerned that after only doing a couple of leisurely bike rides as prep, Miss C(8) wouldn't get as much out of the event as her mate, maybe it would have been a bit of a wasted exercise for her. Boy was I wrong. She really got into it.

 

During the race, I got plenty of the action on my DSLRs and long lenses, but a lot of my favourite shots were taken into the morning sun using fill flash on an ordinary point and shoot. It's quick and easy to pull off and gives such a classy look.

 

So let me wax philosophical about what I learned from this for a moment: Photography is not about how fancy your gear is or how wonderful your prep is. So often it's about being there, just doing it and coming away with something to remember.

A lot like the Weet-Bix Try.

Cranking the Crane

Been having fun with more new video gear lately. First was my little 75cm GlideTrack slider for horizontal moves. Now I'm playing with an 8ft ProAm camera crane - nice for sweeping verticals.  Here I am practicing at the recent South Dunedin Heritage day at Dunedin Gasworks Museum:

And here's a little rough cut of some of the stuff we got - thanks to Mike Thorsen for some of the slider footage.

If you haven't already visited Dunedin Gasworks Museum, do. It's a treat. You can find entries and stills of the place in the blog archive.  See you there some time.

A different kind of shooting

Close observers may have noticed I don't seem to have shot a lot of stills lately. That's not quite true. I've been out working for clients as usual, but my new business venture, Destination Content has kept the rest of my time pretty well occupied. We're a video company, specialising in destination marketing videos and we've got some very exciting projects in the pipeline. Last week I found myself out with Brian Templeton of Elm Wildlife Tours, getting some critter shots on video - while he did some shooting of his own. That's Brian above, engaged in a little pest control work.





Shooting video presents a whole new set of challenges and keeps me fresh. I do enjoy it, but for some reason, I get a bigger kick out of stills. I did get a few during the video shoot, but was mostly concentrating on getting stuff to tell the story below. So I'll just get out of the way and let Brian and Sean tell their own story...



We used a variety of source material for that one. I'm a firm believer that the content of a shot is sometimes way more important than it's technical qualities, so the little girl beckoning you to follow her to the fence was taken from someones point-and-shoot. For me it made the whole thing come alive.

And while I'm on the subject of things coming alive, the book I've worked on shooting and writing for the last year now has a life of its own. "Tales of the Tartan Mafia - Celebrating 150 years of Commerce in Otago" was launched last week and is now on sale from the Otago Chamber of Commerce, University Book Shops and the Star Shop in Dunedin. As it becomes more widely available I'll post more information. Of course, its packed with my pictures, many of which have appeared here already and just in case you've seen enough of my shots - I'm told it's a pretty good read too!

Gold and Ghosts, Part 3

After a comfortable nights sleep - frequently disturbed by a very noisy mouse, I arose from my sleeping bag at Bullendale hut, put on my semi-dry socks and boots, and prepped for a day of walking and taking pictures.





The hut was too low in the valley for a spectacular sunrise shot, so I satisfied myself with a few exteriors before heading down to the river and the remains of the Phoenix mine. Below is a stitched panorama showing the peak of Mt Aurum on the right.



The zoom on my little G12 wasn't enough to capture the goat I saw down on the valley floor, so you'll have to suffice with the skull below. Some of the 20 or so people who stay here overnight each year are hunters.



The fork in the stream below was the site of the Phoenix mine and a stamping battery. The site was abandoned nearly a century ago, but the ruins that remain are still impressive.





The staggering thing is that people hauled all this stuff here on horseback. Tons of heavy iron equipment and supplies, just to get at the gold in the quartz reefs. If you know your latin, you'll know that Mt Aurum was named for the gold the area yielded. The miners even built a hydro electric scheme here to run the rock crusher or stamping battery as its called, and you can see the remains of the pipes they used to haul the water, suspended high above the stream, for much of its length.



The ruined machinery is one thing, but what I really liked was the old bedstead I found on the site of the vanished settlement. It put such a human face on it all.



After an hour or so exploring, it was time to back down the river, stopping to take a few pics of the terrain. Not exactly chocolate box landscapes, but beautifully rugged all the same. Here's the view back up the valley, from the half way point above the river:

 

 And here's the way back out:

 

Not far from the end of the track, there's an old dam - part of the hydroelectric scheme the miners built.



I tried getting a good shot looking over the edge, but it wasn't easy - or particularly safe to get something that really captured the scene .



Finally, I made it back to my vehicle, parked near the Skippers cemetery. There I saw the most poignant thing of all, the grave of two miners, I presume father and son, who died in a mine collapse.



It made me think again of the hard living people made here - baking hot in summer, freezing in winter, and many miles of precarious road to travel to and from the nearest settlement, which would have been Arrowtown or  Queenstown. All for gold.

My little adventure over, it was time to drive back to Dunedin, back to my family and back to the job of earning some gold of my own - and maybe thinking about my next back country getaway.