Up to 2023

September 04, 2023

Well…keeping up a blog is nigh impossible when busy. I’m fortunate for the work and for the range of projects that have enlightened me and shown me worlds I didn’t know existed. I’ve also met people, both the crew I’ve worked with and the people in front of my lens who have become part of my life. I do tend to bond with them, and I’m grateful.

Instead of trying to blog about gear, techniques, and problem solving, which was the original intent, I’ll post pictures. Maybe I’ll even explain some of them. :)

2017 and 2018

July 27, 2018

I've discovered that keeping a blog requires a commitment that doesn't care if I'm working or not. Ah well. I'm embarrassed that my last entry is two years old.

The past year has been busy with fantastic shoots and production challenges solved with some fun, creative techniques. Sometimes this is the best job in the world, with 2017/2018 taking me to China, Japan, Columbia, Canada, South Africa and across the US. I have one state left!

Two Degrees

From seeing my past work creating evocative imagery and timelapse sequences, I'm asked to travel across the country creating images of American icons with a darker feel. This is for a climate change project and the producers want to see something not possible with stock footage of well-known places - something not postcard pretty but instead something that evokes impending collapse and doom. Sounds great to me!

We travel to New York, Washington, Florida, and Nevada, wanting so much more but with only two weeks scheduled our burgeoning list of iconic locations must be whittled down. Video plates are shot for the graphics team to composite doomsday scenarios of flooding in Manhattan, a military checkpoint on a Miami bridge, an emergency field hospital set up on the Washington Mall, and drought that dries up Lake Mead at Hoover Dam.

I also separately shoot timelapse sequences for special effects, sometimes using heavy layers of neutral density filtration to allow long shutter drags, creating ghostly blurs of people or to allow a long enough shutter to effectively clear the streets of any cars or people moving. Shooting with a still camera for some sequences allowed a much greater image control and post-processing flexibility.

These next two images are frames pulled from the more moody sequences created with filtration allowing long shutter drags and foreboding skies.

A new volcano and a new iphone

A new volcano erupting in Hawaii! This shot is at the playground at Leilani Estates, 10pm lit by the lava flow. Pic from an iPhone. The area has been sealed off and our documentary team has to be escorted in by the national guard who precede us with toxic gas sensors.

To get better footage than we can get with the National Guard, we charter a small plane to fly overhead for unfettered access to lava imagery. The plane seats four including the pilot, the windows open, the guy sitting in the co-pilot seat (me) is cautioned to not let the camera hit the steering wheel thing. I'm shooting with a Sony FS7 as it can strip down nicely to allow shooting from this small plane, and a Sony A7S so I can reach out the plane window and shoot straight down.

The sight of such power thrusting out of the earth, the caustic smell of sulfur, the heat I can FEEL through the open window! I have to share this all with my kid, so I Facetime him for him to see this power. What a terrific learning experience and maybe he'll even think Daddy is so cool in a tiny plane flying over an ERUPTING VOLCANO!

Then...A gust of hot wind rips my phone from my hand and I watch as it flutters away.

The still photographer behind me says ‘what was that?’ I act casual, as if I MEANT to throw my $800 phone out the window, and ever so insouciantly I heft up my camera and drift out ‘oh, that was my phone.’

I just lost an $800 phone, but it was backed up last night and it’s worth it for my kid to see the volcano live, and to watch the phone fall out the airplane window and maybe he even saw the plane receding as the phone tumbled and tumbled and maybe it landed in LAVA and isn’t Daddy such a hero!’ Turns out he saw nothing…his side of FaceTime was just a black screen and the loud buzzing of an airplane.

On a positive note, I got to text everyone apologizing for missing any calls as my phone fell into a volcano.

A couple iPhone pics...

Utah wildlands

Six weeks traveling through the backcountry of Utah! This is a dream project - grab a four-wheel drive and a tent and go find beauty footage of the mountains and the Milky Way vaulting across the night skies.

We are traveling with a Red Epic with Helium sensor, two Canon 5D's, three Sony A7's, a Dana Dolly, a Kessler Cineslider with motion control for timelapse sequences and a Ronin gyro stabilizer.

Operating three cams at once for sunset - a Canon 5D with a View intervalometer and a Sony A7 for timelapse, and the Red on a Dana for video...

Very proud of what we've done to the rental SUV...

Melting glaciers

Another project about climate change...Mendenhall Glacier outside Juneau, Alaska. To get to the glacier we have to paddle through a lake that wasn't here 100 years ago, formed from the glacier melting more than 9000 feet. Clearly the earth is warming, at least here on this glacier.

We are shooting solely on the Sony A7S, as we need to travel extremely light. We are a small team traveling by kayak and then hiking to get to the ice that has so dramatically receded we will cross a lake, a beach and a grove of petrified trees that were not visible 8 years ago. I'm carrying only that A7S, a lightweight Benro documentary tripod and a couple zoom lenses.

We are on a mountain of ice crystals that can only be scaled wearing crampons. It's cold and we need to work fast. Setting up a simple locked shot timelapse of clouds scudding across the sky...

One strength of the Sony A7 is its full frame sensor look with a good quality image in such a small form factor that it can be carried everywhere. In this pic, I've rappelled down a 'moulin,' which is a nearly vertical shaft that has melted straight down into the glacier going to an unknown depth.

May 13, 2016

Doc shooting in Ghana and Rwanda, commercial work on the East Coast, and a new camera package.

24 hours of travel, 17 in the air, and we've arrived in Ghana. I'm tired. There were too many movies to watch on the plane (of which I can recall none) for me to sleep more than an hour. Heat is the first sensation to hit when stepping out onto the tarmac. Sixty seconds after arrival in Africa and you are next hit with this...big and bold. THIS is still going on? What?

The airport is small, the baggage and gear come fast, a hotel room will be soon after that. Even if the gear doesn't come through I'm not that concerned. I've carried on-board enough of a shooting package to get the project started - my shiny new Sony 4K FS7, lenses, rudimentary audio and some LED lighting. This isn't my first shoot in the third world; I have enough experience to carry-on what I need to still get a job done. One of the reasons I added the FS7 to my gear is for just this reason...a powerful image with full control that has a solid ergonomic design and can be stripped down for a tight documentary crew or built up to a full cinema package. Alan, the producer, has carried on a Canon 5D and more lenses. This is our second excursion to Africa and the camera package is proving its worth.

What I have in my bag - a complete basic package less a tripod, all in a Think Tank Airport Takeoff carry-on rolling bag that also converts to a backpack. This carry-on accomplishes more than what, years ago, would have required half a cargo van, and the Think Tank is the best camera bag I've had.

Sony FS7 camera
Metabones lens adaptor
Batteries/chargers
14mm prime lens
50mm prime lens
16-35mm zoom
24-105mm zoom
70-200mm zoom
Aladdin LED Eye-Lights
Audio
International adaptors
Tiffen variable ND
Tiffen polarizer
Laptop
Intervalometer for 5D
3 XQD cards
3 card readers
Lens cleaning
Two sets of earbuds
Books/Tea/Snacks
Raincover
Malaria meds

Alan and I pile up our personal bags and a Portabrace Mummy Case, which holds light stands and a tripod, and we trundle past customs, almost making a clean getaway...except that Ghana is not a carnet country and the bond paperwork our fixer said would be ready at the airport, isn't...which means Ghanan customs is about to take all the gear...MY gear...MY shiny new 4K camera package. Oh, and by the way, it is now the weekend (I don't know which day, I've lost track of days) so forget anyone in officialdom being available to correct the problem, and oh, by the way, Monday is also a national holiday so forget about THAT day, also. We should have our gear back sometime around maybe never.

I smell something and I think it's me after 24 hours of travel ending with a customs officer, us on a neon green metal bench with chipped paint while a crusty oscillating floor fan turns turns turns, each turn throwing papers across the scraped up wooden desk as the customs officer frowns at our papers. He looks at the file, rubs his head, the papers blow, he catches them, looks at the file, rubs his head, the papers blow, he catches them...

The heat here. I'm starting to sweat. The papers blow. I read a sign about insect poison and nice smells. The fan turns again and the papers blow and I have to fight to not giggle. Yes, the smell is definitely me. Now I wish I had used Dial soap.

Customs is keeping the gear. Someone (I'm not saying who) sneaks away a 5D and just enough other pieces to get some shooting done. Everything else is wheeled into a corner and we won't see it for three days. Most of the shoot is forced onto that 5D onto which I've input the Technicolor settings to bring us closer to the Log look of the FS7. In Tamale, Ghana we find a vendor who can rent us light stands (broken), audio (broken), and, oddly, a really nice Vinten tripod.

A 5D with Technicolor settings can produce a richly textured, beautiful image. Taking advantage of window light, the small LED's we snuck out of customs, and an inflatable LED camping light for background door scuff, we create a pretty nice interview set up. That glow on the table is one of my Aladdin Eye-lights...tiny light, bi-color, insane high CRI (accuracy of color), and high output. We accomplished quite a bit with our little 5D and some improvising...

The Aladdin Eye-light - Charges by micro USB, lasts two hours, dimmable and bi-color with a 98 color rendering index, meaning no issues with magenta or green shifts.

We stay at the finest hotel in Tamale, a northern city. The keycard to my hotel room...

Juan, my traveling companion with kids in Tamale...

Running multiple timelapse sequences from the convenient hotel rooftop cafe in Kigali, Rwanda. Canon 5D and Sony FS7 with ND filtration and polarizers...

I've been lucky and grateful that projects this year have been coming at a nice pace, with the more important timing factor working out. I've never had a 'real' job, so all my experience has been a life of tight scheduling...or no scheduling.

Finishing principal photography on a project in Oregon led smoothly into commercial shooting on the East Coast, followed by the documentary shooting in Rwanda and Ghana. Before this year, I had only been to one place in Africa - Sierra Leone - and while the people were gracious and the land green and verdant, Sierra Leone was not a place that compelled me to return to Africa as it is still suffering the effects of war. Going deep in-country in both Rwanda and Ghana changed that for me, and Africa is now on the list to return.

Customs is a different issue, though.

Fun commercial shoot with Canon's 17-120mm cine zoom. This woman's life was saved by advanced healthcare. Scary, in that what happened to her could happen to any of us, that fast. But for a shooting blog, what matters here is that great lighting. The best lighting in some cases is working to make it look NOT lit. We achieved that goal here... Joker 800 punched through off-camera window for background texture emulating sunlight. We scouted on a sunny day, and I loved how the sunlight skipped off the floor and softly glowed through the kitchen. On the shoot day it was cloudy. Oops. So we created the look. Arrisun on right, through two frames of opal. Kino's judiciously placed in back rooms for kicks on doorways and walls.

More cool projects for the beginning of the year!

January 22, 2016

Some fun commercial work in Florida and then beauty footage in the Pacific Northwest.

These pictures are Florida, shooting slice-of-life footage for a regional healthcare spot...surely a ridiculous sight for someone wandering by...seven guys back-pedaling on the sidewalk. :) Handheld Ronin mounted with a C300, Log gamma curve, Zeiss 18mm prime lens. Plus a fantastic crew led by Beau Williams of Orlando, one of the most resourceful and best gaffers I've ever worked with.

The end of 2015 going into 2016 - The Oregon coast
Creating environmental footage of the region, but footage with a bit of an edge instead of solely picture postcard and sublime beauty. We searched for the weathered fishing villages of a stormy Oregon coast, rusting hulks of abandoned boats, bleached driftwood, castoff crab pots and tangled fishing nets.

Canon and Sony cameras, Canon Cine zoom 30-300mm, Zeiss primes, Canon L series lenses, motion control timelapse system, Kessler slider and Dana Dolly for portability and speed, and Tiffen Double Fog and Smoque filters for the ambiance of a misty world.

Incredible (and fortuitous for me) rainbow over Coos Bay...

The view inside a Sony A7S viewfinder from a sunrise sequence over Yaquina Bay in Newport, Oregon...
The A7S was chosen as we needed clean night footage of the waters for a sequence before the sun rose. Knowing we'd utilize some noise reduction, we were shooting at an insane 40,000 ISO. Wow. Remember when shooting at 1200 ISO was considered the outer limit?

Handheld walk around the turret of a lighthouse, imparting a more moody and imposing feel to the imagery, Sony A7S with Able Cine Tech settings, Arri triple stage matte box, Tiffen Double Fog and IRND 1.2 filtration...

Low angle Kessler slider, a shot only possible at low tide as otherwise the entire world is under tumultuous pounding waves. I poked my finger into sea anemones while waiting for the perfect incoming flow of water into that pool right below the 24-70mm lens...

Almost an otherworldly landscape...carrying my Kessler slider. I got the other guy to carry all the heavy stuff. :)

This is at Thor's Well, another location only accessible at low tide. Again shooting with the A7S for portability and ease for the hike down. The waves would blast up 30 feet, which we discovered when one dumped a bit of the cold Pacific on top of us and the gear just after this shot was taken. Seeing it coming, I covered any exposed camera with my body, but the water still got in. End of day with a hair dryer for the camera (and maybe a whisky for me) and that little Sony camera was back up and running. Lucky!

Final image processing of stills for timelapse sequences, the bridge over Newport view from my hotel room...

Winter 2015 - New website, new blog

November 29, 2015

A fantastic year for adventure and projects!
This was one of those years that remind me why I do this for a living.

Hunting for a Milky Way timelapse in the desert borderlands of Texas and Mexico, wandering the design halls of White Star where the Titanic was planned in the UK, sipping scotch in the oldest bar in Belfast, and a culinary decadent wallow in truffle, pasta and Italian liquors in Northern Italy.

Fantastic shoots, great crew, creative and inspiring clients!
And when nobody was looking maybe I'd sneak in an iPhone pic...

A frame from a Milky Way timelapse shot in Big Bend National Park. I set my phone to wake at 200 o'clock in the morning, groggy and grumpy (maybe feeling a little of the bourbon and honey)...cold, dark and scary outside the tent, the only reason I finally pushed myself to shoot the sequence was because I didn't want the AC to be disappointed with me in the morning (he won the coin toss so he was still asleep). Once the back LCD lit up with a test shot I was giggling ecstatic that I had the wherewithal to crawl out of that tent.

...though in the morning we discovered we had chosen to camp on top of an old cemetery...

We needed metaphorical imagery for a small isolated town - everybody knows everybody else's business, fish in a bowl. Desert floor and the studio, mirrors for light hits, a 14mm wide prime for vast expanse and a full frame sensor camera for dreamy, shallow focus.

Fast timelapse grabbed at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. 16mm wide with neutral density to drag the shutter to create ghosting-smooth movement in people and clouds. I got lucky as the rain stopped long enough to allow sun texture in clouds (brought out more in post processing) and the romance of glistening wet stones. Every vista in Italy looked like a renaissance painting. Look at the hills framed in that archway!

Another set of metaphorical imagery, this time using mercury. While brainstorming how to creatively approach the need for shots of mercury, I thought it could be fun to use a mirror and the sun - blue tones, cold metal, burning sun...mirrors, macro and mercury!