Blown away by the Sony Shake-5!

Getting paid to do photography is great... getting paid to do photography while listening to rock music on a monster speaker system, well that's just too good to be true!

I did a recent shoot for Sony NZ with my good friend Dag Young from Platform 29, all part of the 'love music loud' campaign. We had a range of new audio products to capture over two days, shot as lifestyle images rather than just product shots.

So how do you show off a 2400W mega system that is bound to be a big hit with the neighbours? With a teenage air guitar hero of course! We set the stage in a basement room with a rather low ceiling which gave us some interesting perspective when shot from a low angle. Also the opportunity to send our air guitar hero through the roof hee hee! We created our own blazing sunny day with a large octa with the diffusion removed outside the window. This was our key light for the shot and two soft boxes and reflectors from either side of the camera gave some fill and clean reflections on the product. Finally we strategically placed various teenage rock god paraphernalia around the room.

Enter the Rock God, Sebastian Irontooth! Now I don't know who was more excited to get some loud rock going, me or Dag! Poor old Sebastian looked a little overwhelmed as we explained to him that 'yes indeed' it really was necessary to have the volume up to 11 to set the scene! Nothing to do with the fact that the two old rock dinosaurs were having a blast! It took a little while for Sebastian to get warmed up, but soon he was hitting his stride and literally bouncing of the ceiling! With the shot captured we had to grab some wigs and have some more fun (see below)!

The next location took us from basement to roof, garage roof to be precise. Outdoor party time with the GPX77 (a mere 1800w!) system as the sun went down. Logistically getting the system and talent on the roof proved fairly interesting, particularly as only the outside edges of the roof proved strong enough to hold any weight! 'She'll be right mate' was the mantra for this setup!

To add to the fun it started to rain the minute we got everything in place, so business as usual then! We waited in place with our gear under umbrellas and were rewarded with a short break in the rain. So with the talent quickly in place, myself precariously balanced on top of a trailer and the rest of the crew down below providing much hollering and dancing, we got the images. The neighbours must of loved us!

Lighting came from a brolly box boomed overhead and the challenge was to balance this with the rapidly changing ambient and the lighting on the system itself. Bracketing is definitely your friend in these situations. As with so many shoots it was all about the setup, as our window of light and weather was very brief.

The guys on the roof did so well to make it look like it was a balmy evening when it was far from it. There were a few passing pedestrians in winter woollies who looked more than a little amused at the strange scene they stumbled upon!

Shooting with a leaf blower!

 

Blimey it's been a while! What can I say other than I've been busy, REAL busy! I have had

a fantastic run of back to back assignments, that just didn't leave me a moment of free time. So apologies for the blog hiatus and thank you to those of you who inquired after

my well being!

I guess one advantage of having a break is that at least I can put up some of the images that have now been published rather than the usual 'watch this space' line!

Of the many bits of gear that I head to shoots with, I have to say that a leaf blower is not usually amongst them. Let alone do I usually use a leaf blower as a weapon of mass destruction, but recently I did! The shot required a lot of wind and debris flying around on top of a hill. Knowing that the weather was bound to not co- operate in the gusty department and rather than lugging generators and wind machines up the hill, my weapon of choice was a large leaf blower!

So the plan was hatched and lots of carefully selected debris was assembled, newspapers, coffee cups, plastic bags, crisp packets, hats, umbrellas, leaves, oh and of course the target aka Tod the talent! It was always going to be a composite image with that amount of elements involved.

So just after sunrise there we were on top of Mount Victoria and as predicted not a breath of wind! To add to the fun a huge bank of cloud was swallowing up the blue sky at a rapid rate! So once we were set up in the best position I grabbed some background shots and set up a couple of lights to ward off the impending gloom. A bare bulb strobe off to the right and a soft fill coming in from above the camera. Then it was out with the blower and we started bombarding our talent… it was all going just fine until the blower started firing missiles at Tod! Fortunately I wasn't aiming at his face at that moment, so he just took a few to the chest before I killed the missile launcher rather than him! I'm guessing the blower was also a sucker and at some point had been used as such. Oops! Luckily he saw the funny side. So after I told him to harden up, we continued firing debris everywhere and of course chasing it all over the hill to pick it up again! 

The whole image came together in just over a day and a half from start to finish, so I'm really pleased with the result we achieved on such a tight deadline.

For my next shoot I think I'll use a less dangerous prop… like a rocket launcher!