Last week gave me the opportunity to be involved in exactly the kind of shoot I love, a chance to drop in on a completely different slice of life!
Previously working with Sanjiv Menon from BRR and their client Giltrap, we had created some great environmental images of their farm machinery in action. This time the brief was to show the story and people behind the construction and development of the machinery itself. Queue the man cave of epic proportions!
The Giltrap engineering plant is down in the mighty Waikato at Otorohanga, so we hit the road early and enjoyed watching all the traffic going in the opposite direction for once.
A quick location scout when we arrived, showed us that we were going to be spoilt for interesting places to shoot. Robotic arms, welding, grinding, sand blasting, paint spraying just fantastic backdrops to some very interesting faces!
In this kind of environment there are plenty of things that will wreck your camera gear pretty quickly, so working smartly with mobile lighting gear was the key... that and running away swiftly! The sand blasting image was a prime example of this, you needed the operator and equipment in action to truly show the environment, but it very quickly became a case of 'run away'!
I have to say the paint spraying unit shown above was absolutely other worldly! A cross between Hell and Mars, with absolutely every single surface, object and indeed person, a lovely shade of the Giltrap red, surreal! I suggested it might make a good club venue in the evenings! Staying up wind of the suction wall was most advisable once the guys starting spraying!
There was plenty of welding being done throughout the plant and we got a variety of views from ground level, to overhead from a fork lift. This worked particularly well for the larger components and the robotic welding arm which was amazing to watch. Balancing the exposure to give long spark trails, hold the intense blue arc welding detail and the environment was a good challenge. That and avoiding arc eye at the same time!
The images spanned office, research and development, parts, production and finishing, it was a big day, but an incredibly satisfying one! To be honest I could of spent the week there making interesting images.
A huge thanks to Craig, Eric and all the fellas on the floor who put up with us sticking a camera in front of them, everyone was amazingly accommodating. Many, many thanks to Sanjiv for all the creative direction and being my 'voice activated light stand' which helped immensely!
