Shortland Street goes boom!

Towards the end of last year I was asked to work on an unusual assignment, one that really did end the year with a bang! My good friend Rohan Rimmer put Amie Mills at Blacksand in touch with me. The team at Blacksand had come up with a great transmedia campaign for the TV show Shortland Street while it was off air over the holiday season.

The final show had climaxed with an explosion and left viewers with the classic cliffhanger, wondering who had survived and who hadn't. They had worked out 34 days of clues to keep fans on tenterhooks! Some were video clips others audio clips and where I came in was to produce still images to throw in the mix.

The first set of images needed as clues had to look as though they were shot at the location of the explosion the following morning by a passer by. Of course the props had to look as though they had been through the explosion... enter the trusty BBQ! It was more than a little sketchy at times, but I managed to grill everything from Jandals to fence posts, all very well done! God knows what my neighbours thought with all the toxic smoke that was blowing over the fence!

Next stop was to find a location that would match in with the reference footage I had been given and after a couple of false starts I found the perfect spot at Stillwater north of Auckland. It was remote enough for me to put up crime scene tape (you wouldn't believe how hard that was to get hold of) without any inquisitive passers by getting involved. I had a field day shooting melted Jandals, Santa hats, tinsel wrapped fence posts and gas cylinders all strewn around the place.

The next shots were of a variety of actual props from the show, supplied to us by South Pacific Pictures. The key here was to find abstract, interesting angles and lighting that didn't give the game away too easily! We had everything from beautiful Maori feather cloaks to bomb wiring to play with, giving us plenty of scope to create interesting images. Amie also put together a very convincing detectives desk which with some clandestine lighting looked absolutely great. She also created a large evidence board which we shot to be used as a huge billboard outside the TVNZ building.

My final contribution to the project was to retouch in some palls of smoke on some of my location shots and fire damage to a gas bottle laying in the grass... even I wasn't silly enough to throw that one on the BBQ!

Down on the farm with Giltrap

A very happy healthy and prosperous New Year to all! My run up to Christmas was a very hectic one so I'm afraid the blog got a bit neglected! But I've dusted the mince pie crumbs off, peeled myself off of the lounger and am back in the saddle again! 

Towards the end of last year I found myself standing in cow pats, shocking myself on electric fences and running away from clouds of lime fertilizer… and loving every minute of it!

I got a call from Sanjiv Menon at BRR who had taken a look at some of my work and decided I would be a good fit on a project he had. His client Giltrap are a supplier of high end agricultural machinery to the Australasian market and as part of a recent rebrand were looking for some fresh imagery for their advertising.

Rather than concentrating on the technical aspects of the machinery, as had previously been done, he wanted the images to convey the environment they are used in. Particularly the many different times of day and the long hours that farm machinery is used! Cue the early starts!

As a back up I had come prepared with generators, 4kw of lights and all sorts of gizmos, but it quickly became apparent with the terrain involved and the need for mobility around the machinery, most of it was staying in the car! Luckily the weather gods were smiling on us and although we had to pick our moments, we could work with available light and some bracketing to cover our exposures.

We had a fantastic farm environment to work with just outside Te Awamutu in the Waikato. Gary who owned the farm was just about the most helpful person you could meet, absolutely nothing was too much trouble for him! As you can imagine getting heavy farm machinery in the right place, at the right time, with the right light, had it's challenges! However not once did Gary show the slightest impatience with the townies requests and took great pride in helping us to get it right! Eric from Giltrap was also on hand as a mine of information and pretty damn handy with a tractor too!

We spent the first day working out all the best locations and timings for the shots. It was important to make sure the machinery was being used in the correct environment at the right time of day. The target audience wasn't going to put up with shots just because the photographer said it was artistic! We proceeded to get shots of log splitters, effluent stirrers, spreaders and forage wagons. We had some very interesting rides on the back of quad bikes to check out various locations and I don't think Sanjiv and myself stopped grinning! What an office! Gary once again delivered above and beyond when he drove the spreader over terrain I would of been nervous walking up! We continued until the sun finally dipped behind the hills around 8pm and took our tired limbs off to our motel to review the days work. Time for a few hours sleep!

Day two saw us up at 4.30 in the morning with a sunrise shot all planned out, bales were loaded and machinery was moved into place. Right on cue a bank of cloud decided to form on the horizon and we had to frantically move the machinery! With one tiny window of opportunity before the cloud completely obscured the sunrise…the trailer came unhitched from the tractor and with several tons of hay started rolling backwards down the hill! Now this wasn't a small field, but right bang in the middle was a concrete feeding trough and you guessed it, the brand new trailer unit was heading straight for it! Gary quick as a flash spun the tractor round and with a bale loaded on the front forks, overtook the trailer and swung round to stop it hitting the trough! Luckily it stopped about a metre short! Far too much excitement for 5.30am! So plan C then and thankfully this one worked, we ended up with a great image!

With no time to catch our breath we made the most of the early light and captured several more pieces of equipment in action, including the image of the bale feeder above. Next was a rather interesting encounter with a fertilizer spreader full of lime. Knowing we only had a few chances to get this one right as once the lime was out, it was out. We'd worked out our positioning, got the views we wanted, allowed for the wind direction…what could possibly go wrong? As the spreader was fired up and I started shooting, the wind direction completely changed and a huge cloud of lime started pursuing us across the field! I kept clicking until the last minute, grabbed my camera and then three of us ran for the nearest pickup! Eric, made of far sterner stuff, closed his eyes, held his breath and was last seen being swallowed by the giant cloud! When the dust settled we retrieved my tripod and Eric, both of which resembled snowmen! She'll be right mate!

I have to confess I absolutely love this kind of shoot, the opportunity to be out on location in beautiful surroundings, thinking on my feet and meeting people from a completely different walk of life. Just brilliant! A huge thanks to everyone involved for all the help that was given to make the shots happen, a truly great bunch of people to work with.

I think gum boots may be joining my list of photographic equipment!

Northland

I recently headed up to Northland to gather some stock, and not so stock images for my library. Here are a couple of my favorites.

The first is from the harbour at Opua where you can take your car across to Russell on the ferry. I set myself up on the ramp where the ferry docks, the sun had not been up long and all was calm and quiet... and then I heard some diesel engines rumbling through the silence, the first ferry of the day was coming! To be honest I hadn't originally intended for the ferry to be in the shot but as it came into view it totally completed the scene, a lucky break indeed! The biggest problem I had was keeping my footing on the algae covered ramp, but I wanted to keep close to the water so I would have nothing but reflections in the lower half of the image.

The next image was taken in the Bay of Islands at the Waitangi treaty grounds inside the beautiful Maori meeting house, Te Whare Rūnanga. I've always marveled at how amazing and intricate the detail in these buildings is. Surprisingly enough I found I briefly had it to myself, but realised I had left my tripod back at the car! Doh! I had a quick scout around to see if I could sit my camera on anything for the long exposures I needed and luckily enough found a guitar case sitting behind a screen ready for a cultural show! So I rather precariously balanced my camera on top of it and used a cable release so as not to disturb it. It worked a treat even though it drew some strange looks from the next group of people who entered!

I'll process all the other images when I can in between assignments and post some more as I do. Now where can I go next please!

Charlotte S

I've been eagerly waiting to post some images from a shoot I did with a great company called Charlotte S. They are going to be releasing some new and unique beauty products to the market. The plan was to have them in the shops for Christmas, but due to some delays it looks like being in the New Year now.

Candice and John who own the company have kindly allowed me to post one of the images from the shoot. It's one of many favorites I have from the day we spent in the studio with our model Luna.

We had a range of scenarios to photograph from a very natural look, to a smart/ casual business feel, right through to the sophisticated evening look you see above. Candice was a dream client who had a clear vision of what she was after but allowed us creative input to achieve the results. Not only that but we were fed and watered like royalty. I don't think I have ever been so well looked after by a client, so thank you very much Mr & Mrs S!

I put Luna forward for this assignment as I have worked with her before and she really does make life easy with her professional approach and ability to adapt to a variety of looks. On this occasion she even handled her own hair and makeup, which kept things easy and economical.

The shot seen here is one of those situations that wasn't initially planned, but developed from being let loose creatively. We were shooting at Kingsize studios, a great place with heaps of gear and well thought out spaces. The background in this shot is actually the reception area to studio 3, one of their upstairs studios. We moved the reception furniture and placed the white couch from the studio into the scene. I have to confess that this couch has been a prop in a few shots over the years and i'm sure i wouldn't be alone!

The mood lighting was created with a gridded beauty dish, a medium octabank as fill and a gridded 7" reflector as a rim light. The dress selection, hair and makeup completed the scene perfectly. A great collaboration of ideas gave us a great result.

We made great time with our schedule and so I suggested some spontaneous family shots with their lovely daughter Charlotte who arrived from Kindy and she was only too happy to be in the limelight! A fun way to end our day.

There was only one complaint from Candice… 'You've given us too many great shots, we want to use them all'! And that's the kind of complaint I can live with.

Kids, helicopters and lots more

I've had a few people asking me about the image shown at the top of this page. So here's the story behind it.

The shot was actually taken while I was on an fantastic assignment for the Cure Kids team. They had arranged a dream weekend in Queenstown for a dozen of the kids who had been through serious challenges in their young lives. A team of helpers, celebs and staff were on hand to make sure they had an amazing time, so a group of around fifty in all.

My job was to capture all of their incredible adventures over the weekend and boy was it fast paced! They went luging, bungy jumping, snowmobiling, flying in helicopters, golfing and jet boating! Not to mention some amazing lunches and dinners supplied by very generous local companies. It really was an epic event to cover and I don't think my feet touched the ground as I tried to capture everyones special moments. You are certainly not going to get fat doing this job!

The kids just blew me away with their energy and ability to take everything in their stride. The helicopter flight from Coronet Peak ski field down to The Hills golf course was a prime example. Some of these kids were from very small town New Zealand, not often seeing a taxi let alone a helicopter! It was sprung on them that they were going in a helicopter to get down from the mountain and they were all "sweet, no worries", even the real young ones.

The panoramic shot with the helicopter is actually a series of stitched images that I took as the first chopper arrived. It is made up of 5 images that I put together in Photoshop and came out pretty well considering it was shot hand held, whilst being buffeted by the rotors of the helicopter.

I grabbed the shots inside the second chopper and love the look on the kids faces, 'just another day at the office'. I had to bounce a flash of the roof and shoot over my shoulder which had it's challenges while harnessed in! The final shot is the helicopter bringing in the last kids to the Hills golf course. The herd of animals you can see below are actually on hundred bronze statues of wolves with a warrior. Truly spectacular, as was the rest of the Hills course which we got to see on a convoy of buggies.

This was such an amazing and humbling event to be involved in. Once again I found myself feeling very lucky for the people and places that photography allows me to experience.

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!

Bum steer

I seized the opportunity to get my rodeo fix this weekend and headed down to the Waikato rodeo at Kihikihi, try saying that after a few Waikato draughts! It was a scorching hot day as many have been of late, which meant everywhere was looking very brown and dusty. I could see my gear was going to need some tlc after this trip!

I checked out good shooting positions and noted that most of the other photogs were shooting from higher viewpoints. I felt getting down nice and low made the shots much more dramatic even if it did add to the dust problem.

Around one side of the arena was a double fence to keep the crowd nice and safe. So naturally I climbed over the first fence to stick my lens right in amongst the action at the closer fence. Which was working all very well and good until all of a sudden I heard thundering hooves! I thought 'that's strange, the steer in the arena I can see is currently in a headlock sooo…..'??? That's when I turned round and saw only a few metres away was a large pointy horned steer heading my way at a rate of knots! It would seem they use the channel between the two fences to get stock from one end of the arena to the other! Doh! Trying to not look totally terrified I rapidly leapt the outer fence and proceeded to try and look cool about it… judging by the laughter behind me it didn't work! 

The whole rodeo was fantastic and as per usual I cannot believe how tough the competitors are! The bull riders seemed to have a particularly rough time, with many limping away holding various parts looking rather broken. I think the heat may have been making the bulls even more ago than usual, with one or two very reluctant to leave the arena once hay had deposited their riders!

Above is my favorite sequence of shots that I captured. This bareback rider defied gravity and somehow lasted the distance on this bronco, truly amazing! My trusty 70-200mm caught most of the action at about 1/800th of a second before I had to dive back to avoid the worst of the cloud of dust and debri that followed him to the fence.

Mental note, next time plastic wrap my camera and fit a rear view mirror to spot incoming bovines!

In-between somewhere

Well I can't say I'm feeling completely fighting fit yet, must be getting old! Thankfully I have some very understanding clients who have been easing me into the year for which I'm very grateful! 

The slower start has also given me the opportunity to work through some of my 'process when possible' folder which I hadn't been able to delve into for a while. Rediscovering shots that have been lurking in the murky depths of this zone and getting them out into my stock library is very rewarding. Every journey I take I'm always on the lookout for these images, particularly road shots.

The pictures above are prime examples of these 'in-between somewhere' shots.The first one is the road to Te Mata peak which I detoured for on a trip between Napier and Masterton. It's certainly a spot I will revisit when i have more time. This shot of the road was a real bonus as i had already managed to get a nice shot of Te Mata peak itself. It is one of those New Zealand roads that anywhere else in the western world would have barriers all over it. But it's much more photogenic without so lets not worry about the safety aspects!

The next image was taken a couple of days later on the same trip, the Rimutaka Hill road has a notorious reputation for accidents and you can see why. It was a considerable challenge to even be able to stop, with nowhere to pull over…well almost nowhere! I spotted a tiny pull out, more of a dent in the bank and crushed the rental car into it (I know it looks like there is a tiny space over the road but you would have been lucky to fit a golf cart in there)!

Then it was a game of dodge the traffic, the articulated trucks being particularly frightening with nowhere to run! Once again who fancies testing the safety barriers out? Not me, I saw the drop on the other side! The final picture from the top of the Rimutaka Hill puts the road into perspective. And just for fun it gets snow on it in the winter…gulp!

Shingle bells

Happy New Year to all!

Holy moly those holidays went by fast! Had a great break with the family though and started the new year revved up and ready to get back to shooting. The cosmos however had other plans for me!

It all started with a bloodshot eye, not out of the ordinary since I injured my left eye earlier in the year. Next came the headaches and finally the left side of my head swelled up with strange lesions and I looked like I had gone ten rounds! After a couple of false leads my regular doc diagnosed me with shingles and due to the dangerous location made an urgent appointment at an eye hospital. After nine hours across two days waiting to see eye docs, I finally got told my eye was ok at that point, but needed monitoring in case the virus damaged my retina. Meantime my eye had swollen shut, I looked like a leper and due to the infection being nerve based, felt like someone was randomly stabbing me in the head with a fork ! Happy New Year! 

Thankfully as I write this the swelling has gone down a lot and my eye is more open. I am praying I have not passed it on to any of my family, especially my young son, it will be a couple of weeks before the all clear sounds. A scare like this really reminds you to be grateful everyday that you wake up healthy…and feel free to remind me of that when I start bitching about the small stuff!

I cannot wait to be fully fit again, I'm absolutely itching (no pun intended) to get behind a camera! This has to be the longest period I haven't been behind the lens since I don't know when. My goal this year is very, very simple… to create more images. That's it in a nutshell, more personal projects, more commercial work, more environmental portraiture, more of every facet of photography. I feel quite driven, it's amazing how being deprived of something, even for a relatively short period, fires you up!

The shots above were taken as bit of fun during some light tests I did at the end of last year and seemed very appropriate considering the state of me at the moment. Some would say I've never looked so good and I'm inclined to agree!