Gifts From Underground

We recently traveled to St. Louis and from there over into Illinois where we shot a really cool job in a coal mine. We have been in several coal mines before but this time we had an opportunity to concentrate on a new subject matter...... headlamps, gloves, and hand-held lighting devices made specifically for mining and other heavy industries. The images will be used for large display booths at trade shows so it was important, as always, to get strong photos that really showed the product in action. Among many challenges on this shoot besides a dark dirty environment, was the "limited time" factor that as professionals we encounter with nearly every job. There were also no power outlets and therefore we were using only battery operated strobes. David had some clear ideas of how he wanted to approach a couple of the shots long before we left Denver and with good planning things went smooth and the client was happy.  David has posted a video of our underground adventure as well as some of the resulting photos.
The client brought a number of great examples of their products and at the end of the day offered us each a super sweet shock resistant water-submersible hand held superlight to call our own. Upon receiving this gracious gift I decided at once to do a cool studio shot of the lights for my portfolio. I was fairly happy with the results although I found it difficult to show the brightness of the light or shape of the beam due to flare. I emailed an example to David to show him how I spent my time in his studio while I house-sat for him and his family during their cruise in March. David, in his endless generousness, forwarded the image to the client and bestower of the lights, who in turn has decided that he would like me to do some studio work for them. Thanks David!