Headlamps and Maps

I met with the client over lunch a few weeks ago. He brought with him the items for the shoot, a custom painted hardhat, a standard headlamp with battery, a headlamp and battery with their state of the art tagging system, and a couple of maps to use as backgrounds. The tagging system is a small device that is is integrated onto the battery pack, it is like a sophisticated avalanche beacon that tracks underground miners and relays their whereabouts to a central system. In the wake of some recent mining disasters this technology has made a push and Koehler appears to be leading the way with this new system.
I spent a full day in the studio jammin' tunes and creating a few shots that I could email my contact for feedback.
We discussed a few minor changes, the name on the helmet was set back too far to be readable with the helmet set at it's most aesthetic angle. To see the headlamp meant you couldn't read the full name but neither of us thought it was a big deal. He loved the test shots so the next day I finished up with the finals.

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!

Around The Room/Over The Rig

We have recently returned from Utah, where, with great fortune we found a break in poor weather to complete our assignment, arial shots of 2 oil rigs in the Vernal area. We had 1 day to scout and mark the GPS location of the rigs, and the following morning to get the shots from helicopter. It was a bit of a nail biter on the timing of the weather but in the end it worked out great and we really got some beautiful photos.

During one of the long evenings between dinner and sleep, I decided to mess around with seeing what kind of shots I could come up with using the lights of my hotel room. The lamp beside the bed had a rather large shade and a tungsten balanced CF bulb (the corkscrew kind ), and the windows were covered with some nice plantation shutters.

 

Setting the camera to tungsten white balance makes the outside light go icy blue while mostly neutralizing the warmth of the incandescent bulb. If you are shooting with strobe and you want the same effect, put a full CTO on the light and set the camera to incandescent. Another trick is to go warmer with the main light, then in post-production, as you cool the whole scene to neutralize the warmth, the window light gets even bluer.

This was shot with my Nikon D70s and a 16mm 2.8 fisheye, hand held at around 1/15 or 1/8 wide open at ISO 200.

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The other light I decided to mess with was the whole reason I started this in the first place. My bathroom had one of those funky red heat lamps in the ceiling and a huge frosted glass window, another mixed light situation. With the camera still set on tungsten this was the result. The shadows are super blue and the red heat lamp mostly looks pink or lavender....... not very  pretty.

So with the snow falling outside and the prospect of a wasted trip due to weather, my nervous energy produced one blurry portrait and an ugly toilet shot...... (I can hear you laughing about which is which).

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The snow stopped sometime that night but our pilot was delayed in Park City due to fog, he said he just needed a brief hole in the sky to get above the stuff.  At 07:15 we got a text from him saying he was airborne and on his way, a text while flying a helicopter, I love it.

Shortly after 8am we were flying and on our way to the rig coordinates, again nervous because of clinging fog that threatened to hide our rigs and hinder our ability to get the shot. We were flying high in the sunshine but below were patches of thick white fog. When our rigs came into view they were in sunlight, and a fresh blanket of snow covered the ground as far as we could see. Heater on, windows open, camera out, click, click, click. What a beautiful morning! Here is the video.

Thick fog below

Clear at the rig site

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