Behind the Scenes: Matchstick Productions shoot

Quick blog post for ya. This coming Friday marks the world premiere of Matchstick Production's new ski movie, The Way I See It. I was fortunate enough to work with the MSP crew on a couple of their shoots this past winter during the filming of the movie.

With the premiere right around the corner, I've been busy working to help them promote the release. Along those lines, we've put up two "behind the scenes" looks at the production of Mark Abma and Eric Hjorleifson's Meadow Lodge trip.

The first behind the scenes look comes from an article I worked on with ESPN. To check out the full article and photo gallery, click on the link HERE.

The second behind the scenes look comes straight from the Matchstick Productions crew. This first episode of "The Making of: The Way I See It" shows some of what goes into filming and shooting skiing movies.

Enjoy!

Red Bull Kayaking Shoot: In 3D

To see the image in 3D, click HERE.

I just recently finished up a really fun shoot for Red Bull Energy Drink with professional kayaker Tao Berman. What made this shoot so incredible, wasn't just the sheer athleticism in front of the camera, but was the amount of creativity I was afforded. In organizing the shoot, Red Bull had essentially given me free reign to shoot this however I wanted.

For the last few months, I've been dying to try shooting something in 3D. Since I saw the James Cameron movie Avatar, I've wanted to test the 3D technology and see how it translated from video to still. When this shoot with Tao came before me, I knew this was the shoot to make it happen.

In doing my research for this shoot, I'd come across plenty of other 3D photos, but none of them were action or motion based. Everything I was coming across was static... whether a landscape, portrait or still life. Not finding any 3D (also called anaglyph) photos of sports left me really excited. This was going to be something relatively new, and it's always fun to be the guinea pig on new things as you never now what you're going to encounter or how it's going to turn out.

(A brief note: with new versions of Photoshop, it's now possible to create 3D images in post production with a single camera and manipulating the single resulting image. But that's not what I wanted to do here. With this shoot, I wanted to achieve a true 3D image, by shooting two cameras offset from one another. The advantage in using two cameras, is that the resulting 3D image has more depth and texture that it can draw out as it does not require photoshop to extrapolate and create new information.)

Given the inherent danger in running waterfalls, and not wanting to subject Tao to any more danger than necessary, we only had a few cracks at shooing this. With that in mind, we were running 3 cameras at all times, in order to ensure maximum coverage and guarantee differing angles and vantage points.

In the end, the shoot went off great. The resulting 3D image turned out better that I could have hoped. I'm excited to put this technology to use again on some more shoots in the near future... stay tuned.

If you'd like to see some of the other images from the shoot, you can see a small gallery HERE.

Final note: if you're interested in learning more of the details about how to shoot a true anaglyph/3D image, post a comment below. If enough people are interested, I'll follow up with a tutorial post later.

International Photography Awards- Honorable Mention

I just got notified that one of my photos received an honorable mention in the 2010 International Photography Awards. The above shot of parkour athlete, Daetan Huck was honored in the Professional, Advertising, "Other" division.

The International Photography Awards is an annual competition for professional, non-professional and student photographers on a global scale, which has created one of the most ambitious and comprehensive competitions in the photo world today. www.photoawards.com

I'm honored to have received this mention and it's got me charged with new vigor and ambition to keep pushing my work in new directions.

To see my photo and some of the other honorable mentions, check out the gallery HERE.

On the Road

I usually try to post at least once a week on this blog. As I look back at the month of June, I realize that my goal was far from reached last month. The result of being on the road and not getting to spend a lot of time behind the camera has left me with the more difficult task of finding things to write about. Not wanting to be "that guy" that just throws up a bunch of random garbage on the blog, I've remained silent for the last 2 weeks.

Well, two weeks of silence is enough for me... actually, I think that's the longest I've ever been quiet for. And while I might not have the most interesting "behind the scenes of a bad-ass photo shoot" blog post for this week, I thought I'd at least post something. Below are a handful of shots from my iPhone from the last couple of weeks of traveling. Hopefully something fun and unique.

Cheers!

Amazing Work... Thanks Red Bull

I just got an email from Red Bull announcing the finalists for their second Illume Photo Contest. The work that was submitted is absolutely stunning. I spent a good hour flipping through some of the photos featured on their website. I could have spent the rest of my day captivated by these images, but instead, I thought I'd share some of my favorites here. (A quick note: These are NOT my photos, just some of the photos that I feel are truly inspiring! Nice work to the photogs that created them.)

If you'd like to see the entire sampling, scroll down to the bottom of this post for the slideshow in its entirety. Enjoy!

New Work: Road Running

I usually try to make at least one blog post every week. Recently though, I've been failing at that... miserably! For one excuse or another (traveling, shooting, and a mother board crashing) I've just been too busy to sit down for an hour to post my new work or other random industry musings. But that stops today.

Two weekends ago, I went out to do a road running shoot. Not for any particular client, but because it was something I just wanted to shoot. I firmly believe that every once in a while you need to go out and shoot, just for the sake of shooting. Not every time you pick up a camera has to be for a client. Sometimes it's nice to take a day or two and produce a shoot that you want to shoot, the way you want to shoot it. It's a great way to add to your portfolio while at the time, showing off your true, unconstrained style. All too often, when shooting for a client, you aren't able to shoot things exactly as you'd like. Whether that be because of branding visibility, layout issues, art direction or a slew of other reasons. It's nice to be able to show other creatives what your true style can be.

So with that in mind, I headed up into the Cascades of Washington with my fiance Karlee helping out with modeling responsibilities for the day. Here are a few of the resulting images. And for all you Strobist followers, the shot above will show you my lighting setup for the image that follows. Enjoy!

Ski Movie Season... in July?!?!

This time every year, there's a nervous energy in the ski and snowboard community. But why you may ask? It's 90 degrees, I'm sunburned and my ice cream just melted in the two minutes it took to read this. Winter and sliding down the hill on skis is the furthest thing from your mind.

Well, that's true. But what every rider is greeted with in July is the release of the ski movie trailers. The 4 - 5 minute teasers that get you excited for the premieres in September. For those unfamiliar with how the ski and snowboard industries work, everything that you see that promotes skiing or snowboarding, was shot the previous winter. It takes the entire summer for that footage to make it's way through the editing boards and the printers, before it lands on your doorstep at the beginning of fall... just in time to get you excited for the coming winter.

So, without further ado, here are my current top 3 videos I'm most looking forward to seeing. In no particular order:

Matchstick Productions- The Way I See It.

Absinthe Films: NowHere.

Teton Gravity Research: Light the Wick.

There's no explanation needed for these films... they're just great works. Amazing riding, great locations, well edited, the full package deal. So enjoy. And to quote my friend Chris Rudolph, "If you need to reach me, you can find me in the walk in freezer waiting for next winter"!