Making Something From Nearly Nothing
July 22, 2010 by vard · Leave a Comment
Today was planned months ago. The image ideas and how to execute them had been thought about over and over. It was going to be tons of fun and hopefully produce some really awesome images…images of some really motivated and exceptionally fit individuals hittin the Appalachian Trail…
…looks like we’re going to have a few more months to plan that out. Doh! Someone in the PA government decided it was time to close Winter’s Trail (one of the on-ramps to the A.T. in NEPA). Yeah, we were confused… but mark one down for scouting! This past Tuesday morning Mike D, Mary and I got a super early jump and headed up to the A.T. to be in position for sunrise. The plan was to be ready when first light hit, assess what we’d have time to do and come up with some shot ideas based on the possible…with a touch of the nearly impossible.
So that WAS the plan. When we drove up around 5:30 and found Winter’s Trail closed. Lots of fences and chains and a whole bunch of ‘go away’. With some quick goat thinking we moved on to two other locations that Mike and Mary knew of. Unfortunately nothing was really working for what I was hoping to shoot…and least not like the A.T. would have.
Feeling slightly less that satisfied with my early morning adventure, I headed back to the ‘Wick to figure out what to do.
Relief was found near the bottom of beer (I know, how many times has that happened, right!) The fine folks at Bandit’s Roadhouse came to the rescue and let us use a warehouse they own to get the shoot done. Having just shot there on Monday, ideas were fresh and ready to go…albeit COMPLETELY different ones from what we wanted to do on the A.T.
Yesterday, less than 24 hours before the shoot, it hit me that I might try something a little different this time. Rather than get right into the workout shots, I thought we’d work into them. The warehouse has some awesome old offices, relics of workdays paste. It was begging for a shoot. I dropped Julie, Seth & Andrea the news and asked them to whip together a look for the office. They rocked it…with very little notice they all put together some great looks.
Kat came in on makeup for everyone and the rest of our team for this shoot (Connie, Erin & Steph) played key roles in making sure it all worked. Thank you Julie and Matt from Brandit’s Roadhouse for helping on location needs. And major props as always to the rest of the team today…thank you all for kicking ass! 
Basically I was trying for a linear progression in the images…a story board sequence of sorts. From the dulldrums of the office to the energy and excitement of LIFE being lived. As this was my first attempt at it, there are some obvious deviations from the time line that could have been done better. But all-in-all I’m pretty satisfied with that part of the shoot, and I’m really stoked about the images. We’ll take what we learned from this and give it another shot on another shoot some time soon.
Rock On!
Live hard or hardly live
April 10, 2009 by vard · 3 Comments
I guess I’d have to call this a successful day; got some rockin shots, learned A LOT…stayed alive. How can you not enjoy it, right?
I spent the morning letting Mike practice is white-water rescue technique on me again…by necessity, he’s getting quite good, which rocks. I think I attained a new personal low for core body temp this morning. But whatever…we made it and I still like kayaking…I’m pretty sure.
And I can’t think of a better way to cap an ice-water start than with a pool-water finish. I guess we can call last nights tub exercise a success too. FROM THE TUB TO THE TANK Clarissa and Theresa rocked it hard today for a few hours of “please do that again…ok, adjust that…ok, again…ummm, please don’t drown please, yes, thank you!” Shooting under water isn’t really as easy as it seems, but anything worth doing rarely is. Going SLOOOOWWWW and deliberate seemed like a good idea for a change, and it worked out nicely. From just this one shoot I came away with a mountain of ‘brain data’ to crunch on for making this easier/better/more! in future shoots. I’m looking forward to taking this up a few large notches in a pool, and then seeing what and where we can take it from there.
Kudos to EVERYONE today. Mike and Nate for a great kayaking ride. Clarissa & Theresa for knocking it outta the park. Connie for being an awesome assistant (I loved having the chance to work with you today! THANK YOU)…Jazzy and Nora for their assistantship (is that really a word?) with background stands and lights. And Erica for making sure everyone stayed alive in the pool…thanks!
…I love my job!
aquatica
…so I’ve been wanting to do this for A LONG time, but time/cost/laziness have not let it happen…yet.
So here’s a little taste of my most recent motivation. I’m actually going to try this ‘in real life’ (cr. A.Z.) tomorrow. No promises on success, but anything at all should be a learning experience, and because of that, worth it. Thanks to Mike for going under for the team, and to Jazzy & Nora for their interest and support from the doorway…Oh yeah, Mike set up the overall shot…he needed this for his 1-a-day project…
…let’s get liquid…
Lessons from the Lehigh
Just a quick note cause I have to write this down somewhere.
Mike and I gave it a go for some freezing cold white water kayaking yesterday. Mind you, I’ve never been in a kayak on whitewater before, but it was a chance to try something new.
We worked on the basics for a few minutes and got underway.
Made it about 100 yards and all hell broke loose…everything that could have gone wrong right away did. I’ll leave the scary details to memory – since there’s NO CHANCE I’ll ever forget it, it doesn’t need to be written down. We ended up hiking more than kayaking and it took Mike about an hour to find my paddle…and the boat.
In the end, aside from some really heavy emotions coming and going for a few hours, everything turned out fine. We had a blast, learned some truly critical life lessons and walked away with another great adventure – however brief it might have been.
Always try to live life to the fullest, just don’t overfill the glass before you’re ready!
