Monday, January 26, 2009

Jessica and the Merry-go-round

A while back I had this idea to shoot someone on the old style playground merry go round. I was hanging out with Curtis (translation: eating steak and drinking mojitos), and he said he knew of such a place not to far away. We decide to kidnap, err I mean, convince Jessica to go for a ride with us the next morning. Jessica is a family friend of ours. She had no reason not to believe we were going shoe shopping. Well she ended up being a good sport about it and we set off to make some images.

Scott Shepard talks to Jessica about the shot

I wanted to rig a remote camera and strobes to the merry go round. You see, I didn’t want to be on that thing while it was going round and round. Not to long ago I was on a U.S. Naval vessel known as a HSV or high speed vessel. We were on our way to Spain from Morocco and the seas were angry. The trip lasted almost 24 hours and I was seasick for 20 of them. Now in my defense the seas were really, really angry. Anyway, I didn’t want to sit on this thing and go round and round so I rigged up the camera. I wasn’t worried about Jess, she’s young and needs to earn her sea legs anyway.Scott Shepard talks to Jessica about the shot

I attached some Pocket Wizards, aimed the strobes and started to spin this thing with Jess on it. I got it going pretty fast and then just started firing the camera with the remote. The images were coming out pretty cool. I should have brought my laptop and used the remote live view option to capture the images in real time. It would have been a whole lot less spinning, stopping, reviewing and spinning again.

Jessica spinning on a merry-go-round

We changed positions and I had Jess lie down on the floor plate. I put a snoot on one of the strobes and let the open shade handle the fill.

Jessica spinning on a merry-go-round

By now Jess has been spinning quite a bit and she needed a break. We moved over to the swings that were close by. I shot a few pictures of Jess swinging but the damage was done.

Jessica swinging

She was already turning green! Thanks Jess for being a good sport and thanks to Curtis for shooting the behind the scenes images. Jessica a bit green



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Some personal work

I thought I would change it up a bit and show some of the images I shot over the winter that were more personal in nature. Here are some pictures of my daughters Makena and Kaylee.  When I get a new lens or an idea to test I turn to my kids first. They make great subjects and they are happy to goof around in front of my camera. In case you are wondering, the beach stuff is early winter, late fall here in California.  It’s tuff to live here (wink) but we’ll manage.

Makena Shepard at the beach

Makena Shepard at the beach    Kaylee Shepard at the beachKaylee and Makena Shepard at the beach

Makena and Kaylee at the beach Kaylee and Makena Shepard at the beach    Kaylee Shepard at the beach    Kaylee Shepard at the beach Kaylee Shepard at the beach    Kaylee Shepard at the beach Makena Shepard at the beach Kaylee and Makena Shepard at the beachKaylee and Makena Shepard at the beachKaylee and Makena Shepard at the beach

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Friday, January 16, 2009

Robert Primes

Here is another series of images from the ongoing advertisements for Clairmont Camera. This ad will be featuring Emmy winning Cinematographer Robert Primes. Bob earned Emmy Awards for Felicity and My Antonio, and a third nomination for Harrison: Cry of the City. Bob received the ASC award for the series MDs, the first digital show so honored and has had ASC nominations for Felicity and the Reasonable Doubts pilot.

While setting up at location, we found these great big drums of used film. I thought it would be awesome if we could shoot Bob fooling around with some of it. When he arrived on set we started to collaborate and kick some ideas around. I told him about the film idea and he said he was willing to try anything. I get so stoked when someone with obvious talent is willing to explore some of my creative ideas.

Robert Primes

We started by giving Bob some film to hold, but that didn’t last long. Bob is a real funny guy. While we were shooting, he started throwing the giant bunch of film around, including at me.

It was starting to look great. I wanted more film in the frame so I had Curtis on camera left and Laurie on camera right start to throw big bunches of film into frame. The timing wasn’t always right but I knew we were onto something great.

Robert Primes

Robert Primes

Some of the shots were hysterical, like this one above. It looks like a giant wall of film is about to devour poor Bob. Bob never lost his genuine enthusiasm during the entire time we were shooting. At one point the film swallowed him whole.

Robert Primes

I was shooting with Profoto strobe packs. The flash durations on these packs are really short. It does so well at freezing the action that the film started to look like a crazy sculpture. It really would not have been possible with any other lighting system. The other great thing is to shoot tethered to a capture computer. The ability to review the images on the fly allowed us to shoot until we were sure we had the shot. Below is the final image used for the Clairmont Camera ad in the International Cinematographers Guild magazine and the American Cinematographer magazine.

Robert Primes



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