Epic photo shoot... this is how it's supposed to go!

  A week or two ago, while I was still out to sea on my last trip, a friend/fellow aerialist/fellow photographer, Meghan Meredith, tossed out a great idea. We have a lot of photographers as well as talented aerialists at Aerial Revolution, our gym/second home. (I mean that, it's kinda like the Cirque Du Soliel version of Joe's Gym from Dodgeball, we're family- even if we're nothing close to average) So why not collaborate and set up a photo shoot day. We'd all get to work together, the aerialists would get great pics for their resumes, we'd get great stuff for our portfolios, and the studio would make a little extra money. Everybody wins.

  So, yesterday was the first shoot of what hopefully will be a regular occurrence in the future, and I have to say it was awesome. I was a little worried at first because I wound up running late (note to self, GPS in the iPhone does NOT take traffic into account when it calculates travel times from point A to Point B) but I actually had planned ahead and knew exactly how I wanted to set up the lighting, so was able to get in and set up while the models were still warming up and getting into costume.

  Meghan had already worked out costuming, posing and makeup with the models, once I had the lights up and rigging set, it was game on. Our first aerialist was Amy.

   We got into a good rhythm, I was shooting, Meghan and two of our instructors, Ivo and Jackie, were posing the aerialists with a little input based on what I could see through the lens. Went pretty well, we were having fun, music was on (I'd comment on Ivo's playlist, but my musical taste has also been called into question at times, so I won't) all we really needed was beer to make it a perfect day. Amy came to the rescue and offered to make a beer run while we kept shooting. Her selection was as excellent as her posing and the shoot got even more perfect.

   Next up was Mary, who rocked it as well.

    Our third and final (planned at least) model for the day was Traci. She is one of my favorite people, recently returning to aerial after a hiatus, and it was awesome to see her flying again. She also gave the camera some great stuff:

even when we disagreed as to creative direction:

 
  See why she's one of my favorite people? Anyone who can look that awesome while flipping me off is definitely a person worth knowing, right?

  Anyway, while we were shooting Traci, Mary was getting ready to head home. She is a motorcyclist, and she happens to have the most awesome kitty ears helmet I have ever seen. She was putting on her boots and biker gear and someone said we needed to get her on the trapeze in her leathers and boots. She mentioned something about wanting to do a shoot on her motorcycle one day. I can neither confirm nor deny that the beer had any effect on what came next (and she hadn't had any- for the record) but someone said why not today? So we opened up the back door to the studio, and in rolled Mary on her cruiser. Parked it right under the trapeze and the shoot after the shoot started.

  We finally had to call it quits, mostly because we were laughing so hard I couldn't focus anymore, so we broke everything down and headed out. These are all rough draft images, the next awesome part is I get to take my time editing. Meghan is going to work up an image package for each model while I am out to sea, I get to just edit at my leisure and post the finished versions when I am back from my next trip.

   So, awesome afternoon of shooting, got some great shots, spent time with friends laughing and playing while making art, and I don't have to do any follow up. Not sure how many days like this I will have in my career as a photographer, but these are the ones that make me think it's worth pursuing and putting in all the less fun hours.

   Thanks again to everyone involved, especially Meghan for setting it up, and Jess - who apparently isn't going to kill us after all for driving a motorcycle into her aerial studio ;-)

How durable is the SB-910 Speed Light? Pay attention to your gear and don't assume anything.

    The image above isn't a finished product, it's a work in progress. You may see it again later on in a different form. It's a first quick edit of the first shot I am trying to take from a creative concept in my head into a finished image. It's a composite of about 42 separate frames, some HDR, some long exposure, some normal. But that isn't what this post is about. This post is about those rocks you see in the lower right corner and my SB-910.

   After we did the exposures for this shot, the plan was to finish the evening with more traditional shots. I pulled my camera off the tripod, and because we were short on time and light, I decided I would just use the tripod as a speed light mount. Threw the 910 onto the tripod, didn't really check to make sure it was locked down before I went into my bag to grab a soft box. Sure enough, in the second my back was turned, the wind gusted and the 910 fell off the tripod and dropped about 4 feet down onto those wonderful large rocks you see in the image above. It made a wonderful shattering sound and pieces of plastic flew everywhere.

 I picked it up to take a look and saw this (did you ever want to see your flash naked? If not look away now)

  It looked like the damage was only to the red plastic window covering the focus assist lamp. But when I turned the flash on and tried a test shot using the D800 in commander mode, nothing. Thought maybe I had just broken the IR window, so put it on the hot shoe, and luckily, it worked. Figured I now just had a very overpriced on camera flash, and wondered if I was now doing a $500 dollar photo shoot. Still, had no time to waste, so just shot with robo-flash on camera until we completely ran out of daylight and we needed to hike off the beach. I call it robo flash because with the cover missing I think it sort of looks like happy robot about to kill its' human masters... but I digress.

  The next day I had another shoot. Since I figured the IR mode on the 910 was shot I pulled out the mitros as my primary off camera for this one. But when I fired off my test shots, the mitros didn't work as an IR remote either. Now I  had to really sit back and take stock of what the hell was going on. Luckily I had more time on this shoot so my troubleshooting was more level headed and thorough, and quickly revealed that I was being a dumb ass. The last time I used my D800 as a commander was at the speed light workshop, where I was deconflicting with other shooters so had switched my master to channel 4. All my flashes were set to channel 1. Fixed that issue and not only did the mitros work perfectly as a slave, but so did the busted up 910 when I tested it later that night.

  So, what did I learn from this? First off, solid gear is much more durable than I give it credit for. Second, pay attention to the little things. If I had just taken the extra second to make sure the 910 was locked down in the first place, it wouldn't have fallen. If I had taken the time to reset my camera back to its' baseline after the workshop I wouldn't have thought the damage was as bad as I initially did. Finally, I got a good reminder of the importance of keeping going regardless of what happened. The flash fell, it broke, I went to a backup and still got good images and had a fun evening of shooting.

   More will come from this shoot later on when I finish processing images. I will probably be going blog silent for a little while, I am getting ready for a summer of travel, there will be lots of shooting but I won't have a solid and reliable internet connection again really until August or September, so I will post when I can, but I'll probably be gone for a bit then back in force this fall. Stay tuned. If all goes well, you may also see my first attempt at a book coming out shortly, since I will have a lot of travel time free to write.

   And just to finish it up- turns out the only damage was the red plastic window cover for the front of the flash, $12 plus shipping and handling later, my 910 is good as new and still blasting away.