Behind the Scenes of the Snow Angel Diptychs

Some people have asked me how I shot the snow angel diptychs from yesterday, so I thought it’d be easier to show you. Don’t worry, it’ll be a short post as it wasn’t a fancy setup at all.

Basically I had to find a way to get the camera up above the subjects. So either I had to go up with the camera on a platform or ladder of some kind, or I had to have a way to remote control it from below. Setting up ladders and platforms is generally frowned upon in NYC parks and I had to do this on the down-low anyway, so I settled on the second option.

First step was to find some sort of arm to stick the 5D Mark III camera and 28mm/1.8 lens at the end of. I opted to use my carbon tripod and ball head with the legs together but fully extended. This gave me about 4 or 5 feet of distance. If I anchored the feet of the tripod in my stomach, I could then use my arm to control the angles. Then the question became how to fire the shutter. My last ditch option would be to use the built-in timer and then have to get the camera in position before the camera fired. This would suck. Next up was a little cheap IR remote I bought on eBay, but I found that I couldn’t control the camera angles enough to get an accurate framing. It worked, but it didn’t work very well. Luckily I had a trick up my sleeve.

A couple months ago I was sent a CamRanger from the manufacturer to try out. I’ve been meaning to send it back to them, but I had yet to find a real life portrait shooting situation for which it was suited. Something to actually run it through it’s paces on a real shoot. Well I found one today. So the Cam Ranger plugs into the camera body (I taped it to the tripod toward the top of one of the legs) and connects via wifi to your iPad or in my case iPhone (The iPad would have been too heavy). It allows you to not only fire the shutter and change exposure settings from afar, it also lets you stream liveview images from the camera to the phone. Basically full remote control. So I could have the camera up at the end of the tripod over the people and still see everything the camera saw. Firing the shutter when I had things framed just right. I have to admit that it worked flawlessly, and I have not generally had a trouble-free experience with Canon remote control even using their own software and an actual computer with a hardwired cable. Color me impressed.

As for lighting I had planned and brought some pocketWizards and a strobe with a little softbox to use, but ended up just using the hard sun as it was. It made the whole thing feel more real.

Below is a very rough video of the whole thing in action.

Video courtesy of my friend Patrick DiJusto whom you should follow on twitter.
Photo courtesy of the lovely Eran Jones.

Snow Angel Diptychs

In late December we were supposed to get a bit of snow. I was working on my daily portrait project at the time and had the idea to take a portrait shooting down on the subject from above. Well it didn’t snow more than a dusting that day, much to my chagrin, so it’s been in the back of my mind until last night when we started to get hammered by this storm here in the northeast. So I put out a call on facebook and 6 of my friends showed up this morning in Prospect Park to help me realize my vision.

Thanks to Eran, Evan, Cait, Kalah, Emily, Patrick, and Heather for coming out this morning for a bit of fun. That Ranger Cam I have on loan came in pretty hand this morning.

Click on the images to blow them up bigger on your monitor and see some extra detail.

Apple Core Studies

Melanie

From a test shoot a couple days ago. I was playing with very short depth of field and using constant tungsten lights as opposed to flash.

Stuff You Should Know – Chuck Bryant & Josh Clark

I had the opportunity on Tuesday to spend a half hour with Josh and Chuck from the Top 5 podcast “Stuff You Should Know“. If you like knowing random facts about random subjects and don’t take the time listen to these guys each week, you’re letting yourself down.

Not only were they two of the nicest people I’ve ever met, they were totally down to earth and accommodating to my (admittedly fairly conservative) artistic whims. Plus their new TV show on the Science Channel premieres next Saturday, so make sure you check it out.

 

31 December – Cocktail

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For the month of December, prints of each day’s image will be 50%-off for the day they’re posted.
11×14″ for $50. So if you like the image and want a print, BUY RIGHT NOW.

30 December – Meditation

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For the month of December, prints of each day’s image will be 50%-off for the day they’re posted.
11×14″ for $50. So if you like the image and want a print, BUY RIGHT NOW.

29 December – Prepared

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For the month of December, prints of each day’s image will be 50%-off for the day they’re posted.
11×14″ for $50. So if you like the image and want a print, BUY RIGHT NOW.

28 December – Smooch

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For the month of December, prints of each day’s image will be 50%-off for the day they’re posted.
So if you like the image and want a print, BUY RIGHT NOW.

27 December – Anniversary

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For the month of December, prints of each day’s image will be 50%-off for the day they’re posted.
So if you like the image and want a print, BUY RIGHT NOW.