We all get jobs through referrals and this one was no exception. A friend of mine calls me to photograph the progress on a construction site. Simple job, really: go out to the site once a month – document the progress – have the client select a number of images to print – deliver the 8×10′s to the office by a certain day. Repeat for 3 years.

Read the specs, run the numbers, write the quote. Have a few conversations about the details rewrite the way the quote gets presented and we’re good to go. Then comes the phone call: “We like the numbers, but our client has a security protocol in place that prohibits photography on site“, which comes as a surprise to me, since their client had asked for progress photography as part of my clients bid.

So how do you deal with a ‘No’? You can just forget about the job and move on to the next one. Write this one off and hope the client remembers you later. You can complain to the client, citing the fact that their client had provided specific photography specs to them – but I’ve found that bitching and moaning does not get you too far, at least not in the long run.

Or you can try to salvage the situation, come up with solutions to make your client look like a hero in their clients eyes. “What if we do the pre- construction photos? Those would not go against any security protocol, since we are just photographing the site – nothing’s there yet.” I did just that, called up my friend and had this discussion with him: “Is this ‘no’ a ‘no’ or is it really a ‘yes’, if we ask the right person? Or is it at least a ‘maybe’?” “Well” he says “I’m not sure. I think this ‘no’ is not a ‘no’, but it’s also not a ‘yes’. Let’s look at the ‘maybe’.” (I mean how many times has an art director on set told you to photograph something one way and the creative director tells you to shoot the complete opposite and then the client walks in and tells you to do something completely different again. Well the same holds true for any large organization.)

I walk away from that conversation feeling better about the prospects of the assignment, then the ‘no photography’ phone call. The weekend passes and yesterday I get an email. “Could you please call me at 3:30.” So the “No” turns into a “Yes”. It’s not every month for the next 3 years, but it’s photography for the next quarter.

How did this happen? Well turns out that the security requirements are for the finished working building and not the construction of it. What about the other 25 months of photography? Well let’s see. We’re writing a contract for 4 months worth of work, with the option to add the rest later. I’m just gonna waiting for that yes to come in a bit.

You’re on the tree already.

Creative people often struggle to break out of a the type of work that they have been doing for a long time. They have climbed up the creative tree and have grown accustomed to the branch that they’ve ended up on. Then one morning you wake up and you’re not happy, because the work is always the same or you know that you can do better or you wish you would do more than just crank out _________________ (fill in the blank).

So how do you branch out from where you are now? How do you get those creative juices flowing again, that got you where you are in the first place? What do you do to break the routine?

Go out on a limb. Far out. Further than you think you can go. Once you’re there, go further.

If you remain hugging the tree trunk, you’re gonna stay in the same rut you’re in now. I promise.

Case in point: my recent documentary film shoot in Afghanistan. About 6 months ago, I had a thought pop into my mind: “I should really use the ability to create visually compelling content to help others, not just to earn a living” and Daniel popped into my head. I have know Daniel since the late 80′s. We went to college together a long time ago. Currently he works for a humanitarian organization in Afghanistan, whose mission it is to fly other NGO’s to remote places in the central Asian country, enabling those relief workers to help the people who need assistance the most.

Then I thought “Who am I to shoot a documentary? I’ve only produced videos for a few months and have never done a documentary.” What I found out though, is that by being willing to create a new genre, one that I have not done before, I challenge myself to go out and educate myself. So I picked up the book that people recommended me to read (Directing the documentary, Michael Rabiger), I spoke with award winning documentary film makers, who are at the top of their field (thanks for your advise, Hugo and Denis – and thanks for the introduction Judge). But initially, I thought that i was not qualified to produce this, so I did to act on that thought.

A few days later that same thought popped into my mind again. This time I thought “Afghanistan is one of the most remote, inhospitable places, where I’m gonna have a hard time, if equipment goes down or stops working.” What I found out though, is that by being willing to push my equipment to it’s limits, allows me to be able to shoot the more everyday assignments with greater confidence (after all I shoot in Florida where I rarely encounter -15° C or 9,800 feet above sea level). On top of that, I can have any piece of equipment, that I can not pick up locally, overnighted to me. I consulted with my equipment manufacturers like the folks at CPS, Canon Professional Services, who flat out told me that I was going to be working outside the equipment specs for my cameras and lenses, but it should be ok. It forced me to plan very carefully and by finding people (like the senior CNN photojournalist – thanks for your insights Jerry and thanks to you too Scott), who have been in those places and learning from their experience, I was able to be prepped and not have a single piece of equipment go down. But initially, I thought that My equipment would be an issue, so I did to act on that thought.

Filming at 9,800 feet in -25ºC temperature

A week or so later – you guessed it – same thought: “I should really go.” This time the objection was that it was going to be unsafe, impossible to plan the logistics from half way around the world, to expensive, unneeded, … But by this time I was also questioning, if I was just looking for excuses not to go, or if I was going to listen to that little voice in my head that kept pushing me to do this.

A crazy idea – how to start letting go of the trunk.

So I emailed Daniel. “I have this crazy idea …” What I expected was – at the very best – a very strongly qualified maybe. ’cause it was a long shot. ‘ cause it was expensive. ’cause it was dangerous, ’cause I had not done this before, ‘ cause I wasn’t sure, ’cause they couldn’t use a documentary, …

What I got was: “We’d love to have you. When are you coming? We’re actually in need of a documentary. We actually have a budget for this. And there is a really neat story of a medical flight that we can use to build a story of the documentary.”

Well after that initial email it still took months of planning, prepping, booking, testing, reading, meeting, calling, … until I stepped on the plane. I encourage you to follow that still small voice, your gut, the thought you think is crazy or what ever you call it. Don’t ignore it. Explore it. Go out on a limb. The further you get out on a limb, the greater the chances of you failing in a big way, but also the greater the chances of you coming back with something amazing.

Today, I am willing to try something new. Something I’ve never done before. I have an experience under my belt, that will bring confidence to my clients “If he can produce a documentary, then I feel confident to book him on a project that he has not done before.”

Today, I am willing to push my equipment. Further that it got pushed yesterday, I know from personal experience how long my batteries last in a below freezing environment, that my gear can shoot in an unpressurized airplane cabin at 16,000 feet. That I can produce a job in one of the most remote places on earth. What do you think that does for the confidence that my client in my ability?

Today, I have a production to show my clients, that was produced half way around the world. In a place that is not easy to film in. In a country that requires you to have security in mind 24/7. A project that had to have multiple redundancies, because their was not plan B for failure – so I had to bring Plan B with me.

Filming a Kodiak as it flies a runway inspection about 4 feet above my head.

You gotta see the view from the tip of the limb!

What does all this have to do with creativity? Everything. You can only try new things, if you get out on that limb. Far out on that limb. Is the risk great? Yes, but so are the rewards. I will have a documentary, once I’m done editing, that is being presented to the European Commission of humanitarian Aid and Civil protection. I will have a piece that is shoot in a country that few people would volunteer to go to. Will that set my reel apart from the next guys?

I have also learned more in a shorter period, than if I would have stayed in my comfort zone, close to the tree trunk doing what I have been doing for the last 20 years. This experience has also given me the knowledge that I can do something that many people say is stupid, dangerous, impossible, …

Next time my client has a crazy idea that they want to realize, it’s gonna be a lot easier for me to say “Yeah, I can do that” and be able to back, ’cause I’ve done it before.

Get out on your limb.

Use the comments below to tell us about your limb that you went out on. I look forward to reading your story…

Wow! It’s been an absolutely crazy ride these last few months. We’ve been swamped like never before, but I want to get back into the habit of sharing some of the things I’ve learned in my work, here on this blog. We’ll start with something simple.

Gear does not make a good photograph or movie, but the right tool for the job makes it a heck of a lot easier. I started using Think Tank products 18 months ago and love the design, quality and workmanship of these bags. We photoraphers/cinematographers carry tons of stuff with us to a shoot and it all needs to live somewhere. Hint: If everything has it’s specific place, when you’re packing up to leave a shoot you’ll notice what’s missing, just by having an empty spot in your bag.

“Facebook is a waste of time. I don’t need to know what you had for lunch today” is a common response that I hear when I speak with people about why I am involved in social media – hmmm, what did I have for lunch today … but back to the point of this post: I wanted to share with you how I got booked to shoot a video shoot from my facebook post in less than an hour.

I have been getting into shooting video over the last few months – you can check out some of my films on vimeo – and I have been seeing that there is a lot to learn from a photographers perspective. I purchased my first HDDSLR 3 months ago and got booked on my first paid video production last week, so I posted a blurb about editing this shoot on my facebook page.

I tagged my wife (the beautiful model in the photo) and left it at that. I also did not design the post to be anything special my comment on facebook merely read: “Spend most of the day editing a commercial movie project, while learning Adobe Premiere, incidentally the client was very happy with the rough cut :)”

That was late Thursday night (around 10:30 pm), I was ready to call it a night, take the dog for a walk and go to sleep. On that walk I get a comment on my facebook post – 24 minutes after uploading the screen shot – from one of my photography clients. I answered the post and that exchange ended with: “Hey….I got a movie project we should talk about ; )” at 11:23 pm, 43 minutes after my original facebook post. I called the next morning and we are looking at producing a series of half a dozen short movie clips for this client in May.

“So an existing client contacts you to shoot for him” you say, “big deal.” – but wait this is where the facebook story really starts getting interesting. A few months ago, my wife (remember the lovely lady from my video shoot :) sees a post on facebook from one of her friends, Katja, who had posted a few images of a recent job photographed for some yacht building company on location in the Bahamas – beautiful photographs by the way – anyway my wife sends a facebook friends request to the brand manager of this company, who accepts based on their mutual friend, the model Katja, with me so far? Good. Turns out that the brand manager is friends with one of my good friend Hugo, whom I have known since college, he is also one of my wife’s facebook friends – she knows him through me and Hugo showed up a mutual friend when my wife’s friend request got accepted by the brand manager. So I friend the brand manager as well and based on our mutual friend he accepts my friends request.

The beauty of facebook in this instance, is that a couple of total strangers in real life, get connected based on relationships that we all had with friends of each other:

Yes you are right, facebook does not replace old fashioned relationships. It is not a magical machine that provides work out of the blue, but in this instance it showed me a relationship that I had through an old college buddy, who is best friends with a brand manager, who hired a model that is friends with my wife.

And that’s how you get hired on facebook in 43 minutes.

I’ve been writing about an exciting project that I had the privilege of being a part or: a 5 day behind the scenes time-lapse and video shoot of the set up of Meridian Yacht’s ‘booth’ at the Miami International Boat Show 2011.

You’ve bee reading about all the planning that goes into a commercial time lapse project and I have also broken down how to pack for a multi-day photography assignment like this. I will post about the actual photography of this job, which is now been completed as well as how to put the whole project together, but in the mean time enjoy a short video trailer:

2. Pack it

Packing for the shoot

An overview

Now you know where you’re shooting from. You know how many shots your taken. You got the power and storage issues figured out. It’s time to pack. If you’re shooting a time-lapse sequence for fun, this will seem a little over the top just remember we’re talking about a commercial professional application. Redundancy is the name of the game, although I want to be able to walk into my time-lapse set up in one trip.

Everything I needed for this project fits on this one cart. I like this specific one, since it can double as a shooting table, once it’s unloaded.  I’ll go through each bag in detail with everything that’s in it, but here is the overview: slung over the back of the cart (on my back when I go to location) is my grip pack: extension cords, data cables, clamps, rigging gear, some snacks, coffee mug, velvet and black fabric – more on those later – gaffers tape, ect. They are packed in a old computer back pack, just in case I want to bring a computer to shoot the ‘B’ camera tethered as well. On the very bottom is my computer case that holds computer, hard drives, card reader, data cable, power supplies, … on top of that is my camera bag that holds cameras, lenses, CF cards, video cage, filters, moregrip gear, batteries, credentials, business cards, … behind that is my tripod (Bogen 3058 with a Gitzo Ballhead 1576) for the time-lapse ‘A’ camera and my sticks for the video work (Manfrotto 547 with 701 HDV fluid head).

The dolly is one I picked up at Home Depot a while ago, I like it because it folds into a table once you got all your gear off the dolly:

The camera bag

Over the course of many years of professional photography you accumulate a bunch of little tools, tricks and hacks that end up living in your camera bag. I took a bunch of them out for this assignment, like radio slaves, flash meter, sync cords, … As you’ll see there is a lot of gear that comes on a shoot with me, so I love my camera bag (ThinkTank AirportInternational 2.0). It’s a rolling case that fits on an international flight as hand luggage at least what dimensions are concerned. Now if someone could make it fit the weight restrictions too … but that’s another story. This case has no issues rolling, even if it’s fully loaded. It also features a lock on the case and a cable lock to secure the case to a stationary object.

Here is the case open and packed. Remember that there is a second 5D that lives here, but it’s being used to photograph the images for this blog post.

Let’s go through some of the gear that came with me. Much of this is personal preference, this is my kit, use this example to build your own.

Cameras:

Two Canon 5D Mk II’s. Awesome video camera and still camera. We shot one for the stills in the time lapses and one for all the ‘B’ roll – video and time-lapse.

I used my Canon 5D to shoot some stills and behind the scenes photos. This particular job had 3 cameras going.

Extra batteries and chargers. 8 camera batteries, 3 chargers.

Canon on camera speed light – never left the bag. That was there just in case I needed it for some of the still images.

Lenses:

Canon 24-70 mm 2.8 L. Most of the video was shot on this lens as well as all the ‘B’ roll time-lapse.

Canon 24-105 mm 4.0 L. The lens for the ‘A’ camera’s time-lapse. Focus and zoom got taped once we got the camera set.

Canon 100 mm 2.8 macro. I love this lens, but it never came out of the bag.

Canon 70-200 mm 4.0 L. Love the Image Stabilisation on this lens for shooting video.

Mamiya 500 mm 8.0 mirror lens. Just a fun lens to have. It’s big and heavy.

Mamiya 70 mm 2.8. Never left the bag. The Mamiya lenses are attached with a mechanical adapter.

Filters:

Lee ND 3 gradated filter

Circular polarizing filter

LightCraft Fader – essential for shooting video out doors. Unless you want no shallow depth of field – but then why are you shooting a MkII?

Canon lens hoods and Lee compendium. Use them. ‘nough said.

Grip:

Manfrotto Magic arm with Super Clamp and camera plattform. If you hang your camera 40 feet over a concrete floor, you want to be sure that your support does not fail. So are you really gonna trust that $10.- deal you got on Ebay? The arm preformed flawlessly. It articulates to where you want it and then locks down solidly with one big knob.

The white fabric next to the lens shades is a rain coat for the camera and lens – it lives in my bag and only comes out when it needs to protect the camera. The black bag next to it is the raincoat for the Camera Bag that comes with the rolling case (thank you ThinkTank!).

Flashlight. Grey balance card. White balance card. Business cards. Press Pass. Credentials for all access at show.

Video:

Zacuto Z-finder. You’ll want one to pull focus. Get the anti-fog version – or upgrade to it. You’ll need it.

Follow Focus. Essential for smooth focus pulls. More an art than a science. Don’t forget the wet erase marker for marking the points your pulling to and from.

Easom Cage. Protects the camera and follow focus assembly, allows you to attach audio recorders, monitors, ect. to the rig. The other great design detail is that the camera plattform and the tripod plate move independently from each other so you can balance the camera on sticks for pans and tilts.

The computer case

I love these cases – I have a few of them. This one (Hardigg’s storm case) is like a armored briefcase for your laptop. I also have a shock mounted rack case for the bigger shoots, but again – that’s another story …

These guys are basically bomb proof – well at least water proof and crush proof they do an awesome job protecting your fragile electronics. I like these because of their unique latch design – they don’t bust your knuckles like other cases. Like the photo bag, there are a lot of little details in the case that get added over the years.

Computer:

Mac Book Pro with a 2.53 MhZ processor, 4 GB of RAM and a fast 320 GB harddrive.

We also used a Mac Book Air as the computer that the ‘A’ camera was tethered to.

Harddrives:

1.5TB drive in a Wiebetech enclosure. These enclosures rock. I have the single one that I travel with and then dual and quads at the office. You can slide the actual HD’s out of the enclosures. They’re interchangeable and pretty cool. Great Product.

2 750GB bus powered HD’s

Power supplies, lock, CF card reader, another set of USB data connections for the camera, firewire cables, eSATA card and cables.

The grip pack

You can go over board packing for the unknown – that’s why scouting pays off – good scouting that is. Where o you have power? Is it enough power? Who is in charge of the location that you’re in? Who can override their decision? How do you secure your gear or do you want to sit next to it for 10 hours a day; other than being boring that means you won’t be able to do anything else.

Back to packing – my grip/rigging bag is an old computer laptop back pack (Targus Computer back pack). I specifically chose this bag for this assignment, because I had to shoot up in the catwalks 40′ above the ground, with the only access being a small spiral stair case. That means no cases, no tripods and no carts up there. I need to be totally mobile – so camera in hand and grip/rigging gear on back – and I can slip the computer into this case, if I had to.

Since we are shooting a long day we need to get power to the computer that’s running the time-lapse camera. A few hundred feet of extension cords do the trick, along with some surge protector strips – since we are charging camera batteries, running lap tops, ect.

Rigging gear, i.E. webbing, carabiners, ratchets, clamps, … for securing the camera when it gets suspended from the catwalks and boat railings. Some coffee (gotta have coffee – no that’s not a canon lens – it’s a canon coffee mug :) thanks Trevor).

The black cloth in the foreground is a 3′x3′ piece of velvet. When I scouted the location, I saw that we were going to shoot through the glass of the restaurant we were shooting from and that we needed to eliminate the reflections for the time-lapse. Gaffer tape this piece to the window, lens goes through a hole in the center – secured by a rubber band. No more reflections. Make sure that the fabric does not vignette in your lens.

The other black fabric is a large piece of canvas to put down on the super dirty catwalks (that no one has EVER cleaned), so I can lie down and place equipment on a clean surface.

Now that you’ve finished planning and packing it’s time to photograph your time-lapse project.

Go on reading how to photograph a commercial time-lapse project on Friday.

I just finished shooting a four day time-lapse project at the Miami Boat Show for one of my new clients Meridian Yachts. Our goal was to show the 3 day set up process, which no one visiting the boat show gets to see. It’s fascinating to watch the Miami Beach Convention Center transform from an empty cavernous warehouse to the biggest boat show in the States. In my research I have found numerous video tutorials, examples, web posts, … on time-lapse projects; but I have not found one that speaks about the process of preparing to shoot one in detail. This blog post will talk about how I planned, produced and photographed a commercial time lapse and how I put it all together after all the pieces were been shot.

1. Plan it

Scouting the location

I’m gonna assume that you already have a project in mind. So the first thing I do is to scout the location that I will be shooting in. What is the subject that you’re going to be shooting? Where will it be? Are there vantage points that will become obstructed in the course of your time-lapse? Is your location accesible? Do you need to get to the camera to change batteries, cards, … Is there a way to get around power and storage requirements? Is access restricted? Who will guard the equipment for the duration of the time-lapse (in our case it was 4 days). Shoot photographs and look at your field of view.

Click for a larger view

Now you’re ready to have an intelligent discussion with your client. Why have you picked the location that you’ve selected? Remember once you start shooting, you can not change your location or you’ll ruin the time-lapse, so be careful where you set up. In our case there where 3 possible locations:

• a business center that was too far away to get a good angle on the clients booth

• a restaurant that was not going to be in use during the time of set up, but was directly behind the booth

• the cat walk directly above the booth

But I still checked all 3 possible locations to make sure that I was picking the correct one. The restaurant was going to give us power and a place to keep our set up overnight, without the risk of someone disturbing our set-up. The client had coordinated with the show’s organizers to get me access in these restricted areas. Get to know the person who is in charge of security and the access to the off limits portions of the building and become their friend. They will be invaluable during the project. (Special thanks to Venus from the boat show, by the way who was never to busy to get me security, engineering, access, … she made this project run smooth. You rock!)

Do the math

You’re gonna have to figure out how long the finished piece is going to be. What frame rate will in play at? In our case it’s between 2 1/2 min to 5 min. I suggested shooting enough photographs to run at 60 fps. [5 min * 60 sec * 60 fps = 18,000 images].

Now take a look at how long your event it going to be. In our case 4 days. The first day will be 10 hours, the second and the third will be 8 hours and the last one is 4 hours. [10+8+8+4 = 30 hours * 60 min = 1800 min * 60 sec = 108,000 sec].

No all that’s left is to divide the number of seconds in your event by the number of images needed in your project and you’ll know how many seconds you have in between shots. 108,000 / 18,000 = 6.

Double check your math, for real.

Now for the important part: TEST YOUR CAMERAS SHOOTING SPEED! How large of a file writes to what speed of card in what length of time. You don’t want the buffer to fill up and mess up your time-lapse project. In our case we’re shooting sRAW (~10 MB) tethered to the computer using a software to fire the shutter, more about all that later; but it turns out that the speed from one frame to the next is 7 sec for that set up. Which is fine, since we are shooting for a 2 1/2 – 5 min project that will have B-roll to intercut with the time-lapse. But you want to know that before you begin shooting. If you’re shooting to a card, you’ll want to figure out how many images can be stored on the card before it is full and messes up your time-lapse. What about power? Did you think of that? How long can the camera run on one battery or two batteries in a vertical grip or do you have a power adapter for your camera?

How much power do you need?

One battery is going to interrupt your time-lapse. You’ll have to stop shooting to replace the battery. A power adapter is great to have, but we couldn’t get one in time. The vertical grip doubles your battery life, but when you open the door to switch batteries, that shuts off the power too, however thanks to a little research on google and melandercl on the timescapes.org forum there is a hack on how to keep the door open and the power on. Read the post for all the details, but the short version is open the battery door, find the little button on the top left side of the battery grip that gets engaged by the door, push that (the cap of a ball point pen works perfectly) and turn on your camera. Voilá! Camera is powered up with the open door. Now write “DO NOT CLOSE” on a piece of tape and stick it on the inside of the open battery door, I’m just sayin’ old habits die hard. Thanks to the battery door hack (thank you melandercl!) we have unlimited power, because the third battery in the charger is charged much faster than the two batteries in the grip will run out of power. Have a system in place to know which is the last battery you swapped out (right in the morning, left in the afternoon) or what ever works for you.

Power savings

Even with the battery solution we want to limit the amount of power the camera draws. Here are some settings you can change to prolong the battery life:

• Turn Live View off. Although it’s cool to watch each shot as it comes in – nothing drains the battery more than having the LCD screen on for 4 days. Just don’t turn Live View on. If you’re software (like the one I used) defaults to Live View on – disable it.

• Turn Image Review off. You’re not going to be watching the camera screen, so why have it fire up every 7 seconds to display an image. You can do this in the first camera screen of the menu under review time. Turn it to ‘OFF’.

• Turn the meter off – unless your shooting in AV mode (more about that later as well). If your on Manual exposure – the light in the scene I was shooting did not change, so why would you want to meter something that you know. The closest you’ll get to this is in the ‘Live View/Movie func. set.’ in the second wrench window of the menu. Inside there you’ll find ‘Metering Timer’ – set it to 4 sec. the shortest time available. If you don’t hit the shutter button, the meter should stay off anyway.

Will you run out of storage?

Once you have the amount frames figured out, you can extrapolate your power and storage requirements. How much fits on your storage medium (in our case a 1 GB external USB 2.0 drive) more than enough. But know how many hours it will take the camera to fill up your card, if you’re shooting to one. In our case it would have taken almost a week of shooting 24 hours to fill up the drive. We did shoot to two separate drives Day One to drive One, Day two to drive Two, Day Three to drive One and Day four to drive Two. That way you can back up the previous day to a separate hard drive that lives somewhere else – in our case that was a 1.5 TB HD.

Go on reading how to pack for a commercial time-lapse project on Wednesday.

How many times a day do you need to show a client a file, concept, video, photo, …? If you’re anything like me, it’s all the time. Many of our files are pretty big or proprietary and confidential, so it’s hard to send them through email or over a social network like facebook (I mean do you really want to be discussing the terms of an upcoming shoot on your fb wall?)

Would it not be great to have one place that is like facebook, just secure? A social network for business that is more personal than LinkedIn? A timeline like Twitter that shows your whole team what is happening in your business? A place were you can work together with your vendors, clients and crew to produce, review, share and comment on the projects that you are working on?

Find out how you can do all this for free after the jump.
If you read my blog, you know that I use SalesForce for my customer relationship management and that it is tied into my website. They introduced a “facebook for business” about a year ago, where you could do just that inside your SalesForce account, which is great for a company that has many people using this CRM, but does not do much good if your by yourself.

All that changed on Sunday though when SalesForce opened Chatter up to everyone. (You may have seen their ads in the Superbowl) – here is a quick video that gives you a Chatter overview.

Let me give you an example of how Chatter works in practice. I shot a video for one of my clients last week and needed to get the rough cut approved. Usually I would upload a small version to YouSendIt or to DropBox, wait for the client to download it and sometime get a call or an email about what they though about the project. However today I uploaded the video to Chatter, invited my client to Chatter and placed the video in a private group that only they and I can access – and SalesForce knows how to do security, believe me. So I can upload proprietary information to the cloud, for them to review and to comment on – directly in Chatter! (Which shows up in my Chatter feed – similar to your facebook wall or twitter timeline.)

Pretty cool stuff. You can check Chatter out for yourself – it’s free and it’s pretty cool.

Eeny meeny miny mo …

If you have not purchased your DSLR yet, this Emmy winning set of Webisodes is must watching. Zacuto, a film making accessories manufacturer, put together a test a few months back, in which they pit DSRL’s against 35mm motion picture film, which was screened in front of film industry professionals. The results may surprise you.

Webisode 1 tests the latitude of DSLR cameras and film, webisode 2 looks at ability to shoot in low light due to the increased sensitivity of DSLR’s and the final webisode 3 looks at the ability to have DSLR’s used with green screens and looks at resolution and color. You’ll need some time each episode is about half an hour long, but it’s worth every minute of it. It’s an objective test between DSLR’s and movie film cameras. In addition to this you get the feedback of industry professionals.

Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

So now that you know which camera to buy (right), you gotta figure out how to move this – for us photographers, movement (and sound) are new challenges that we need to wrap our heads around, since my still photo does not move at all. I stumbled across Phil Holland video, in which he describes his DSLR rig. He does a nice job explaining why and how he uses the different components of this rig.

This is a great place to start learning about some of the things you’ll need want to have, when getting into video on your DSLR.

Can you hear me now?

Sound is the other dimension that I don’t think about. I was shooting for Mars a few weeks ago and the Creative Director that was on location with me stopped the shoot, when a plane went over head – something that did not even phase me – nor did it have to, since we were shooting stills. However in cinematography this becomes a major issue since at least half the content (speech and music are communicated non-visually). But the sound recording features on the DSLR’s are not really up to par with what you need to capture that ‘Hollywood sound’.

So how do you record sound on you DSRL? Philip Bloom, one of the guys that was in the Zacuto shootout film, sounds off about this problem in his blogpost “How to record sound with the Canon 5dmk2 and a great plug in for Final Cut for auto synching“.

If you’d like to read a little more detailed review of external recorders that can be used with DSLR’s take a look at Jon Fairhurst’s series of video post on the Canon 5D tips blog. He reviews 4 different external recorders for your DSLR.

This post is a work in progress, I will continue to post articles, webisodes, blog posts, … that I find helpful in making decisions on what equipment to choose to create motion pictures.

How do I grow as a photographer? What do I do to push myself to create better work? My book looks like it did two years ago. While the images have changed the photography has stayed the same. I just finished watching another one of Chase Jarvis’ CJLive videos, where Chase and his guest speak about the need to constantly be creating work, on the one hand pushing the envelope while on assignment and on the other hand creating personal work when your not photographing for clients.

Traceur Nhan Du leaps from the wall onto a ledge.

However, I always seem to come up with a lame excuse for not trying something new: “I’m too busy, shooting.” “I’m not busy enough, so I need to … work on the website, call up that new client, learn that new technique, …” So as my 2010 new years resolution – ok so I’m a little behind in those  - I’ve decided that I just gotta take the leap, jump off that wall. I have a few concepts in mind that I want to shoot, that I need to create, that I have to capture. Some piggy back on current clients assignment work (like the floral wholesaler, that I will shoot flower bouquets for – that I want to use to photograph some editorial bridal photographs) and some that will be completely my own.

Nhan Du walks around the corner.

I photographed one of those today: Nhan, a traceur, moving around some walls and corners as he practices the art of parkour for fun. Just as he has to commit to the jump all the way to reach his goal – in his case the wall on the opposite side – I must do the same. I must commit to stretch my photographic muscle, so to speak, otherwise my book next year, will look like it did 2 years ago.