The Public Works | Blog

Heroes meeting Heroes

2011-12-21T20:30:07+00:00

The Public Works recently documented an amazing day with Red Bull. One of the best skateboarders in the world, Ryan Sheckler, and one of the best snowboarders in the world, Louie Vito (of Dancing with the Stars fame), spent the day with some of our Country’s military heroes.

The day began at Dragon Man’s compound just outside Colorado Springs, Colorado. Here, anyone with the guts and the credit limit can saddle up and shoot an array of fully automatic weapons. Dragon Man also has a personally run military museum—the Colorado Springs Historical Military Museum. The museum is mind-blowing. This place is worth a trip for anyone; it displays, among other things, over 85 vintage military vehicles, including one of every jeep ever made from the first Willies to the modern day Humvee.

At Dragon Man’s compound, Ryan and Louie got to shoot some flame throwers and set off a bomb or two. The real highlight though was that a decorated solider of the 10th Special Forces Group taught Ryan and Louie the proper handling and firing of everything from M4’s, to AK47’s, to a Barrett .50 caliber rifle. This solider, “Jar”, was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for duties he performed in Iraq. This award is the second highest award in the military. And, Jar is being considered for a possible award of the highest honor, the Congressional Medal of Honor. (To learn more about Jar, check out - http://northshorejournal.org/staff-sgt-jarion-halbisengibbs-distinguished-service-cross ). One of our favorite parts of the day was watching Jar teach Ryan Sheckler how to shoot his personal duty weapon.

It was surreal watching Ryan Sheckler—an X Games gold medalist and world renown personality—ask for autographs from these military heroes. Both Ryan and Louie stated that it was one of their best life experiences.

We ended the day by going to Fort Carson where a line-up of hundreds of military families were awaiting the arrival of Ryan and Louie. A solid two hours were dedicated to autograph signing, with kids shaking and almost in tears as they got to meet their idols.

All in all it was a most humbling and amazing experience. We were surrounded by these brave men who go out into the most hostile environments to protect our freedom so that we may live freely to snowboard, skateboard, photograph, and enjoy our way of life—which we take for granted all too often.

DEMCO Shoot in Indiana

2011-12-15T18:43:07+00:00

At the Plainfield Public Library in Indiana, The Public Works collaborated with DEMCO (a unique library supplies provider) on an installation of our Supple Collection furnishings (a unique brand of sustainable library furniture, designed, fabricated and brought to market by The Public Works). Following this collaboration, DEMCO also hired us to return and document all of their recent projects in the area.

So, we recently traveled to Indiana to photograph four libraries. One of the libraries we visited on the trip was the Plainfield Public Library.

The Plainfield Public Library now has an awesome mix of our Supple Collection pieces in use, including: “Jellies” (book shelves); “Jumps” (self-check desks); and “Bugs” (media displays). In addition to these in-line pieces, they also have custom pieces that we fabricated to match the look of their existing shelving units and displays. All pieces were made in The Public Work’s Colorado facility. They were then sent via truck to Indiana, along with five of our staff, who ensured the install was super-smooth and to our own high standards and our clients’ desires.

On this most recent trip to the Plainfield Public Library, it was inspirational for us to see first-hand how much the public library environment has changed. The Plainfield Public Library is now a cutting- edge, beautiful example of how a library can transition from a book warehouse into a key focal point of the community. While there, we observed: numerous people working in the library; others utilizing the space for business meetings and tutoring sessions; and approximately 40 eighth graders roll into the private teen room for an afterschool session. During our all-day shoot, the library was packed with hundreds of people coming through. It was an affirmation for us that our passion, designs and work can make a huge, positive impact.

2012 Red Bull Cold Rush Pre-Production

2011-11-21T18:49:53+00:00

The Public Works is fired up to be working on Red Bull Cold Rush again this year. Last year we designed and built the on and off hill branding, trophies and produced still imagery of the event. 22 skiers were invited to do an all helicopter-accessed natural ski event. It was all time and this year looks to be taking a huge leap forward.

Silverton, Colorado this time of year is very quiet. Most buildings are boarded up and the locals are taking a break between the big summer tourist groups and the crowds of skiers seeking out some of the best terrain in Colorado if not the country. We figured we might as well break that silence and make some noise in true Public Works style. No better bonding experience to get the event logistic people, Red Bull folks and Aaron Brill who owns Silverton, Mt together so some fun and safe shooting.

Check out more at last year’s video on the Cold Rush branding project page, Red Bull Cold Rush, and Silverton Mountain.

Supple hits Plainfield, Indiana

2011-10-24T15:01:14+00:00

The Plainfield Library in Plainfield, Indiana was our latest Supple Collection install and also one of our biggest to date. An entire tractor-trailer of furniture made right here in our shop was loaded up and shipped out. Five TPW crew members then flew out to do the final assembly and installation. Pieces from the Supple Collection are now installed in several libraries in Colorado, Georgia, Texas and Indiana.

lululemon Westboro Store

2011-10-23T16:29:44+00:00

We couldn’t be more excited about kicking off our working relationship with lululemon. They’re a super strong and creative brand with roots out of the snow industry and we have always loved working with Canadians. The first project we did was for an art installation that will be mounted on the wall behind the cash wrap. The theme was to be somewhat lumberjack inspired, so we fired up the chainsaw and dropped a beetlekill tree right out of our back door. This was then cut to size and CNC milled. Hand painted to specs Lulu provided and then it was off to Canada. Total time from the dead tree hitting the ground to the piece delivering was about 5 days.

Oakley Torpedo Trophy

2011-10-19T23:26:27+00:00

We love that our clients never cease to amaze us with their creativity and projects they come to us with. So when Oakley asked for a trophy that “looks like a torpedo” for a surf contest we just got cracking. We managed to find a WWII tail section of a torpedo and fixed that up nice. We then fabricated a custom stand out of aluminum to match the aesthetic feel. Tags were added for all the previous winners of the event with plenty of space left for this trophy to be passed from champion to champion. To top it off we added a “liquid holding vessel” into the top so the bubbly can served up.

Levis Commuter Series

2011-09-26T22:56:57+00:00

Last summer we hosted 19 product designers, merchandisers, and category managers from Levi Strauss in San Francisco and showed them Colorado. We toured them through our backyard and put together 3 days of trending, biking, focus groups, partying, and kart racing.

Levis came to us because they wanted to get their finger on the pulse of the fixed gear and commuter bike movement in an authentic way that couldn’t be done with traditional consumer research. They chose Denver and Boulder (as opposed to NYC, San Fran, or LA) because the scene is still young and developing organically in Colorado.

The fruits of the research have finally hit the market. Utility waistband for U-lock, stretch fabric, reinforced fabrics, sanitized brand technology, 3m reflectivity and nanosphere technology. Find out what all that means here.

New Zealand Catalogue Photo Shoot Details – Part 2: Lighting

2011-09-23T22:49:01+00:00

As you can see from our last post on traveling and packing the majority of our traveling burden can be blamed on our lighting equipment. What we choose to bring on any given trip depends on the goals outlined by the story and the shot list (on an editorial shoot) or the creative brief (on a commercial shoot).

The creative brief for this trip included outside sculpted portraits at night with gells and light painting, lit daytime action, product focused environmental lifestyle, and a variety of studio set ups. We’ll break these post down into 4 categories: On hill action, improvised studio, lifestyle, and creative (light painting etc.).

Unfortunately we can’t show any of the final imagery until Spyder’s 2012 product is launched.

New Zealand Catalog Photo Shoot Details – Part 1: Travel / Packing

2011-08-30T20:31:33+00:00

Warning: This post may be a bit drier if you’re not interested in photography with some nerdy details and how-to’s for surviving a medium size international catalogue shoot. We also posted a short travelogue of the trip here if that’s of more interest.

There is a ton that goes into successfully executing a location shoot of this scale. We’ve been lucky enough to both shoot and produce photoshoots all over the world and over the next few weeks we will do a series of posts based on the New Zealand shoot highlighting what we’ve learned throughout the years.

We’ll cover…
Part 1: Packing and Travel
Part 2: Lighting
Part 3: Digital Remote Workflow
Part 4: Planning and Logistics

Packing and Travel

The gear we choose to bring on a shoot depends entirely on the creative brief that outlines our agenda. This shoot called for the full gamut from backcountry ski action photography, to fully produced and styled lighting set ups… so we had no choice but to pack it all. This brings us to the first part of getting a shoot like this done well… packing and travel.

En Zed: New Zealand Spyder Photoshoot Journey

2011-08-29T19:54:48+00:00

Our second big catalog shoot with Spyder is in bag. We captured 10,000+ images over the course of 10 days with 5 athletes at 3 resorts.

The trip started with the ambitious attempt to lug 440lbs of ski, camera and lighting gear into 2 ski bags, 3 pelican cases, and 2 Dakine roller bags. We made it though DIA with a manageable extra baggage fee of $300. We don’t say it often but… Thanks United! Once in NZ things didn’t go quite as smoothly. Two pelicans and a camera bag were confiscated and we ended up walking all around the Aukland airport grounds trying not to get hit by cars by looking the wrong way crossing roads and searching for the Customs office.

In true Kiwi fashion we had 5 customs officials all with a good sense of humor helping us try and get our bags back. At one point everyone in the office was gathered around one computer heckling the head officer for his bad typing skills. While we were dealing with the Kiwi customs version of Super Troopers the flight we should have been on and planned on missing was grounded because half our bags that were checked through were on the plane and we weren’t. We were getting texts from the rest of our crew that made the flight saying, “don’t talk to me or even make eye contact when you get on the plane. We’ve been sitting here for 30 minutes and people are PISSED.” After customs officials raced us through the airport and we got yelled at by the Air New Zealand woman escorting us to our flight… “If I can run this fast in my high heels the least you can do is keep up!”, we made our flight to Queenstown with all our gear and avoided getting stoned to death by angry delayed travelers.

We spent the next 7 days based out of a beautiful modern 7 bedroom house overlooking Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu.

We spent 2 days at Cadrona shooting Colby James West and Eva Patscheider jumping. We got early ups the day after the Burton NZ Open and got to shoot the jumps cleaned of banners and fences and we were lucky enough to get a beautiful sunny day. We were also able to shoot our Profoto strobes at high sync speeds thanks to Pocket Wizard’s new technology. We’ll do another nerdier post on all our gear and photography specific info after this post.

During our stay the storm of century rolled through Queenstown and dump a staggering… wait for it… foot on the ground. Queenstown, despite being known as a winter recreation destination, is not used to any snow and completely unprepared for the event. The city shut down. Every slope in sight had mini kickers built and kids sessioning. Cars were abandoned, businesses closed. Half our crew make their way over the pass to Snow Park and Wanaka and half decided to brave the treacherous road up to The Remarkables. Half way up our chains broke and we had to hold them together with ski straps. Knowing a thin piece of orange rubber is the only thing holding your traction devices on bald rental tires while weaving perilously close to a 2,000 foot drop with no guard rail is disconcerting to say the least… not to mention the total lack of visibility in the 50+ mph winds and the huge busses barreling down the middle of the tiny narrow road.

We managed to tick off the shot list a couple days early and decided to hit the road. No stay in Queenstown would be complete without the requisite bungee jump so we hit the Kawarau Bridge Bungee on the way out of town.

We raced to catch the sunset on Lake Tekapu for some lifestyle shots and then made party in Methven. The next day we shipped some product and started the cruise to the west coast via Arthurs Pass. Cruising through the Southern Alps down to the coast was an amazing scenic journey and we only killed one sheep on the way [no sheep were actually hurt or killed… although one, upon being chased, fainted or possibly made the rapid decision to take a nap during a full sprint]. We caught sunset at Punakaiki, ate an amazing dinner, had a recovery sleep, and then headed back to the right coast.

From huge mountain passes, to rolling rainforest hills descending straight into dramatic craggy cold coastline, east to west, we saw a lot in our few days of travel. New Zealand has so much to offer it would take years to experience everything there is to see and do but we did a pretty good job of exploring and making the most of our short time on the island of middle earth… We took some pretty pictures too.

Unfortunately we can’t share any of the photos that feature new Spyder Gear until next year so in the mean time this is a tiny sampling of what we captured.

HUGE Thanks to: Spyder, Jess McMillan, Julia Mancuso, Colby James West, Eva Patscheider, Jake Zamansky, Steve Nyman, LowePro, Pocketwizard, Profoto, San Disk, Pelican Cases, and Contour Cam.

We’ll cover…
Part 1: Packing and Travel
Part 2: Digital Remote Workflow
Part 3: Location Lighting
Part 4: Planning and Logistics