Oh how I want a motorcycle. Although I have ridden on one only a handful of times and most of them being a Vespa. Its crossing the line from a want to a need. With the hot engine beneath you and the cool air of the open road around you the feeling is great. Unfortunately right now a motorcycle is not the most practical choice in my line of work, especially for carrying around truck loads of photo gear.
Anyways, last summer I shot some images with a Harley Davidson Fatboy. The shoot was shot on location and was larger than anticipated. When shooting on location there is always pros and cons and for this shoot the con was power. I had to bring along a fairly large generator to power the strobes I was using and a good amount of extension cords. Because of the fairly large setup for the shoot we generated some unwanted action and the police showed up. Luckily one look at the bike and the officer quickly changed the subject to “is that a Harley?”. All in all the shoot was a success and plans to shoot some more motorcycle images are in the works for the spring.
Recently a friend of mine called me up in dire needed of some portraits. Of course he needed them done that night, lucky for him I was in Toronto and more than happy to help him out. I didn’t have any camera gear with me, typical. So I called a friend and managed to get a hold of a Canon 5D, some lenses, the Canon 270EX and a reflector.
With only an on and off switch, this flash couldn’t get any more basic. The 270 is less than half the size of its two big brothers and, at first glance, looks like the output would be weak. But once it’s powered on and you start shooting, it’s great! It uses Canon’s advanced E-TTL metering and actually has a good range of control when using Flash Exposure Compensation on the camera.
Now the 270EX doesn’t have all the bells and whistles as the 430 or 580 but it’s only $129. If you are a Canon user and on the market for a new flash the Canon Speedlite EX270 is defiantly worth double it’s weight in gold. This little flash is perfect for someone on a budget and who doesn’t want to spend $300 on the Canon 430EX.
Here are a variety of images I took that night using the Canon 270EX on the 5D.
Back in early July my friend Todd asked me to book off a couple days to shoot a couple music videos for his sister who was visiting from New Zealand. I had a few spare days at the time so I agreed to do it, working with Todd is always a good time, he usually has some crazy ideas. A few days before the shoot we got together to plan out the finer details of the video such as location, finding extras and equipment we would need. Everything for the most part had been sorted out minus where we were going to shoot this thing. Todd remembered he had a buddy Graham Paulsen who had this amazing, massive property right at the base of Mount Nemo. We went to scout it out immediately, took an ATV down to where Graham suggest we shoot and it looked perfect. A few days later, we were back around 3PM to set up for the shoot. It was quite the challenge getting all the equipment down to the location, we had to load up a big trailer and tow it down with the ATV. We pretty much went offroading.
It ended up taking more time to set up and get everyone organized so we didn’t start shooting until the sun was setting, which was fine because we wanted a dark scene anyways.
Once we got rolling we relied on my KinoFlo 4 foot 4 bank as the main key light for most shots, with 1 or 2 300w & 650w Arri lights for back/side lighting, or anything else we wanted to try. Mark did an awesome job of trying out different positions as it was constantly getting darker out, because of this they needed to be constantly adjusted. We powered all of these things with a pretty decently size gas powered generator that actually worked wonders for this shoot…minus being very loud.
We rented a bunch of fake grave stones and a fake casket as props for the location and we had ourselves a grave site.
Todd also wanted there to be a misty feel to the video, so we tried to use a smoke machine which really caused more problems then good shots I think. We probably did quite a bit of cutting around that stupid smoke machine because A. it wasn’t big enough, B. when you’re shooting outdoors with smoke, you need A LOT of it to show up, C. it would puff out a bit of smoke, need a break, then puff out a bit more. But again Mark and our PA Jeremy did the best they could fanning the smoke in to the scene.
We shot the video on the Canon 5D mark 2 and I think our go to lenses were the 50mm 1.4 (because it was so dark), the 24-105 4.0L and the 70-200 4.0L.
If you are shooting at night, bring a flashlight, or ten…because packing everything up once you power down the generator and have no more light is really hard haha.
Here are some behind the scenes photos by Mark, as well as the final video that was cut by Todd Neilson (Director, brother of the artist, and all around crazy guy.)
Amidst the accolades, the ritual, and the brazen glamour of the Golden Globes, there was one particular moment that captured the essence of the Golden Globes. Producer Thomas Langmann (The Artist) graciously accepted the award for Best Musical/Comedy in memory of his father, the French filmmaker Claude Berri. During Langmann’s speech, the producers of the television broadcast appropriately cut to Martin Scorsese who nodded in appreciation. Scorsese has long been a strong advocate for the preservation of film (few people have the encyclopaedic knowledge of cinema than the New York director) and responded to Langmann’s poignant speech. Scorsese has gone to great lengths to ensure that future generations of filmgoers are similarly aware of cinema’s storied past. In his most recent piece, Hugo, Scorsese and his cinematographer Robert Richardson ingeniously use 3D to recreate the legendary presentation of the Lumiere brothers’ Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1897). In this scene –and perhaps in the entire movie – Scorsese boldly exclaims that “film is history.” This message is critical to the filmmaking craft. Understanding the cultural, artistic, and historical significance of film is imperative for the next generation of filmmakers. Tragically, I have met many young filmmakers who brashly proclaim that they “don’t have to watch movies because [they] have their own style.” This hubris will be our downfall. It is only when we understand the language of cinema, to speak it fluently, that we are able to move forward. We must watch the movies of Ford, Truffault, Bergman, Tarkovsky, Altman, Bresson, Hawks, Chaplin, Lang etc. etc. etc. If we are to continue making films like Hugo and The Artist, we must respectfully look at the past and take notes.
I’m a sucker for cars. I can remember as a kid every sunday morning watching “My Classic Car” or “Two Guys Garage”.
So when my friend Kevin told me he was buying a 80′s sports car I couldn’t have been more excited for him. To be honest I had never even heard of a Supra, I knew Toyota wasn’t in the super car business but the name was promising. So the google search commenced, and within 0.33 seconds 600,000 images of 80′s awesomeness had been found. David Hasselhoff would have killed to have a Supra in lieu of his Pontiac as Night Rider… It was Japanese.. it was at the pinnacle of high tech and built a thousand times better.
The bond between man and his car will always be a mystery to some, To me I totally get it. Just ask anyone about me and the White Knight (my ’92 Accord). For a while Kevin and I had been talking about photographing his car, passing ideas back and fourth. Finally we scheduled an evening and made it happen. I decided a few nights after I would do a portrait of kevin with the car, it only seemed right to have him in one of the images.
I recently had the honor of doing an interview with Joanna Frketich from the Hamilton Spectator about the kidney transplant I had last February. I thought it may be a cool thing to blog about because that whole process is sort of where the name ‘Incision Creative’ came from. I won’t go to much in to detail about the process of the transplant itself because the article sums it up nicely, but I will say that doing this interview really forced my Dad (one of the donors) and I to re-live the experiences we went through last year. It brought up memories and emotions for the both of us as well as the rest of my family that I wouldn’t say we forgot about, but definitely didn’t think about often. Bringing back these thoughts and feelings wasn’t a bad thing at all, it was actually really good. I think it’s important to reflect on these types of things once and a while, without dwelling on them too much. For me personally it reminds me that life should be cherished. It’s short, it moves quickly, crazy unexpected things happen, but it all happens for a reason and if you are able to get through these things with a level head, they usually become learning experiences. I wouldn’t want it any other way. Sure it was a crazy time, very depressing at times, but it taught me a lot about my life, and put a lot in to perspective. Make sure you do what you love in life, because one day you will be fine, and the next everything will be flipped around and you’re heading in a direction (could be good or bad) that you really weren’t expecting.
It was weird how it all worked out post surgery. Nothing went the way I thought it would, it all went way better. My recovery went rather quickly and because of that I was able to get back into work way before I thought I would.
In the process of getting going again myself and my close friend Mark Luciani had been brainstorming a new way to showcase our work and hopefully create a business out of it so we could continue to do what we loved as a job. I had been thinking about starting a company and calling it ‘Incision Creative’ for about a month following the surgery, mainly because I thought of it during my recovery and because I thought it was a cool sounding name. From there we asked Michael Clemens, a local writer and director to join us in the building of IC, and he was more then happy to hop on board. Since that time in the last half a year we have worked on some awesome projects together including a feature length documentary and multiple music videos including one for the internationally known band ‘The City Harmonic’.
It has been a wild year to say the least. Probably the most memorable one of my life, and it will be for a long while. It had its ups and downs but I feel truly blessed and thankful that it happened the way it did, and everything worked out. I get to continue doing what I love as a career, with my best friends, and have a new perspective on life. I look forward to the next year at Incision Creative, we have some exciting things cooking and I can’t wait to be a part of them and to share them with all of you.
Please take some time to read the article in the Hamilton Spectator, Joanna did a great job. Also, she just informed me there will be another article being printed soon about the other people involved in the transplant.(if that doesn’t make any sense, read the article and it will!)
I recently watched Werner Herzog’s evocatively titled Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a documentary film about 32,000 year old cave drawings in Chauvet Cave in France. The auteur’s exploration of the ancient caverns is typically Herzogian: with his distinct Bavarian accent, the German filmmaker pontificates about notions of death, dreams, and the absurdity of human history. As far as Herzog films go, this was average at best. However, one particular element in this film stood out for me – the paintings themselves. The cave paintings are configured along the walls in such a way that gives a sense of motion. Herzog astutely terms the sequence of drawings as proto-cinema. Like modern film, these cave paintings suggest that our ancestors also expressed (or more appropriately, articulated) their experiences and values by sculpting images in time. Rather than placing the birth of cinema at the end of the 19th century, the “motion picture” has existed over 30,000 years! As a filmmaker this realization is both exciting and sobering. It is with fear and trepidation that we understand, adopt, and evolve centuries of cinematic language to tell powerful stories about the world we live in. At Incision Creative, we take this burden very seriously. Incision Creative is founded on our passion for capturing the richness and diversity of our world. Whether it’s doing commercial work for our clients or making our own feature film for distribution we want to share unique stories in interesting and new ways. Incision Creative is a trusted production company that meets 21st century video and photography needs. We work closely with clients to get their creative vision on the screen with industry leading technology and experience.
I am pretty lucky. I work with two incredibly talented individuals in Jesse Hunt and Mark Luciani. The things that they come up with are truly remarkable –from the spectacular imagery of Mark’s photography to Jesse’s wizardry behind the camera. Although this industry can be stressful at times (especially as an infant company) I am able to sit back at the end of every day and bask in the fact that I get to IMAGINE for a living. Quite frankly, there is nothing else I would rather be doing. We hope that this blog will show you the intricacies and nitty gritty details of our work. Behind the scenes photographs and video clips will reveal the technical and creative processes behind Incision Creative. I will leave you with the words of Walt Whitman because I think it effectively capture the spirit behind Incision Creative:
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson.
