Spring Training detour - The Salton Sea (part 2)

Now with the successful sunset shoot at Bombay beach in the can, and the blurred memories of a long day of driving, it was time for a dinner and a place to crash. Finding the most convenient roadside hotel was high on the agenda as I was running on fumes. Unfortunately, under those conditions, my decision-making abilities were not at it's best! The only rooms available at this roadside hotel were smoking rooms. Well, it's been a while since I stayed in one, how bad could it be? After only 4 hours of sleep, I awoke with a massive headache and a sore throat. I knew instantly it was time to leave.

Back in the car again, I decided to just head back to the Salton Sea at 3:30 am to look for a place to shoot the sunrise. Before I knew it, I was on that earlier apocalyptic landscape of Bombay Beach. It was a known location in an unfamiliar area, where I knew there would be something to shoot at sunrise. Now with some two and half hours to kill, I took the opportunity to shoot some long exposure night scenes.

Fortunately, I was blessed with some high clouds and a near full moon. With the smell of dead fish and eerie sounds of birds in the distance as I trudged through the soggy salt, it was a perfect place for my imagination to take over. So armed with a flashlight to navigate and focus, and a tripod, it was time to make some images. This first image with lit by just direct moonlight, that set the scene but was not too dramatic.

After an hour shooting around the beach, I gravitated back to that earlier trailer structure, seeing it in a completely different way. With the high clouds and the moon shining bright, back lighting it, I found a familiar scenario where I would use an artificial light source to make the image pop. Wanting to see the details in the trailer while maintaining the dramatic skies, I light painted the trailer with the flashlight. Bouncing the cool LED light off my hand to warm up the look, I danced around the trailer during the 30-second exposures filling in the shadows. 

After making dozens of exposures and getting the light painting choreography down. This was my favorite image from that half hour of choreographed dance.

As the morning progressed, I waited for that magic stream of light.  It popped in and out, as the sun broke thought the clouds for about 45 minutes while I chased it around the beach. 

The following images were made during that short period.

 

With the sun, high enough in the sky to have lost it's golden glow, I wandered the shoreline again looking at the dead fish in the morning light. I was surprised how colorless the images were compared to the previous ones I had shot just and hour before. As the light was getting higher, I pulled out a color inferred converted camera and shot just a few scenes again before ending my glorious 12 hours adventure to the Salton Sea at 8 am. 

The last image is a monochrome converted color inferred image.

Spring Training detour - The Salton Sea (part 1)

It’s been over ten years since I have had an assignment during the MLB Cactus League Spring training in Arizona. This year I was fortunate to secure two separate assignments, one with the Oakland Athletics team photographer, Michael Zagaris, as his lighting collaborator and three days shooting for the European Photo Agency, covering the Oakland Athletics newest acquisition, designated hitter Hideki Matsui from Japan.

In the passed when I've worked for Jiji Press, a Japanese wire service and the San Francisco Giants, it was a fly in and out trip from Oakland to Phoenix. Now with all the airline carry on restrictions, added baggage charges, security hassles and lack of security for equipment. An 11 hour drive from northern California seems to be a less stressful way to travel. And for this trip, if I had to ship all the lighting gear, it would amount to a small fortune. 

 

Now with the stage set to hit the road, I have actually done this trip many times to visit friends in Phoenix. And every time it's been just motoring on through so I don't get in at an ungodly hour. This time I made plans to detour to the Salton Sea, a place I've heard about for many years. A location where many photo shoots have taken advantage of it's unique landscape. Just south of the Indio and the Palm Springs area, the Salton Sea developed into a tourist attraction in the 1920's, because of its water recreation, and waterfowl attraction to the area. However, in the 50's and 60's, environmental issues changed the seas salinity creating large fish die offs and the decline of tourism. Leaving nature to reclaim its rights to surrounding areas in a cruel and brutal fashion.

I had planned to arrive for a sunset shoot along the Salton Sea. But, since I had never been there before, a bit of research turned up a location on the eastern coast of the lake. Bombay Beach, built in the 50's, it has been a favorite destination for photographers for decades due to the wild and incredible decaying scenes of abandoned salt encrusted structures. Even with the best-laid plans, checking sun set times, TRAFFIC and the Highway Patrol will make a mess of anything. No, I did not get a ticket, but boy can they slow things up. I arrived at Bombay Beach with about 15 minutes of sun still visible, even though sunset was about 30 minutes away. After eight straight hours in the car, I quickly took advantage of the few golden minutes before the sun disappeared behind a local mountain range. As I worked the abandoned salt encrusted structures, which were barely recognizable, compared to images I found on the web, I felt a bit cheated. The structures were so decayed; it was hard to even recognize what they were. 

 

As the sunset, I found myself in a post apocalyptic scene. With the crunching of salt under my feet and the smell of decay, I wandered of to the shoreline, with a string of amateur photographers with tripods shooting the sunset.  Stepping over salted preserved fish along the sandy beach, I came to realize it was not sand, but the broken and crushed scales and bones of thousands of passed fish die offs, along with whole fish laying everywhere. 

As I watched the sky darken and the other photographers shooting the glowing skies, I walked along the shoreline hovering low with my camera trying to capture the true essence of the Salton Sea. Fortunately, the Internet has not reach the ability to offer a sense-o-rama feature. The smell was quite over whelming once you got down on your knees. Even after the sun set, the beach yielded an incredible over whelming sense of death that stared back at you through the pitch black eye holes of the dried salted fish.

Now only having about 30 minutes of shooting in, I knew I had to return. 

Assignment: Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport - from the archive

Client: Bugatti

Assignment:  Photograph the new Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport showing the open top variation of the car in the Napa Valley for it's US/California introduction. The Bugatti Veyron is the fastest production car topping out over 250 mph at the cost of 1.7 million.

Location: Napa Valley Reserve

This was my second shoot with a Veyron. The first shoot was for Business Week Magazine, a first person story about test driving the fastest production car in the world. Well, with that knowledge from the first shoot, I had a good idea what I was getting in to with this car. 

The shoot was planned for early June, with a few weeks out looking good for the weather. As the date closed in, there was the chance of showers for the day of the shoot. Fortunately a small front moved through the day before, granting me a clear day. Feeling good and the schedule holding, I looked forward to the shoot. The days script included three general locations,  a historic winery building, driving through Napa Valley, the Reserves winery tank room and a variety of details shots of both exterior and interior showing the open top roof. As for timing, the shoot was planned for the early morning for the driving shots and then to the historic winery, back to the Reserve for the details shots and the tank room.

Come the day of the shoot, a few things had changed. The cars were delayed in shipment, pushing the time to a 10am start. On top of that late hour, the car turned out to be white, which was to be shot near and through the mid-day sun. Needless to say I was in a slight panic. Adjustments to the scrip had to be made. We switch the to the second location for the first shot to take advantage of the light since the driving portion of the shoot was pretty much canceled. We would not be able to take the car out for a drive, due to the car I was shooting and it's driver, needed to be ready as a backup to the second car out on test drives with potential clients.

Location #1 - historic winery building in Napa Valley. The building front side was in shade but the sun was rising fast. Turns out, having the white car in the shade was perfect, since we had no time to light it. By the time the car was set to shoot, the sun revealed its self on the ground creeping closer the the car and creating washed out highlights in the foreground. At this point we were not able to move the car any closer to the building, which would reveal a drainage grate in the drive way.

Solution: An old Hollywood trick. Water down the ground to darken direct sun highlights.

SAFETY NOTE: being and shooting around expensive cars. Don't carry or have any sharp objects, keys, pens, watches and think about removing your belt or at least taping up the buckle. You don't want to take any chances when moving around or in a car costing 1.7 million.

Location #2 - With the change of plans and not having the ability to drive the car off the reserve, there was not a lot to work with except for the vineyards.

Luckily after a lot of questions asked, the reserve manager advised me about a long access road between vineyards on the property. With a quick survey and a quicker brainstorming session with my assistant. This road was going to be the solution. Well, that was it if we could find a way to get a high vantage point. Reserve manager to the rescue again, he offered a 40 foot high Genie boom lift that we could use. Great...now we just need to do set the car on the road, move the lift in to place before the sun moved out of alignment. By the time everything was set the sun was in line perfectly with the road at high noon just behind the car. Could not ask for a more perfect location when shooting a white car in the middle of the day!

During this elevated shoot, I used a variety of lens and a gyro to stabilize the slow shutter pan as the Bugatti raced down the access road.

  • Canon 5D MKII

  •16-35mm ƒ2.8

  • 24mm ƒ 3.5 Tilt shift

  • 50mm ƒ 1.4

  • 70-200mm F 2.8

  •Kenyon K-4 gyro

Location #3 - Exterior and interior shots showing the uniqueness of the open top of the Grand Sport.

This led to more brainstorming since we were still an hour or so after high noon and needed to get shot of the interior that was black when also showing potions of the exterior of the car. And I want to emphasize again, the car was white!

This is where some pre planing and an arsenal of equipment came in to play. First I flew an overhead silk, creating a giant soft box powered by the sun to help cut the harsh midday light. being extremely careful, double checking everything to ensure nothing was going to fall on to the car. With that done, the question was how were we to make a picture looking in through the open roof in to the cockpit of the car. And yes, they were not going to let me stand on the engine for this...

This is we a remote control boom arm, mounted with a Canon 5DMKII and a 16-35mm ƒ2.8 , triggered by a pocket wizard, did the job. This got the camera in to place over the car with out placing anything or person on the car.

Equipment :

   •  6 ft. Matthews artificial silk

   •  6 ft. ScrimJim frame

   •  2 - Matthews baby triple rollers

   •  Mathews Medium roller 

   •  Manfrotto Black Super Boom

   •  Canon 5DMKII

   •  16-35mmƒ2.8

   •  2 - Pocket Wizard Multi-Max's 

   •  50 lbs of sand bags.
 

 Location #4 - The reserve tank room. The challenge is dealing with the tungsten lights, which gives off a warm orange tonal shift when balanced to a daylight setting. But I decided to use it to my advantage.

Setting up this mixed light shot was pretty easy, once you identify the light sources and their values. The trick is calculating your exposure. With a fair amount of daylight entering the room that filled the front of the car and the over head lights giving the stainless steel tanks a copper look. I added one strobe to fill the rear quarter of the car and watered down the floor giving the room more depth. I then located the camera on a tripod in the doorway with a 24 tilt shift lens and a remote trigger, stepping aside not to block the incoming daylight with my body. With this 100 ASA, ƒ14 exposure for 5 seconds, it produced this (ICI) - In Camera Image.  An image pretty much ready to go out of the camera with a minimum amount of post production work for it to be ready for publication.

So finishing up this long day with so many changes and adjustments, I was pretty satisfied in what was produce. The key thought from this shoot, is to be ready to throw out your original script and be prepared for the unexpected. Never thought I would have to shoot a white car at high noon. You just never know!