Day 16 - 365

"High Voltage"

With every passing day I get bolder in my attempts to create new and interesting images. Today could have landed us in jail as trespassing on power company property is frowned upon. "like masturbating on an airplane - the hangover". We set out on our adventure round 7:00pm. Brian hit up KFC/Taco bell and decided that everything on the menu looked good. He even put taco sauce on his KFC. We headed out to the power substation west of town. This little known photo backdrop gem is tucked back against the highway on a road named FPL (florida power and Light). We drive along this winding road that ends at this massive structure of twisted humming metal. You feel cancer creeping in as the radiation bombards your head. I find it ironic that I needed to bring out my Vagabond II power pack as you'd think with all that power there should have been at least one power outlet. But no of course not! perhaps I could have wrapped the cords around the fence and sucked the power that was surly emanating from the vast transformer. I set up the tripod and snapped a few long exposures to see if I could possibly composite a long exposure in to the shot to bring out the background. It wasn't going to work as the fence would present a bit of a problem. We set up the trusty beauty dish and boom along with a medium soft box and a bar AB800 for background fill. I messed around for a bit with power levels and position only to scrap the multiple light ideas all together as I wasn't happy with the over lit "fake" look. I was going for more of a cinematic, dark look, similar to yesterday's shot. We found the book bag and tool bag in the car and figured why not use them as props. The book bag came in handy to cover shawn's plumbers crack. His shirt was just not long enough. We snapped a few shots and figured we'd move on. We broke down the two extra lights and than the urge to try one more angle hit me. Just as it usually does as were breaking down. We left the boom up and I repositioned the shot. Got on the ground and had Brian hold his cell phone out for a focus mark. Now I'm not very happy with the focus of this shot as I feel its a bit soft. well feel isn't the right word. More like... the focus is a bit soft - period! However, I chose it as it portrayed the theme best out of all the shots. We decided that it was best not to push our luck anymore and leave before the police showed up. I went to turn the key and nothing happened. The battery was DEAD! "oh shit" I said. This was not a good thing as getting caught back here with out lights setup is harder to talk your way out of. At least when you have lights set up you can use the excuse "well, officer... you see, I'm a photographer doing a project" and he's like "Thats ok, I just had to check it out and make sure you weren't all covert and plotting to shut down power. Hey can I see the shots?" "of course officer, Hey want to see the 15 days of shots I've got thus far?" "of course!" says Mr. Officer. Well at least thats how it would go in my head. I figured that if we did get apprehended by "the man" today's picture could be from a jail cell! I figured that if we had to wait for a jump than we should at least push the car down the road and off private property. Well, the car wasn't going to have that. The battery was so dead the sensor that makes sure your pushing the break down when shifting out of park would not work, thus making it impossible to shift into neutral! We were truly stuck! Shawn called Erika and her and her sister Rocy came to the rescue. We managed to get the car jumped only after 15 min of messing with the crappy wires. The car started up and we got the hell out of there. The moral of the story is... when trespassing, make sure you turn your headlights off or keep the car running". It reminds me of the time we were bridge jumping and just as we were about to jump we had someone yell. "the cops are coming" well its illegal to bridge jump in our town so we jump off the bridge and swim to shore, run to my truck and realize I locked the keys in the cab. I ended up breaking the back window and climbing in just to avoid dealing with the police. We pulled out and passed the cops not too far down the road. Close one. I know during the remaining 350 days it is inevitable that I will find some sort of trouble capturing an image for the day. But thats what its all about! A fun, stimulating and sometimes risky challenge.

Lighting:

AB800 Beauty Dish, Boomed overhead 7' high at approx. 4:00