Day 34 - Project 365

For Her, He'll Walk Forever."

Today, started off with a great idea to get a desert scene with a man and a woman. We were all hyped up to go and shoot at the dry lake bed at the state preserve. I even called and asked if the lake was still missing water. The lady on the phone sounded sad when she said it was. I was happy because it's the closest thing we have to a desert around my house. The walk from the trail entrance to the over grown path leading to the dry lake is a half mile hike

through sand and loose dirt. I have nearly 200lbs of photo gear and only three people to carry it. I devised a brilliant plan to mobilize everything. I took my lights, cords, receivers and other electric stuff and put it into a rolling suit case, the c-stands were broken down and packed into my snowboard case and the rest was put into a rolling laundry cart. On our way, I checked the weather and to my complete shock it said foggy! It was sunny when we left our house! There was no way it could be foggy at this time! Well, not more than 5 minutes later… guess what? FOG! Well, more like Haze. There goes the high noon desert shot. Plan B here we go! And plan B didn't include a night shot!

We arrive at the gate to the park at approx. 4:08pm. The park sign says they close at 4:45pm which gives exactly enough time to walk out there. Oh well, we will just disregard the closing time and shoot until we're done. The park works on the honor system! Envelopes are provided and you are trusted to deposit $3.00 cash. The slit to insert the envelopes is very narrow and every time I've visited the park empties I find myself fighting with this stupid box to jam the mess of loose change I'm paying with. I know the park ranger that empties the box at night must swear when they have to collect a mass of change from the bottom. I just chuckle to myself every time I think about it!

We drive down the sand path for approximately 1 mile until we got to the gate for the white trail. A 5 mile sand trail that winds through the most boring landscape south of Nebraska. Sand, a few scattered trees and a whole bunch of saw palmetto bushes. It's a nature trail and you rarely see anything other than the occasional bird! The first time I visited the park I was ready to run over the collection box and get a refund! We unload the mobilized gear, chugged our redbull, did a quick intro for the video and set off down the half mile sand trail. I had a weak metal laundry cart loaded with three 25lb sand bags, the legs to all three c-stands, both soft boxes and a 2 liter of water. In my left hand I had the snowboard bag with all three c-stands. I had approx. 150lbs of gear. Shawn had the light case and Letty had the ridiculously light electrical case and her purse. I figured that the grueling hike would get us all in the right frame of mind for the shoot. Between Shawn and Lety asking "Are we there yet?" or "how much further?" the hike in seemed to take forever. I had to take frequent breaks to switch hands as the bag has thin handles and was digging into my hand. I had made this snowboard bag from materials bought at Joanne Fabric a few years back. It was made to support 10lbs not 50lbs. However, it held up great!

In the 20 minutes it took to walk to the lake bed, the haze had thickened and the temp had dropped a few degrees. The path leading to the lake bed was over grown and very loose. It was a pain to drag the heavy rolling cart through it. Once at the lake bed I was surprised to see it had a lot more foliage than I remember. It would be harder to sell the "desert" look but I didn't let it get to me. We quickly surveyed the landscape and started blocking out the shot. Shawn had worn ripped jeans that were at least 2 sizes too big. He was however, smart and wore a belt. However, he failed to realize it was missing half of the belt loops and the belt was rendered next to useless as large sections of his boxers were hanging out. Shawn looked down at his pants and asked if he should take his boxers off. They wouldn't be a problem if they weren't obnoxiously printed with brightly colored cartoon characters - They had to go. Being in the middle of the least visited park in all of Florida, he figured it was safe to just change out in the open. Well, safe from the eyes of small children or even animals but not us! He stripped his pants and his boxers! For a brief moment Lety and I both had the unfortunate glimpse of Shawn's white ass. Well, of course I took the mandatory black mail photo while Lety recorded the whole thing on video.

We quickly set up three lights and positioned them at 11:00, 8:00 and 2:00, ran the extension cords and started popping test shots. Its been about 1 year since I had all three Alien Bee's hooked the vagabond at once. Worse yet was that I needed them on 1/2 power or higher. But wait… thats not it. To assure the background didn't fall into oblivion I had to lower the Shutter Speed to 1/60. My poor Vagabond didn't like me very much and showed its distain through out the shoot by not firing lights or not recycling fast enough for me. I've had it for 2 years now and in battery pack years thats like 90!

We did several different poses including what Shawn referred to as the "passion of the Christ" pose, where he was laying on the ground, with Lety holding him, giving a drink of much needed water. I wasn't to hot on that shot and ended up going with the shot of Shawn holding Lety's limp body. From there Lety wanted to get wet, so we set up for the shot where she was teasing the poor parched man by pouring the only water left all over herself. If we had more time, this would have been a hilarious shot. We attempted several takes and soon realized that this wasn't going to happen we called it a wrap. During the several attempts at pouring the water over herself Lety did manage to say the funniest line of the shoot "oohh my panties are all wet" Ya, that was classic!

The walk back seemed to take half the time as no one was complaining. 15 min later we arrive at the gate to the trail. The lone Park ranger was waiting for us as the park had closed well over an hour ago. He was very pleasant as I chatted it up with him for a few min, handed him my card and told him to check out tonights shot. The whole shoot took just under 2 hours. Full of sand, sweat and wholly exhausted we all headed back to the house to edit. I expected to have this shot up by 7:00pm as it seemed pretty cut and dry. That is until I got home, loaded the images and realized that I just wasn't happy with any of them. The hazy sky and rapidly fading light just didn't sell the desert look for me. I brought the only shot worthy of posting into photoshop and started playing. Before long I realized that this was going to be a Day to Night shot and I jumped into cooling down the image, darkening the sky and heavily Dodging and burning. In the end, I realize the shot didn't work any other way. I'm fortunate that I have enough experience in Photoshop to salvage a shot that otherwise would have made a dark smudge on my project.

I'm very happy with the response i've been getting thus far and know now that it will be a combination of fan support and my intense love for the art of photography that will see Project 365 to the end. - Michael

Lighting:

AB800 Medium Soft box 11:00 3/4 power
AB800 Medium Soft box 8:00 1/2 power
AB800 7 Inch reflector 2:00 3/4 power