Industrea Mining Equipment-proofs

YouTube Behind the scenes videos and stills **HERE**
Maree and myself were commissioned to photograph equipment and the manufacturing and assemby sites for the annual report for Industrea Mining Equipment. IME is the largest manufacturer of long wall ming equipment in the world.These a a small selection of proofs ( unedited) from the hundreds of images captured from the full day shoot at two locations. The proofs were sent to the client for selection and then the final editing.Maree below holding the whibal card we use this for colour cast removal. The machine she is standing in front of is called an 80T Choc Carrier. This in one of 6 , it's the largest machine of its type in the world, it's very impressive in the "flesh" and you can have one for your kids to play with for $2,000,000.
The images will be deep etched, that is, the background will be removed and it will be presented on white or a selected back ground to the client

We shot it from many elevations and angles, we like to give our graphic artists the answer...then they can come up with the question.W are well respected for our clean exposures and over delivering.We shoot the brief and add creative spin as an option.

Its important to shoot this equipment as often as possible at 50mm ( optically the way the eye sees things) Doing this reduces distortion.In this case due to its size and the venue that was not not possible.We also supply very wide angle shots the be used as dynamic images to highlight its size.

People are added at various stages and compositions the show perspective and size.

This is the second venue, the assembly plant.We shot this as an overview and in detail, with and without people still and with people movement.Many of the images are captured with space to add text over image as well as left and right placement on the page.

We show scale and detail and people, this is called an environmental portrait in some cases.

I do like the very wide 12-24mm lens, I sacrifice a little distortion to show the environment.We also captured images using 70-200 2.8,85 1.4,50 1.4 12-24 F4 and the 24-70 2.8. Our iso was 400-800. Nikon D300s, I prefer this camera for our style of shooting over the D700 and D3. The reason is that the others really excel in very low light situations and we treat those situations differently, we use very fast prime lenses or we can call on our lighting kit of 8 strobes and light modifers.The D300 is reported to capture more information on its Sony sensor in good light situation than the D700 and D3.

The image above is the 12-24 F 4 zoom. I'm on a 6 foot ladder.

Maree is capturing portrait images with 85 1.4 on our back up D300.

We always keep the subjects in the loop showing them the images, They always are impressed as professional fast lenses depict a situation very differently than kit lenses.Much less control of the back grounds with the kit lenses.

BLUE WORLD ORDER SHOOT

We did a band shoot the other day Rob of BLUE WORLD ORDER has been wanting to update their website for some time.We had scouted a few venues looking for something a little different than the wrecking yard stuff and urban grunge that is the signature of bands that play rock.


Rob found this factory that he said he could rent for a slab
so Maree ( my prod mgr) and myself loaded the gear and headed out.
We didn't know what to expect so we needed to pack everything we could.
I use a trolley for my gear that is secured by tie down straps.The reason I like this is that I can take lots of gear in one trip if I'm working by myself .I don't suggest you carry half your gear to the shoot leave it there and go back for the rest....that doesn't work.

I also take things like towels,umbrellas and ground sheets.It was raining really hard so I can load the trolley under the umbrella ,cover the gear with the ground sheet and off we go.

Its a good idea to have a fluro vest,steel caps ,safety eye wear and ear plugs on board if you doing stuff like this,with the insurance ( I do hope you have public liability) and OHS stuff if your not prepared..the shoot is over before your started. There is a short video at the next entry , its got no sound but you might get a glimpse of the gear on the ground sheet, many times I need to packup in the dark..all camera gear is black and hard to find.One of those headlamp LEDs is always in my kit.I carry sandbags for the stands as well.The ground was covered in very sharp metal shavings that Maree was picking out of her shoes after the shoot so good footwear is advised.Another important thing is a change of clothes in the car.Once on a wedding shoot in a rather exclusive businessman's club I tore that backside out of my trousers setting up some strobes just before the toasts...without a spare pair....there would be much black gaff tape to start a new fashion...


We were shooting a D300 with a 24-70 2.8.It was firing 2xsb600 strobes left and right of camera gobo'd to eliminate lens flare, I think they were at about 1/4 power not gelled.I wanted a clean edge light as I wanted to go mono in the final images with some blue in the shadows....non of these images are finished, this is not about post production , this entry is about the setup.
Maree needed to gobo the umbrella because the flare was a problem in some images. You can see some flare in the lower colour image, it looks OK but Id rather have the image clean, you can put the stuff in later.


I fired 2xSB600 strobes through the umbrella.Its much better to fire 2 strobes at 1/2 power than to struggle with slow recycle times with one at full power.The SB28s have optic triggers but I still fire them all with pocket wizard radio triggers

We were to shoot a few different group shots and a few solo portraits.Its a good Idea I find to shoot a few wide to allow magazine text and remember CD/DVD covers are square.

Blue World Order-band shoot ric woods photography

We shot about 90 images in the 90 minutes we had in total to setup and bump out...it was Friday afternoon at knock off time for the factory and some were keen to lock up on time. These are few of the band member profile images, these will be cropped and cleaned up in photoshop as necessary
rob -guitar


crooksie-bass

bono-percussion

I usually supply extra images of backgrounds etc and details to make the web builder and graphic artists life easier. AFTER I fill the clients brief/shot list I will shoot images I think will work and on deliver may give a few suggestions on the use of some images.This image below may work behind text on the back of the CD. Most clients appreciate the extra effort, Ive found the less experienced stylist can be a little rigid in taking on suggestions

I hope you enjoyed this behind the scenes glimps...ric and maree