Back In The Saddle

Hi there. I want to thank all of you that have written me concerned about my absents from blogging, I assure you that my family and I are fine. I've just returned from a very busy month! 2 workshops, 2 job and a vacation. I attended a workshop in Santa Fe and one in Los Angeles. Between those workshops I managed to squeeze in a 3 day job shooting helicopter aerials in Vernal, UT and an underground shoot in a coal mine in Illinois just before my vacation.

We did manage to shoot video on both shoots and I will be post them when I have the time. I have another week before things will settle down to a normal pace for me. My sister is in town visiting, she arrived at the airport at the same time that my family and I arrived at the airport on our return from our vacation. Once her visit is complete, I'll be able to resume my somewhat normal schedule of posting to my blog.

I have some exciting things going on in my life that I am looking forward to sharing with you when I can. When events come together I'll let you know. In the meantime, I look forward to new posts and hearing from you.

Thanks for hanging in there. DT

If I Only Had A DOLLAR!

If I only had a dollar every time I hear; You should have been here.... or To bad you can't be here.....

I here this stuff all the time. It's very frustrating to arrive on location and hear those kind of comments when your there to shoot an assignment. For what ever reason, your there and you have a job to do and you deal with it. On some occasions you actually hear, "your timing couldn't be better...."

I'm currently working on an annual report for a construction company with projects all around the U.S. I started this project several months ago and we are fast approaching the deadline for photography. Thus far, we've shot in Yakima, WA, Ogden, UT, Salinas, CA, Monterey, CA, San Diego, CA (last week) and Key Largo, FL (next week). I still have St. Louis, MO and another location (somewhere?). I have to have all work completed by Feb. 16th and time is running out.

I may be forced into a timing and availability (my availability) issue regarding the remaining locations. The Key Largo project has been scheduled to coincide with the placement of a major support for a bridge that their building. In St. Louis, it's all about weather!

It's hard to forecast the weather, I've been using weather.com for my forecasting. I try to look for a large window of good weather and book ticket as far in advance as possible. With 3 more locations to go and only a few more weeks available, I may be facing less than perfect weather. If that becomes the case, I'll deal with it. Inclement weather can and has, provide wonderful opportunities to create dramatic images.

I'll attach a few images from last week in San Diego, CA. This location was one of those, "to bad you can't be here ...." times.

We did have nice weather for our shoot, but not the amount of active we would have liked. My client was contracted for site clean-up from the Southern California fires back in October.

I have a up coming post about a fashion shoot I had this past weekend. "Fashion" you say. Industrial Dave is stepping out of the comfort zone. Here is a sample from that shoot.

A Sense of Scale

Having a sense of scale in a photograph is critically important. I try when ever possible, to include a person (more than likely my assistant) within the photo. This not only provides a sense of scale to the photo but it also allows you the opportunity to interject some human interest.

It's my opinion that the photo here at the left would be less interesting without the 2 worker wearing yellow slickers below at the bottom of the frame.

I this situation, I had the use of walkie talkie's to communicate with the worker below. I was able to position them wherever I wanted and direct them to pose and gesture as needed. Basically I'm recreating an activity that you might see just waking through the facility.

I was shooting an annual report for a chemical company some years back on the gulf coast of Mississippi.

During the summer months you have these wonder sunsets on the gulf coast. I had a wonderful leading line of the pipe straight out to the ship being filled with product. Bay placing a worker in the photo, you see what I mean. Just put your finger over the worker, still a strong graphic shot but more interesting with someone in the shot.

This photo was taken for one of the many oil & gas clients I have. I shot this photo just east of Denver and because it was so close to my home, I was able to scout the location ahead of time. While scouting, I saw this composition and knew I just had to shoot it.

This pipe runs east and west and I wanted to take advantage of a sunrise for this shot. I had a compass with me and I took note of the excite compass heading the pipe was running. When I got back to my office, I went to the web for information relating to sunrise time and compass heading where the sun would rise. For that information, I head to USNO which stands for U.S. Naval Observatory. This online resource is wonderful, you simply plug in your location or the locations your traveling to and the information comes up instantly.

As it turned out, this pipe was running straight inline with the sunrise. Just got lucky! Before I leave on assignment, I check out USNO and print out the sunrise and sunset information for each of the locations I'm traveling to on assignment & vacation.