Jogging through Holland
I just finished a fitness shoot in the south of Holland with model Mandy Glasbergen. I was assisted by Neville Marcinkowsky and Fadim (not sure of last name) did makeup. To prepare for the shoot, I first scouted locations by hopping on my bike and riding around for a couple of Saturdays. Then I spent a few evenings making sketches of the kind of thing I wanted to shoot. And then, the weather promised to toss all my plans asunder. The forecast called for rain all day and thunderstorms.
I didn't want to call off the shoot, but my lighting equipment wasn't weather-proofed, so it seemed like the best thing to do. However, I realized that one of my locations had covered sections, making it usable even if it did rain, as long as it didn't rain too hard. I then looked around for another covered outdoor location and realized that the bicycle tunnels all over Holland provide excellent cover for my gear and are located on bicycle paths that double as jogging paths. Those two locations would cover me for about two hours of shooting. Add in lunch, and we could handle three hours of rain. This would be enough because the latest weather reports had backed off on the thunderstorm prediction and were now saying it would be only three hours of rain.
On the day of the shoot, it looked like it would rain, so we did the first shot in a bicycle tunnel. By the time Mandy was dressed and had her makeup on, it was raining, but it wasn't that bad. Within fifteen minutes, the rain had stopped and it never came back. For the rest of the day we had beautiful weather, though it was windy enough to warrant staking the light stands to the ground. As we left the house, Neville reminded me of another location we had scouted earlier for a different purpose, some old German bunkers in Dordrecht. Maybe it would be worth doing one of our shots there? It made sense to me, so our second shot was done there. Unfortunately, my knowledge of the roads in that area is related to my use of bicycle paths, not the motorways, because I don't drive in Holland. The result is that we got lost a couple of times and lost about forty minutes. For this reason, we weren't able to go to the last of the three locations originally planned, but we added two others so we came out ahead regardless.
The end result of the schedule changes is that my sketches resembled only a couple of the photos taken for the shoot. That seems to happen every time I make sketches actually: about half are used almost exactly as drawn, and the rest serve only as an idea for the action in a shot rather than the composition.
I didn't want to call off the shoot, but my lighting equipment wasn't weather-proofed, so it seemed like the best thing to do. However, I realized that one of my locations had covered sections, making it usable even if it did rain, as long as it didn't rain too hard. I then looked around for another covered outdoor location and realized that the bicycle tunnels all over Holland provide excellent cover for my gear and are located on bicycle paths that double as jogging paths. Those two locations would cover me for about two hours of shooting. Add in lunch, and we could handle three hours of rain. This would be enough because the latest weather reports had backed off on the thunderstorm prediction and were now saying it would be only three hours of rain.
On the day of the shoot, it looked like it would rain, so we did the first shot in a bicycle tunnel. By the time Mandy was dressed and had her makeup on, it was raining, but it wasn't that bad. Within fifteen minutes, the rain had stopped and it never came back. For the rest of the day we had beautiful weather, though it was windy enough to warrant staking the light stands to the ground. As we left the house, Neville reminded me of another location we had scouted earlier for a different purpose, some old German bunkers in Dordrecht. Maybe it would be worth doing one of our shots there? It made sense to me, so our second shot was done there. Unfortunately, my knowledge of the roads in that area is related to my use of bicycle paths, not the motorways, because I don't drive in Holland. The result is that we got lost a couple of times and lost about forty minutes. For this reason, we weren't able to go to the last of the three locations originally planned, but we added two others so we came out ahead regardless.
The end result of the schedule changes is that my sketches resembled only a couple of the photos taken for the shoot. That seems to happen every time I make sketches actually: about half are used almost exactly as drawn, and the rest serve only as an idea for the action in a shot rather than the composition.
Comments
Post a Comment