You are here: Home / Archives for sunrise

Best Challenge Ever?

I’m in the middle of another UWOL Film Challenge. The theme for this challenge is “Renewal.”

So far I’ve shot some fantastic footage. Maybe some of my best. I find myself chomping at the bit in anticipation waiting for the next opportunity I can get out and shoot for this challenge.

The new camera is simply amazing. The quality of the footage continues to blow me away. While they may announce a new version of the camera this month, I think it’ll be hard to beat what I’m getting right now. It’s simply stunning.

This also may be the most personal challenge I’ve done for the competition. Maybe that’s why I find myself so anxious to get out and shoot for it.

The film is due on September 20th. So, certainly not a lot of time to tweak it so it’s just right.

I’m going to try and shoot the one crucial scene tomorrow. If I don’t get that shot then the whole film will fail. So, it’s really, really important that I get this shot and I get it right. I’ve been trying for over a week to try and find a way to make it a simple shot and still make it clear what is going on without looking too cliche. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow if I was able to pull it off or not.

I’ll be up before sunrise tomorrow working on getting some more shots to fill the gaps in the story before I head out for the big shot of the day.

There’s nothing like being out in nature that moment just before the sun peeks over the horizon. There’s no way I can describe the feeling. It’s as close to being magical as anything can be.

I hope tomorrow is a good day! I’ll keep you posted!

There’s No Place Like Home

Wave

The life of a nature and wildlife filmmaker is often a lonely one.

When I’m working on a project I’ll often head out well before sunrise and sometimes won’t be back until well after sunset. If I’m someplace like Yellowstone, this can go on day after day for weeks at a time. Usually I’m by myself. Sometimes my wife, Angi, will come along.

But even when I have someone along for company, I’m too consumed with figuring out what to shoot, how to shoot it and how it’s all going to come together. I’m in my own little world. Angi will bring a book to read since she’s learned over the years that nature filmmaking is many hours of boredom followed sometimes by a few seconds of something wonderful. Oftentimes she wouldn’t understand why I was so excited about something but was happy that I was so happy.

I’ve hiked to frozen lakes in the middle of July, waded through a canyon river where the walls were only eighteen feet apart. I’ve seen ancient ruins thousands of years old. Had bears close enough to touch, coyotes chasing a wolf,snow falling in the Utah desert.

I’ve seen and done a lot of things in the natural world pretty mush most of them I was the only witness that they ever occurred.

But I thought Hawaii would be different. I got a call about teaching at a workshop in Honolulu a while back. The way the schedule was set up, It would have been easy for Angi to come along and enjoy Waikiki Beach while I was out filming. Unfortunately, her schedule wouldn’t allow her to come along.The ironic thing is that the night before I left, her schedule cleared and she would have been able to go after all. The only problem was that now plane tickets were over $2k. So, she reluctantly accepted the fact that she was going to miss out on this opportunity.

Hawaii turned out to be everything you hear it is. I met some great people there and we had a blast filming around the island. In fact, I still keep in touch with them and hope to visit them the next time I’m in town. John Chance, one of the locals, turned me on to Loco Moko and Plate Dinners. We had a great time along with his family and another friend I met there Constantino Ferrer. We sat on Waikiki Beach at sunset and watched world class films being projected onto a 30 foot screen as part of the Hawaiian International Film Festival. There’s just something about watching a documentary film about sharks while you’re sitting on Waikiki Beach and can hear the ocean waves just feet away from you. It was truly magical!

But Angi was never far from my thoughts when I was there. I knew how disappointed she was that she couldn’t join me.

On the flight back to Iowa, I broke out the laptop and started pulling clips from the trip. Angi is a California girl and living in Iowa, she misses the ocean terribly.

As the plane touched down in Cedar Rapids, it was great to be home. I had been in paradise for two weeks but nothing was as good as walking in the front door of my house, setting down all the gear and being home.

So when she asked me how was the trip, I played her this video that I had edited on my flight home.

[flv:http://www.silverphoenixllc.com/phoenixblog/movies/Angi.flv 592 331]

Do Pictures Lie?

What do you think of this picture?

landfill1

It’s a beautiful picture isn’t it? One of those Golden Graham mornings.

How about this one?

ladfill

Not quite the same impact is it? Would it surprise you to know that both pictures are at the same location? Would it surprise you even more to know that the “mountain” in the background is actually our local landfill “Mt. Trashmore”?

We’ve all heard the pictures never lie, but they do all the time. There’s an old mission in Montana that I’ve seen in books and magazines for many years. It shows this beautiful mission seemingly in the middle of nowhere with majestic mountains rising up behind it.

So one year, I made the trip to photograph the mission. As I travelled up the highway I happened to glance over to my right and there was this building that kind of looked like the mission. I was puzzled because this building was right in a town. There were telephone lines running every which way run down buildings, junk cars. It couldn’t be the same mission could it? Well, it just so happens that if you set up at just the right angle, you can eliminate all the distractions and get the iconic shot of the mission against the mountains that you see in all the magazines.

As a photographer and now filmmaker, I’ve learned that it’s not so much how things look but how you see the possibilities within them.

Here’s a shot from a recent short I did. It’s a tranquil pond seemingly set in a Waldenesque setting.
pond1

You can feel the peace and tranquility in this quiet little spot.

In actuality, this pond is in my housing development just off a major highway, Tons of traffic on the highway, dogs barking in people’s yards. It certainly wasn’t peaceful by any means.

This is what it normally looks like whenever I drive by.
pond

Do pictures really lie? I don’t think they do. I think they can show us the possibilities that we’ve chosen not to see. They show, at least to me, that there is beauty everywhere. We just need to take the time to see it. I feel fortunate to be blessed with the ability to see beyond what’s in front of my eyes and find those possibilities that seemingly lie hidden away.

Silent Kingdom

frost

Another film for the Underwater Over Land Film Challenge.

The theme for this challenge was “Animal Kingdom.”
Unfortunately this film had to be put together in just a few hours.
Family matters kept me home for most of the time period we had to complete the film. So, on the last day I headed out and spent most of the day driving around trying to find anything to film.
I knew I didn’t have enough wildlife footage to even come close to doing a film that really addressed the theme. So, I came up with the idea of doing a film about there not being any wildlife in the “Animal Kingdom in the tenth hour.

With the film due that night, I sat down about 9:00PM and started trying to put something together. My plan was to do a voice over but as the night wore on, that grew to be less likely.

The clock struck 2AM and I was still trying to put something together to beat the deadline.

Finally I just started laying down track, hoping that it would all make some kind of sense.

Although not the film I was hoping to do, I made the deadline and hopefully it has a bit of a message.
[flv:http://www.silverphoenixllc.com/phoenixblog/movies/SilentKingdom.flv 592 331]

Africa: A Moment in Time

rhino_590

Back in January and February, I had a fantastic opportunity to travel to Africa and try out as of then an unannounced camera for Panasonic, the HPX-300.

In previous posts I’ve documented the experience but never really posted any footage.

I have a habit of editing footage together while I’m on a trip so when I get back, I have something to show my friends and family as soon as I get off the plane. Africa was no different.

We arrived home late but still broke out the laptop to show everyone some of the fantastic wildlife we encountered while we were there. My intent was to always go back and re-edit the piece since I had juts taken bits and pieces from each days shoot and put them all together. I still intend to do that, but while you’re waiting for that, I thought I’d show you the footage that I had put together when I stepped off the plane.

A big thanks to Jan from Panasonic for believing in me and letting me take this camera to Africa. Course, I guess a bunch of footage from Iowa wouldn;t have had the same “wow” factor. 🙂

I hope you enjoy the footage. You can view it by clicking here.

If you have a moment please leave a comment and let me know what you thought of it as well as what else you’d like to see posted on this blog.

Seeing the Possibilities

One of the questions I’m often asked is how do I capture such beautiful imagery.
It’s a hard question for me to answer. It’s not that I’m reluctant to share some secret technique ( there really isn’t one ), it’s that I really don’t know the answer.

While composition and exposure can be taught, seeing the possibilities in a scene where there may appear to be none is much harder to explain. I think a lot of it is something you’re just born with.

I’ve been a dreamer my entire life. In my world of daydreams, there are never any limitations. I can be anyone, do anything, go anywhere. I think that allows me to look at the real world in different ways than just the current reality that’s in front of me.

I my latest film, “The River”, I scouted locations for the opening sequence. I was looking for something that would have a big impact and set the tone for the rest of the film.

This was the first place I scouted, a local state park which had great access to the Cedar River.

Really not much to look at. Certainly wouldn’t put it in the film as is. But, I saw the potential.

So I began checking sunrise times and position. I also checked the weather reports every night to make sure the morning sky would be clear. Nothing worse than traveling to a location to capture the sunrise only to find clouds blocking the sun.

By seeing the possibility in the location and a little planning I wound up with this.

Certainly much more impact as an opening shot than what I had seen when scouting this location.

The River

A strange thing happened to me this round of the UWOL challenge, I actually was able to change my mind about the subject of my film.

Normally whenever the theme is announced for a new challenge, an initial thought will pop into my head and no matter how hard I try to think of something else, my brain locks onto that first idea I had and that’s all she wrote.

Maybe at first, the idea sounded really good but upon further reflection, I realized it might be more difficult to pull off in the three week time frame that I had originally thought.

When I first heard the theme was “Habitat” for UWOL #11, my first thought was a film on vanishing forests here in Iowa.

Every year in the Cedar Rapids area, they have what the call Parade of Homes. The public is given an opportunity to tour homes built by local contractors. Homes range in price from $150k to over a million dollars.

One of the million dollar plus homes was in the middle of a great forested area. As my wife and I were being driven up the lane in a golf cart because it was tucked back so far off the road, I was saddened by the fact that such a beautiful area was being bulldozed to make way for more million dollar homes.

Oh, there were still plenty of trees and a great pond, but the natural beauty and wildness had forever vanished with the building of this development.

So, that was what my film was going to be about.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this was part of a bigger story. Something that couldn’t be told in the normal span of time we have for the challenge.

Normally my brain would be so focused on this story that I wouldn’t be able to shift gears and find another story that needed to be told.

But this time was different. This time for whatever reason, a new idea popped into my head. That idea has become the focus of my UWOL #11 film, “The River.”

Stay tuned as “The River” starts to take shape.