by JFISQIV
Apr 4th 2010
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0 comments
Dan Carr's blog post about A.K. for more info please and photo's please go to. http://dancarrphotography.com/blog/2010/04/02/so-you-want-to-go-and-shoo...
I?m becoming very very familiar with the interior of the hotel room in which I?m currently sitting. The front door is a portal to the 1970s, wood paneled walls that creak in the night, vinyl flooring and a selection of electrical appliances that would make an interesting museum exhibit. They call it the ?slow roast? here in Haines, Alaska, and nobody knows how long it will last. When I first arrived in town 2 weeks ago the skies were blue for a couple of days and we got right into it. But since then our fortune has changed. We have flown for 1 run in the last 7 days?.. and its beginning to drive us insane. The weather patterns seem totally unpredictable, even by the most seasoned of Alaskan forecasters. We have given up even checking on them, the only way to go is to look out of the window.
I?m here with a crew from Poorboyz productions, working alongside them while they film for their new movie, Revolver. Our stacked list of pro skiers consists of Dane Tudor, Tim Durtchi, Julien Regnier, Pep Fujas and JP Auclair and I?m doing some shooting for Atomic Skis and Salomon . The trip actually started out with a bang though?.. flying into Juneau from Vancouver I was greeted with beautiful sunshine. There are only 2 ways to get from Juneau to Haines, sea or air. And we aren?t talking 737s here , you need to pile into a tiny 4 seater Piper Cherokee with all you ski gear and camera equipment. When the weather is nice the plane is the way to go and saves you a ton of time and for $100 you get one of the most beautiful flights you could ever hope for as you fly up the Chilkat inlet towards the port town of Haines. As soon as we landed we headed straight up to ?33 mile?, the base for Alaska Heliskiing , located 33 miles outside of Haines. It was already late afternoon but we did all the necessary paperwork and safety checks that are required when you go heli skiing, so that we were ready to fly the next day if the sun held out.
Unfortunately, as usual, I cant show you any of the skiing photos until they have been used in next winters ski magazines but here is a few other shots from our trip.
On the flight from Juneau to Haines I jumped in the front seat with my Canon 1d MKIV and my 24mm f1.4 II lens. Due to limited space I could only take the camera and one lens but I made a quick little video. These little planes are shaky, could have done with a gyro to stabilize things a little bit. If you want to watch it in HD you can head HERE
Shooting in AK is very different from normal shooting in most situations. The cost of using a helicopter is huge, nearly $3000 per hour to be exact. There are several ways to approach using a heli and they both have their advantages and disadvantages. If you rent a private heli then you have to pay a minimum cost per day, whether you use it or not. This cost varies but it can be upwards of $4000 a day. When you often have huge long stretches of down time like we have had, having your own heli can really ruin your month! On this trip we have experimented with various options, including splitting a heli with a snowboard film crew that is also up here. The disadvantage is that you get less drops on a good day, but at least you dont go broke if you have some major down time. Its not unheard of for people to come up here and spend all their budget without ever getting to fly at all! So you finally get up in the air on a bluebird day and that clock starts ticking, you pay for the heli for every minute that you are flying in it, $50 per minute. Taking hours to search all the lines in the area is financially not really an option so the riders have to be on the lookout for something they want, and we have to quickly make a decision as a team, as to whether its going to look good on film and photo with the light that is currently on it. Knowing the area is a huge advantage, knowing which lines get light at which times and which ones get sun-baked by a certain time. Its a huge learning process for the younger riders in the crew like Dane and Tim. When a zone is selected the heli spins round to let the riders snap a photo of the zone and then often they are dropped straight on top of the line, only seconds after seeing it. From there everything looks very different and picking your line down by looking at the photo is an art in itself. Because of the limited weather windows and the huge costs, there is always pressure on the riders and filmers/photogs to make every shot count, its a very different vibe to most shooting that I do in the mountains. For the skiers , and even myself to a slightly lesser extent, you have to stay constantly mentally prepared. The weather can change quickly and then you get the phone call to gear up and get down to the heli port. As a skier, in an hour you can go from being in bed to standing on top of the line of your life, with no warm up run. And as a photographer you have to make sure that you capture that moment perfectly because you might have waited days and spend thousands of dollars for that split second. There?s always a lot of choices to make, where can you stand that is safe (which can be a limiting factor), what lens will you use and when will you take the shots. The lines can be long, and simply holding down the shutter button will have you filling your in-camera buffer in no time meaning you miss the shot as the skiers sends it off the cliff at the bottom of their line. If you don?t have a private heli for the day, the riders can only expect to get 3 or 4 runs in a day if its bluebird all day. More often than not, the weather is not that stable and you might get one run in before the clouds roll in and its time to head back to the motel. It?s a waiting game.
The video below was shot entirely with a GoPro® Helmet HERO? Wide camera. I?ve had one of these now for a couple of months and been really impressed with the quality of the video. It shoots in full 1080p at 30fps , or 720 in 60fps. It can also be used to take low res photos and you can set an interval timer on that to create a timelapse. These things are a lot of fun and small enough that i can just slip it in my pocket. Most of the shots in this movie were taken using the optional GoPro chest mount. This video is well worth watching in HD on vimeo?s site, if only just to see the exceptional quality of the video from such a tiny tiny camera! Hopefully it give you a bit of an idea what its like to shoot a day in Alaska. The video was edited in Final Cur Pro but one thing you should know is that natively the GoPro records to an h.264 encoded file that is not much good for editing. If you want to edit multiple clips together like this you will need to use a program to convert the files to a quicktime file with a different codec like AIC or prores 422. You can use a free program called Mpeg Streamclip to do this. To watch the video in HD please go HERE.
