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Last summer we hosted 19 product designers, merchandisers, and category managers from Levi Strauss in San Francisco and showed them Colorado. We toured them through our backyard and put together 3 days of trending, biking, focus groups, partying, and kart racing.

Levis came to us because they wanted to get their finger on the pulse of the fixed gear and commuter bike movement in an authentic way that couldn’t be done with traditional consumer research. They chose Denver and Boulder (as opposed to NYC, San Fran, or LA) because the scene is still young and developing organically in Colorado.

The fruits of the research have finally hit the market. Utility waistband for U-lock, stretch fabric, reinforced fabrics, sanitized brand technology, 3m reflectivity and nanosphere technology. Find out what all that means here.

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While this isn’t the kind of project we work on every day it is something that falls perfectly into our scope and calls upon our core principles as a creative company. The Public Works was founded on the idea of integrated involvement with designers, consumers, and professional athletes to create a better product. If we’re developing a DJ booth for Red Bull for example we get together with DJ’s, bar owners, bar tenders, etc. to call upon the knowledge of the experts and those that will be using the product to develop something truly custom and designed to the needs of the end user.

The week started with a bike tour of some of our partners and friends around Denver. We started at the Curtis Hotel in Denver and hopped on Denver’s public B-Cycle bikes and cruised to Yespleasemore a pop up store featuring the work of local artists, then we rolled down the street to DVLP Clothing and Omerica. DVLP is a local clothing brand that is collaborating with local artists and Omerica is an amazing wood jewelry company designing and producing all their product in Denver. Then we headed down the street to the Taxi live/work development. after spending some time touring the work spaces we cruised through the skate park and headed to the Platte street area to visit our good friends at Jiberish Clothing, Emage skate shop and Salvagettis Bike shop.

The crew at B-Cycles

The route

Taxi

Omerica repping Xrocksthespot

That evening was an “industry insiders” dinner/party. The Public Works reached out to a large network of shop owners, event organizers, and influencers involved in the fixed gear bicycle culture. A steady flow of tapas and cocktails kept the evening fun and easy going while connections were made and info was exchanged.

Party time at the Corner Bar in the Curits

Crewed up

Late night ride

The next morning the Levi’s crew headed over to Salvagettis to meet up with 20 consumers selected as a representative sample of the key demographic. They broke into groups based on predetermined consumer types and spent 2 hours in small groups talking culture, trends, and product. The group then headed to Boulder to meet with 20 more consumers and do a short trending walk through the famous Pearl Street walking mall.

Casual consumer research… Engaging consumers in an authentic and legitimate way.

On the last day the crew headed to The Track at Centennial for debriefing meetings, action planning, and some serious burning of rubber. The Track is some of the most fun possible on 4 wheels with a fleet of carts that clock out at over 54mph on almost a mile of snaking concrete with 21 turns. The Levi’s team left full of adrenaline and information and ready to charge confidently into a new market.

It was amazing watching the good folks at Levis engaging and connecting with consumers and developing a go forward plan.

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The creative brief for this trip included outside sculpted portraits at night with gells and light painting, lit daytime action, product focused environmental lifestyle, and a variety of studio set ups. We’ll break these post down into 4 categories: On hill action, improvised studio, lifestyle, and creative (light painting etc.).

Unfortunately we can’t show any of the final imagery until Spyder’s 2012 product is launched.

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On Hill

The first goal of the NZ shoot was getting onhill images of Colby James West and Eva Patscheider in the terrain park. For locations we had basically 2 choices for a good park: Snow Park or Cadrona. Cadrona had just hosted the Burton NZ Open slopestyle so the jumps were primed and ready to go. We got clearance to show up before the lifts were open to the public so we hustled the crew out of our humble Queenstown abode and loaded the lifts just after first light.

Since the two angles we felt worked best for the jumps were a long lens shot facing West and a fisheye shot from behind we decided to set up two Profoto heads on the West side of the jump at 45° from where the peak action (apex of the skier’s arc through the air) would happen. For the long lens shot this would provide a quality rim light in addition to the natural fill light. From the fisheye from behind the set up would provide a key and a rim light while the sun would provide some fill. The Profoto 7B and Profoto Acute 600 provided plenty of power to shoot during full daylight and the new Pocketwizard’s hyper sync allows us to freeze action during the day. We shot all day at 1/1600th of a second without any trouble and got some cool results where the skier was completely crisp with a backlit snow trail from the take off, a nice rim light on the skier, and nice early day natural fill from the sun.

You can see the strobe positions here.

Packing list for a park shoot day:

Light Bags – Lowepro
-Battery pack – Profoto 7B
-Synch Cord
-Pocketwizard -Flex TT5
-2 Lightstands -Manfroto
-2 Reflectors – Profoto
-tent stakes
-Paracord

Camera Bag (LowePro TK)
-Camera body – D300s, D700
-Back up body – D7000
-Lenses – Nikor 80-200mm 2.8, Nikon 50mm 1.4, 80mm Tilt shift, 14mm Nikon Fisheye f2.8, 17-35mm Nikon 2.8mm
-Extra cards – 32gig Sandisk
-Extra battery
-Motorola Radios
-Lens cloth
-Sunglasses
-Water Bottle
-Mittens
-Snacks

Extras for Backcountry Shoot
-Beacon, Shovel, Probe
-Extra Goggles
-Balaclava
-Hand Warmers

Tips and tricks for strobing action on hill:

-Every camera and flash system is a little different and the Pocketwizard settings take a little tweaking to get the hyper sync right. For our D700 and both Profoto kits we set the delay to -1700
-Find a bag that will fit the flashpacks and two heads. It’s nice if it has a top strap to hang on the light stands for extra stability
-Tent stakes and paracord or webbing works well for anchoring a light stand if it’s windy or you’re on an uneven surface
-Gaffer tape the lid from a bottled water over the power switch of the Profoto packs. Nothing worse than getting to a location only to find you have a dead battery before the day starts
-Keep a sync chord and Pocketwizard with each pack. Sucks if your flashes end up somewhere difficult to access with an assistant or an athlete and all the wizards are in your camera pack.
-Shower caps from hotels can be great makeshift camera covers if it’s pissing rain or dumping snow.
-Always bring more memory cards and extra batteries than you think you’re going to need.

Testing

Before heading on the road we test the pocketwizards in the studio to dial in the sync speeds. By shooting against a white wall you can get a good feel for how the hypersync is working.

These shots are with the Profoto. Eventually we got the profoto syncing clean up to 1/2000 of a second. When we shoot with the Nikon Speedlight system we can go as fast as we want.

More info on improvised studio, lifestyle, and creative (light painting etc.) coming soon. If anyone has any specific questions we can address them so let us know!

There is a ton that goes into successfully executing a location shoot of this scale. We’ve been lucky enough to both shoot and produce photoshoots all over the world and over the next few weeks we will do a series of posts based on the New Zealand shoot highlighting what we’ve learned throughout the years.

We’ll cover…
Part 1: Packing and Travel
Part 2: Lighting
Part 3: Digital Remote Workflow
Part 4: Planning and Logistics

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Packing and Travel

The gear we choose to bring on a shoot depends entirely on the creative brief that outlines our agenda. This shoot called for the full gamut from backcountry ski action photography, to fully produced and styled lighting set ups… so we had no choice but to pack it all. This brings us to the first part of getting a shoot like this done well… packing and travel.

Carry-on:

Always carry on the bare minimum to survive and start getting accomplishing something when you get there. Often bags get held up, lost, or delayed especially when traveling to more remote destinations and traveling with overweight bags.

-Passport (forget this and you’re F@#$ed)
-Travel cash (though we rarely even see the currency of countries we visit thanks to the ubiquity of plastic, you’ll need it for tips, taxis, etc… always tip the airline curb check guy!)
-Camera and lenses (even if you have no extra lighting gear, extra clothes, or equipment at least you can start shooting ambient light set ups, travel photos, etc.)
-Computer, hard drive, card reader, and cords (the client will likely want to review images plus it’s always good to back up your photos ASAP)
-Extra camera battery and charger (nothing makes you look worse than holding a dead camera because you checked your battery/charger)
-Light weight rain jacket and down jacket (sucks to be cold)
-Boots (in a worst case scenario you can always rent but skiing or riding on a rental board or skis sucks… riding in beat up rear entry boots is impossible)
-Toothbrush (no one likes skunk breath and nothing gives you skunk mouth like passing out on a plane)
-Sleeping pills (even with airline status you still might end up on a middle seat between a heavy set fellow and loud talker that can’t tell that headphones and a book mean you’re not interested… check out and skip the jetlag)

Additional options that happen to be on our list:
-Journal (always nice to be able to record thoughts/ideas, make lists, sketch, or just remember the cool places you’ve seen and how you experienced them)
-Book (or kindle if you think you can blaze through more than one on a trip [yeah right] or you’re too ADD to stick with one)
-Magazine or two (light and content rich… and sometimes it’s nice to just look at pretty pictures of stuff you like)
-Headphones (This should probably be on the mandatory list… drone out plane noise and groove out)
-Breath mints (again… skunk breath)
-Point and shoot Camera (easier to bust out at random occasions than the SLR… Though we shoot Nikons the Cannon S-90 is the perfect pocket tool)
-Podcasts/

Luggage:

Pelican Cases are invaluable for checking expensive breakable items. Arrange them so everything is well padded and if possible distribute the weight well… Weight cut offs for the airlines are usually at 50 and 70 lbs… over 50 and you’re looking at unexpected charges… over 70 and you’re going to feel like you dropped the soap in the prison shower.

We use the Pelican 1620 Case and the 1610 Case

Lowe Pro Bags. LowePro makes a Huge assortment of bags that cover a wide range of uses. We like the Flipside models to carry our Profoto 7B kits with battery, two heads, and extension chord and the Specialist 85 AW to carry the Profoto Acute 600. These bags are very customizable for whatever you’re carrying and have comfortable ergonomic harness that carry better than any other pack we’ve tried for the angry midget (heavy lighting kits).

Customs

To avoid needing a work visa it’s best to familiarize yourself with what the destination country is concerned with so you know what documents to get, how to properly prepare, and have your talking points in mind before you’re brought to the dreaded “back room”.

In NZ the primary concern is that you’re not bringing in gear to sell or trade with the company you’re shooting for. The best way to avoid hassles is to get a Carnet…

Carnets or “Merchandise Passports” are a good idea if you’re traveling with a lot of gear. On this trip we had a camera bag and two Pelican cases full of lighting gear confiscated and a carnet would have saved us this hassle/cost. You can get a carnet at your international departure airport if you show up with a comprehensive itemized list of the equipment you’re carrying.

Batteries can create issues. We’ve been advised to take the cassette out of the batteries and carry them on but we’ve always risked it and haven’t run into any issues yet (knock wood).

Random Travel Tips

-Check out the “traveling media clause” for your airline and get a letter of assignment if you can… this should help with overweight baggage fees (usually only works for domestic)
-Always ask about a window (or aisle if you prefer) upon check-in. Ask if there’s a bulk head available. Unless you’re on SouthWest in which case check in early!
-Audibles.com and/or iTunes podcasts (NPR This American Life, The Moth, Adam Carrolla are a few favorites)
-Find a belt that doesn’t have much metal in the buckle so you don’t have to take it on and off at every security check point.

Please feel free to comment and share your tips and experiences. Let us know if there’s anything else you’d like help/advice with. Stay tuned for New Zealand Catalogue Photo Shoot, Details- Part 2: Digital Remote Workflow

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The trip started with the ambitious attempt to lug 440lbs of ski, camera and lighting gear into 2 ski bags, 3 pelican cases, and 2 Dakine roller bags. We made it though DIA with a manageable extra baggage fee of $300. We don’t say it often but… Thanks United! Once in NZ things didn’t go quite as smoothly. Two pelicans and a camera bag were confiscated and we ended up walking all around the Aukland airport grounds trying not to get hit by cars by looking the wrong way crossing roads and searching for the Customs office.

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In true Kiwi fashion we had 5 customs officials all with a good sense of humor helping us try and get our bags back. At one point everyone in the office was gathered around one computer heckling the head officer for his bad typing skills. While we were dealing with the Kiwi customs version of Super Troopers the flight we should have been on and planned on missing was grounded because half our bags that were checked through were on the plane and we weren’t. We were getting texts from the rest of our crew that made the flight saying, “don’t talk to me or even make eye contact when you get on the plane. We’ve been sitting here for 30 minutes and people are PISSED.” After customs officials raced us through the airport and we got yelled at by the Air New Zealand woman escorting us to our flight… “If I can run this fast in my high heels the least you can do is keep up!”, we made our flight to Queenstown with all our gear and avoided getting stoned to death by angry delayed travelers.

We spent the next 7 days based out of a beautiful modern 7 bedroom house overlooking Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu.

The House

The Lake

We spent 2 days at Cadrona shooting Colby James West and Eva Patscheider jumping. We got early ups the day after the Burton NZ Open and got to shoot the jumps cleaned of banners and fences and we were lucky enough to get a beautiful sunny day. We were also able to shoot our Profoto strobes at high sync speeds thanks to Pocket Wizard’s new technology. We’ll do another nerdier post on all our gear and photography specific info after this post.

A Jump

During our stay the storm of century rolled through Queenstown and dump a staggering… wait for it… foot on the ground. Queenstown, despite being known as a winter recreation destination, is not used to any snow and completely unprepared for the event. The city shut down. Every slope in sight had mini kickers built and kids sessioning. Cars were abandoned, businesses closed. Half our crew make their way over the pass to Snow Park and Wanaka and half decided to brave the treacherous road up to The Remarkables. Half way up our chains broke and we had to hold them together with ski straps. Knowing a thin piece of orange rubber is the only thing holding your traction devices on bald rental tires while weaving perilously close to a 2,000 foot drop with no guard rail is disconcerting to say the least… not to mention the total lack of visibility in the 50+ mph winds and the huge busses barreling down the middle of the tiny narrow road.

The Mountains

More Mountains

We managed to tick off the shot list a couple days early and decided to hit the road. No stay in Queenstown would be complete without the requisite bungee jump so we hit the Kawarau Bridge Bungee on the way out of town.

We raced to catch the sunset on Lake Tekapu for some lifestyle shots and then made party in Methven. The next day we shipped some product and started the cruise to the west coast via Arthurs Pass. Cruising through the Southern Alps down to the coast was an amazing scenic journey and we only killed one sheep on the way [no sheep were actually hurt or killed... although one, upon being chased, fainted or possibly made the rapid decision to take a nap during a full sprint]. We caught sunset at Punakaiki, ate an amazing dinner, had a recovery sleep, and then headed back to the right coast.

The Ride

Left Coast GTS

From huge mountain passes, to rolling rainforest hills descending straight into dramatic craggy cold coastline, east to west, we saw a lot in our few days of travel. New Zealand has so much to offer it would take years to experience everything there is to see and do but we did a pretty good job of exploring and making the most of our short time on the island of middle earth… We took some pretty pictures too.

Right Coast Sun Rise

Right Coast GTS

Unfortunately we can’t share any of the photos that feature new Spyder Gear until next year so in the mean time this is a tiny sampling of what we captured.

HUGE Thanks to: Spyder, Jess McMillan, Julia Mancuso, Colby James West, Eva Patscheider, Jake Zamansky, Steve Nyman, LowePro, Pocketwizard, Profoto, San Disk, Pelican Cases, and Contour Cam.

There is a ton that goes into successfully executing a location shoot of this scale. We’ve been lucky enough to both shoot and produce photoshoots all over the world and over the next few weeks we will do a series of posts based on the New Zealand shoot highlighting what we’ve learned throughout the years.

We’ll cover…
Part 1: Packing and Travel
Part 2: Digital Remote Workflow
Part 3: Location Lighting
Part 4: Planning and Logistics

Gratuitous Sea Donkey Shots

Fuzzy Land Seal

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We tested for two weeks on a Spyder shoot in Portillo, Chile (check out it out here) and have been shooting the system non-stop since we got it in our hands. The FlexTT5 system is working great and there is a ton of exciting technology that’s changing what we can do with off-camera flashes.

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We were able to sync the Profoto 7B pack at 1/1600th without losing any of the frame! This is HUGE! This allows us to shoot strobes during the day without being confined to a 1/250 which was a big problem for shooting day time action with stobes. We were also able to sync nikon speed lights up to 1/8000 of a second.

The set up for Colby West’s mini rock dwelling jib

You should have seen what those rocks did to his bases. On the plus side, the flashes all fired when they were supposed to.

Colby sending into the pool. Pocketwizards firing two speed lights and a Profoto 7B pack.

Jake Zamanski lit up during the day. Nikon speedlight synced at over 1/1000sec

The ControlTL system works shockingly well. The fact that we can now set up as many strobes as we want and get a baseline exposure PERFECT on the first set up in no time at all is huge. For events, shooting lifestyle with speed lights, and other high paced environments this is a huge help.

Jake hanging out. light courtesy of Nikon and Pocketwizard working together for well balanced fill on auto and a sharp rim-light on manual

Nikon speed light and Pocketwizard on TTL

Sage Cattabriga-Alosa and Sean Pettit

Red Bull Thre3style DJ competition

With the newest firmware update that enables the AC3 controller we can now control 3 banks of flashes up to 6 stops each. This is incredibly helpful technology that will change the way we shoot. We can now make quick adjusting on the fly and since we often have flashes mounted in difficult to get to places this makes a big difference. Though we haven’t had a chance to test
the outputs with a light meter the system works amazingly well.

Ian weaseling into a steep tight spot with the speed lights

Red Bull Media House has also recently teamed up with Pocketwizard and as photofiles photographers there were able to provide us with a full new production kit that has been utilized well on Red Bull shoots.

Red Bull Open Ice, MN

Denver Red Bull Thre3style


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On Board Experiential Marketing came to us because they knew we bring more to the table than just fabrication. Most of what passes through our fab shop starts with napkin sketches from chairlift, trailhead, or bar room meetings and goes though a long series of sketches, engineering, and prototyping. On this project On Board had a refined design that we helped bring to life.

The kiosk is framed out of beetle kill and skinned with corrugated steel. We CNCed the signage in our solar powered shop in Evergreen and the rest of the build went down in our Battery621 shop. The crew from On Board came down to Battery, checked out the finished product, and we loaded their trailer (wrapped by our friends at Ink Monstr) so they could hit the road to the Teva Games.

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Loaded and ready to roll.

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We put this slideshow together as a quick tour through our years of shooting everything Red Bull. It was a challenge, as curation always is, sorting through the tens of thousands of frames. We edited and re-edited, feeling that one shot or a whole shoot was more worthwhile than another. In the end, photography is subjective and almost certainly there is someone who would be more or less happy at either end of our vacillations. There is a ton we left out but we feel it landed on comfortable length and selection. We’d love to hear your feed back.

Enjoy [at full screen]

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We designed the modular portable system as a system of light weight crates made of beetle kill pine. The crates nest together to create a shelving system and front bar. The top crates in each stack have branding both inside (behind the denim) and on the back and can be oriented either way depending on signage needs and amount of denim. The bar is branded with water jet cut steel.

The bar and one of three shelves in front of branded van.

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