A tale of two extremes
This was my second gig for Tuff Turf (they are a Melbourne based artificial turf company that do work all around the country) the first was to photograph the resurfacing job they did at the Burnie Tennis Club. They liked the results so much they flew me to Melbourne to shoot their recently completed mega-job for St Kevin’s College in Toorak. This is a very impressive multi-sport facility and coverage included both stills and video from the drone and on-ground images with the dslrs. It was a challenge predicting when to book flights as everything relied on the weather.
Another of the challenges with this shoot was actually getting my gear to Melbourne in one piece. Everyone has heard the baggage handling horror stories and I was determined not to become another in the list. The issue is compounded by regulations preventing spare lithium ion batteries from being carried in general cargo. So, I needed to have the bulk of my camera gear (bodies and lenses) and spare batteries for both the cameras and drone in my carry-on luggage which has a weight limit of 7kg! A definite challenge…professional gear is not light.
My drone…a DJI Phantom 3 Pro (which lives in a customized hard case) just fitted in my suitcase. The remaining space was filled with a small travel tripod, a single Godox AD200 flash head (didn’t think I would need it but I would rather go prepared), my Canon 70-200 f2.8 zoom (which was bubble-wrapped to within an inch of its life and jammed into its carry case) as it is the heaviest lens in my kit, toiletries and the very few clothes that would fit.
Not so squeezy!
My carry-on (a LowePro Fastpack BP250) contained 2 Canon 5DmkIII bodies, 3 lenses (Sigma Art 50mm f1.4, 24mm f1.4 and Canon 14mm f2.8, 2 spare Phantom batteries, 2 spare camera batteries, a WD My Passport Wireless Pro hard drive (for backing up…there was no way I could take my laptop and stay under weight) and various other smaller bits and pieces.
Everything made it both ways safely.
Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about the Moon Lake shoot. This job was also very dependent on the weather and involved both video and stills from the drone on their Woolnorth property in Tassie’s far North-West.
The weather when I left home on the designated morning, was perfect. This was not the case when we got to the farm. The wind (which blows hard and often down there) was virtually non-existent (perfect) but the fog and misty rain that kept scudding through made flights of any duration practically impossible. The best was made of any opportunity…but it was less than ideal.
After deciding to call it a day (as we were heading out) there was the largest break in the weather we had had all morning. It was decided to put the drone up again…bad idea.
In my desire to make the most of this window of opportunity…I got lazy. I failed to do a proper reconnaissance of the area and a misjudgment of about 2 metres resulted in me lodging the drone in a huge cypress tree. There was no coming back from this one. About 20 metres up…jammed firmly in the hedge-like crown of a section of tree that has no branches for about the first 10. She is still there, has been rained on regularly, and is highly likely to spend the rest of her days there (normal methods of retrieval have been discounted for either safety or cost reasons…it’s pretty remote).
The drone can be replaced (expensive mistake on my part) but the stills and footage are lost...there will have to be a re-shoot and the opportunity for suitable weather and availability of the client, is fast slipping away.
So, there you have it…my week of contrasts.
We never stop learning.
Until next week…