On the way to Snow Shoe-GETTY UP!!

If you've ever been at Snow Shoe and thought, WHY THE HELL DONT HAVE HAVE CELL SERVICE.  The next thing you think is that adding cell service would be the first thing you think they would have set up.  Well this is why they don't have cell service up there.  I forgot the name of this place but it's basically a NASA type facility that takes photos using a GIANT camera.  When I mean giant, I'm  not joking.  This one you see above is at least 40 times smaller than the one I wasn't able to see / gain access too.  The reason you can't have cell towers around that area is because the radio waves disturb their signal to take photos.



This is a random train station in the middle of nowhere.  We saw a redneck feeding his pet dear just 1 minute away from this train station.  It was very interesting.

GO PRO 2-Review

My Family and I headed up to Snow Shoe, West VA for xmas and I thought that was the perfect time to test out my new Hero Go Pro 2 camera I got from Erin. I've used them before so I was pretty familiar with it's set up.  I also got the suction cup which was my fav of the accessories.  The first and only format I tested, I shot in 1080 30p and I stuck the suction cup on my hood looking into my jeep.  That worked VERY well and it was extremely stable.  I also used the head strap while driving to give a POV type look but I'm still getting used to the lens on it and I didn't have the camera pointing as low as I should've.

For snowboarding, it was great.  I of course used the suction cup on the front of my board.  That was cool but not GREAT.  I then held the camera when following Erin and my step brother Tom.  That came out pretty well.  As I said above, I need to get used to the on head feature because when boarding you could only see what's in front of me, not my board.

Overall, I love this camera and I will use it for paid work for double angles, surfing and other tight shots it's hard to film from.  I need to get a few more accessories then I'll be ready to go, bitches!!

2011 Demo Reel

The Natural Bridge

I had a 20 minute meeting down at VA Tech on Friday and I decided to stop by the NATURAL BRIDGE on the way home.  I always heard about it / saw some photos but I never new it would be so epic in person.  I asked the lady who took $18 from me just to see this thing about coming back for a private night shoot and she said no.  This was before I saw the bridge.  I will be getting permission to film some timelapse shots in 2012, no matter what that desk jockey says.  

The Art of Flight-Mini Review

I've been sitting on reviewing The ART OF FLIGHT snowboard film since it came out..  I wanted to really dissect the snowoarding, music and cinematography / final production.


Let me first say, being an avid snowboarder, film maker and a fan of BRAIN FARM's work since THAT'S IT, THAT's ALL, I couldn't WAIT for this film to drop.  We were teased with the first Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kh29_SERH0Y that dropped in February then with their official website www.artofflightmovie.com.  Once I started following Curt Morgan and TRice on Twitter and facebook, seeing the photos they were posting every week for 6 months, I knew this would be something historic.  Maybe not historic just in the snowboard community but through out the world of film making.  There are big time Hollywood directors who were talking about this film for months.

The opening montage was epic and nuts wrapped into a gnarly package.  From the DEEP BASE that the Dolby Studios provided to the clapper Rice used in his snowboard shed.  The cinematography was the best I've ever seen in any sports related film.  They used MANY cameras such as something simple from a HERO GOPRO $300 helmet cam to the RED EPIC $60,000+ and for mega slow motion the PHANTOM $100,000+.  Each camera has a purpose in every film and they used maybe 8 different types of cameras throughout the movie.

Maybe my favorite part didn't have snowboarding in it.  It shows what they do when stuck in place like Alaska with nothing to do but shoot guns, fish and drink.  It's something I can totally see me and my buddies doing.  My other favorite parts was the opening montage in Alaska with John Jackson and Rice, killing it and when they were all in Jackson Hole.

I did feel like the trip down to South America was kind of pointless.  I think it's a great piece to watch but the snow looked horrible and that Rice and Lando were very limited on where the could ride and what they could do.  I think those 2 parts could have gone into the bonus part of the DVD.  One thing I did notice that I haven't heard anyone else talk about.  In the trailer they hint about a section based in Austria, which I was getting stoked on but I didn't see 1 clip from Austria in the body of the film.  I was kind of disappointed for that.

Instead of rambling on, I'll just get to the chase.  "The ART OF FLIGHT", is INSANE.  It's the best snowboard film to ever be released.  Others have tried to say "THAT'S IT THAT'S ALL" was better, which I totally don't agree with at all.  Like I said above, I think a few sections could have been replaced or taken out.  It doesn't matter if you've snowboarded before or not, this film will make your jaw drops.  If you don't know what a double cork 1080 is, you'll find out soon!!

I give THE ART OF FLIGHT a 4.6 of  5.  WATCH IT ON BLUERAY!!!

3 New Cameras and some lenses-Stop Traffic

November 3rd was supposed to be a BIG day for camera releases.  Canon set the date but RED took it over.  Canon announced the C300 will looks very similar to Panasonic AF100 only the price tag is $20,000.  Maybe people would pay that price if it shot 120fps but from what I see, it's 24 frames at 4k resolution.  NO ONE CARES!!!  I'm my opinion it's worth $10,000 at best.

 

Let's get to the exciting stuff.  Canon announced a concept DSLR camera that will be mostly a cinema.  As you can see, the body looks just like the 1DX that just got announced for a spring time release.  They didn't really talk specs or price but seems very interesting.  I'm hoping it will have at least 90fps at 1080p.  The spec I did see says it will shoot 4k resolution at 24fps which is cool but I don't give 2 shits about 4k as of right now.  ALL I really care about is FRAME RATE, FRAME RATE, FRAME RATE!!!  I really need to see the video and photo specs before I make a decision on a purchase.


Lastly, RED has pumped out the long awaited SCARLET.  The body will be $10,000 and when all pimped out with all the needed accessories, you'll be in the neighborhood of $15,000.  That's a lot of money but the SCARLET is made by RED and is the little sister to the EPIC.  You know it will be GREAT quality and worth the money.  I read lots of big boy film makers blogs and FB posts today and they've already made purchases.  I won't get too much into details on this camera because RED doesn't need to be hyped up more.  They are leading the video war in my opinion and Canon is eager to step up.

A Marathon in Fast Forward

If you've ever watched a marathon, it's nothing to get super excited over. The winner will finish in just over 2 hours but you have thousands of people left to watch cross the finish line. I decided to speed things up with this clip of the Marine Corps Marathon in Virginia and Washington D.C.  It was about 34 degrees when the race started and warmed up to about 46 degrees by the time I was done shooting.  

Filming -7:45am - 1:00pm 
Camera- Panasonic HMC150
Graded- Magic Bullet Looks


WATCH IN FULL SCREEN!!!  


THANKS

Fall Camping / Time-Lapse Scouting!!

This weekend I went to my GO-TO farm out on the Shenandoah to camp, eat, drink and scout possible locations for some 2012 time-lapse shots once I get my new camera.  It was perfect fall weather and we had the fire blazing.  I can't wait to go back next year to shoot some.  I even hopped in the FREEZING water and tubed about 400 yards, my balls are still frozen!!

Canon Finally Announces their new BIG BOY CAMERA!!

Here's the new big boy camera from Canon.  It's main features are
-18mp Full Frame
-Up to 14frames per second
-Video Specs

• MPEG-4 AVC/H.264
• 1920×1080 30p/25p/24p
• 1280×720 60p/50p
• 29 minutes of continuous shooting

-61 point AF System

-Shutter-1/8000 to 1/30, bulb, x-sync at 1250 sec.

AND MUCH MUCH MORE!!!  This camera is brand new and won't be out until March but from looking at the specs i'm overall stoked on this camera but not stoked on the price of $7,000 (body).  If I had to add 1 more feature on the video specs, it would be AT LEAST 1080 60P or higher!!  I'm still waiting to see what Canon does to the 5d mk3 before I see which one will be the lucky winner!!  

http://www.canonrumors.com/2011/10/eos-1d-x-canon-usa-press-release/

LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y., October 18, 2011 – Canon U.S.A., Inc., a leader in digital imaging, is proud to introduce a completely revolutionized EOS-1D series camera, the Canon EOS-1D X Digital SLR camera.* As the new leader in Canon’s arsenal of professional DSLRs, the EOS-1D X will be a high-speed multimedia juggernaut replacing both the EOS-1Ds Mark III and EOS-1D Mark IV models in Canon’s lineup. Enhancing the revolutionary image quality of the EOS-1Ds and speed capabilities of the EOS-1D series, the EOS-1D X DSLR features an 18-megapixel full-frame Canon CMOS sensor, Dual DIGIC 5+ Imaging Processors, 14-bit A/D data conversion and capable of shooting an incredible 12 frames-per-second (fps).  Canon’s EOS DSLR cameras and accessories have a long-standing legacy of providing high-quality results to professionals in a wide range of markets, including sports, nature, cinematography, wedding and commercial studios. The addition of this new model will help take this tradition to a whole new level.

A break from Editing

For the past few days I've been editing my demo reel which will feature all the work I've shot in the past year or so and Saturday AM I hit big snag.  The best thing to do when you hit a snag in editing is to free your mind.  Erin and I went downtown to do some boating / eating.  I will continue editing today and I expect my 2011 demo reel to be complete early November.

Travel Travel and more Travel

I've been traveling a lot lately for work.  I was able to take a break while in Madison, WI and head to Green Bay to watch the first NFL game of the season.  The Packers vs. Saints was a great game to break the season in but I cared more about just checking out Lambeau Field.  The history there is out of this world.  Yes, it's true what they say, there is NOTHING in Green Bay but the Packers and Lambeau Field.  I had pretty decent seats but to tell you the truth, most seats in that stadium are pretty good.  I unfortunately was in a row of Saints fan and they didn't understand why I wouldn't want the saints to win.  It should never have been a question.  I'm up in Lambeau Field, the CENTER of football, why on gods earth would I want some hurting team with ZERO history to win.  If you EVER get a chance to check out Lambeau Field, DO IT.  Also, if you're in the Madison area be sure to check that out as well.  Madison is one of my favorite little cities.  The food, people and architecture are great!

FALL CAMPING

Apparently people don't like to camp when the Fall is approaching.  A few of us head to our GO TO spot on the Shenandoah River.  The weather man clearly said it would be clear skies and 65 degrees, it was clearly 55 degrees and raining.  The sun did come out but the sun was on it's way down when it finally cleared up.  Joey and I just fucked around with cows and snapped some photos.  For some reason no one wanted to go tubing with me so I went alone.  Of course I wore a beanie!!  The air was pretty dry and at night just as the moon was coming up I was able to actually get some Stars in a night shot with my Canon 10d.  I had my ISO at 800 and the shutter was 30 seconds.  As I've been saying for a year now, I can't WAIT for canon to release the 5d Mk III so can attempt to do some still image night time lapse tests.   I'll be able to get a MUCH better quality.  

FEET MEET INCLINE-A Running Story

After watching some of the sports clips from local skateboard filmmaker now owner of the Emmy award winning giant, www.shilo.tv I got pumped up to do a running piece myself.  I had to decide WHO and WHERE.  Out of all of my friends I selected my buddy Jeff.  He really ins't a hardcore runner compared to some I know but he's always down to shoot and he has that green string bean type runners body.  The location was EASY because there's this hill about 2 miles from my house and it's massive.  In the winter the fire department shuts it down when the littlest trace of snow falls.  I wanted the story to explain a runners decisions on how he / they chose their paths.  Kind of like in life, do you want to take the easy road to success or a more challenging road that will pay off.  The shoot went well, i had some white balance and color issues on a few shots and I went back a 2nd time but I would have to wait around for a few hours for a different type of sun.  I didn't have that time.

Is it too early to think about snowboarding?

Now that my golf game seems to be flat lining and I'm starting to see the seasonal snowboard mags being released with 2012 gear reviews it's hard not to get pumped on this season which is still a good 4 months away for us east coasters.  The below video is of my trip to Whistler last year and a majority of the video you'll see some 4 bladed machines flying around.  When I originally posted this video on my blog I didn't get into the details of the trip.

It was 6am on February 16th and I just realized my first heli trip was happening in just 2 hours.  I ate a good breakfast and put my gear on.  I saw all of my other friends still sleeping and all I could think at that moment was how they are missing out on this adventure.  I arrived at the whistler Heli building for training.  I had to make quick friends because these people could possibly save my life today just in case something went wrong.  The first guy I met was actually a doctor.  He was a younger guy and I think he was more of a executive desk doctor type, whatever the hell that means.

We did 2 hours of beacon and heli training but in the middle of the training, in the10 years she's been doing these tours, our instructor said she's never had anyone berried in an avalanche deeper than knee deep.  That was a huge sign of relief for the time being.  For whatever reason our group was the last to take off of maybe 6-8 groups.  I'm not sure if that was us just getting screwed or due to our 11 person crew.  Once we got in the air all of my new friends were extremely excited.  How could you not be, we were about to ski / board down some amazing, untouched glacier bowls.  We were in the air with Blackcomb to our right and we landed on this tiny peak.  My first step from the heli to the snow felt like Neal Armstrong stepping onto the moon.  Everyone strapped in and looking down this 4 mile long glacier bowl was the most epic thing I've ever seen.  The first 50 feet you realize you're no longer on the resort or even the back country of the resort because you're in untouched knee to thy deep snow and the only thing you can hear are everyone's screaming due to how fucking bad ass it actually is.  However you think / imagine how sweet your first Heli trip will be, throw that out of the window because you not no idea.  After one of the most insane runs of my 15 years of snowboarding, all we wanted to do was do more.

We were back in the air and going to a peak 15 minutes from where we were.  The 2nd run was a little different.  After we dropped about 2000 feet and got off the glacier we started seeing trees and really cool hits like mini 10 foot cliffs and quarter pipes for some nice slashing and it was our longest rune of the day.  When we stopped at the bottom of this valley the heli landed and we had food.  I can't speak for everyone else but we've knocked out 2 of our 3 runs by 12:00pm and we stopped and met up with other groups who came down behind us and had maybe a 60-90 minute lunch break.  That was a fucking downer because I could've gone and done our last run and maybe even a 4th, which we end up doing, and been done by 2pm.  But we had this insanely long break filling out our bellies.  After watching what we called "TEAM ASIA" come down our trails they were trying to get really aggressive with some natural features and these guys were falling so bad, i'm talking face plant and upside down vertical falls.  From what I saw, those guys should have stayed at the resort and trained on the greens.

Now with full bellies and it was about 2:00pm  we were arriving at our 3rd and final peak.  This time was a little bit different, we had a staffed photographer / filmer with us.  He was taking photos and filming eveyrthing he could.  I didn't understand why he wasn't with us for our first 2 runs when the conditions were the best i've ever experienced .  We're about to drop into this glacier that was on the north side facing the wind and when wind hits the snow directly a hard layer starts crusting on the top with the fresh pow pow underneath with freaking sucks balls.  The first 1000 feet or so was great though, a little layer on top but still fun then we make it to this change in vertical which didn't bother me, but the fact the sun has set behind the peak in front and now is casting a shadow the size of Manhattan is my main issue.  I couldn't see any detail in the snow and did a nice face plant, BOOM!!  You can see this face plant on the below video thanks to the photographer catching it.  I continued to go down with no issues but my food coma was stetting in.  At the bottom we voted to do another run which of course costs extra.  We flew about 10 minutes to our final peak and again, it was mostly layered up due to heavy winds.  I made the most of it, trying to get down as fast as I could.  The photographer was taking photos on this last run.  I of course was the first to drop in like most of the day.  I basically went straight down and waited for everyone else to get their photos.  At this point of the trip I just wanted to get back.  Again, this glacier / mountain had a drop in vertical with a gnarly shadow the last mile or so.  It was now 3:30pm and that sun was trying to get away from us as fast as possible.  The shadow was looking like night minute by minute.  We saw there was a group below us and they actually had a level 1 avalanche which they triggered.  They were at the very bottom and we were held up in cold shade for about 30-45 minutes.  Once we got the go ahead it was beyond snowboard / skiing conditions.  Our group leader told us to follow her tracks.  That was also pretty hard since my goggles are for sunlight.  This terrain was the steepest of the whole trip, and visibility was now 10 feet and the snow is averaging thy to waist deep.  I was trying not to fall but it was impossible unless you had night vision goggles.  I boarded by a guy in our group who looks exactly like Jack Black but he was from Austria or something.  Anyway, he was berried so bad to the point his skiis were vertical with the front of his skiis facing down, yes, it was gnarly looking.  I couldn't stop because if I stopped to help I would've been pretty freaking berried myself which would've SUCKED.  I continued to go down to our finish point and I saw some other skiers helping him out.  Since we had to change the finish spot due to the avalanche the heli had to land in the middle of this mountain and we needed to dig out a landing pad for it.  The heli landed into the hole we dug out with the blades hovering about 4 feet above a snow drift.  I thought that was insane to see in person and I wish the photographer got a photo of that.

We landed safely and had a nice happy hour with all of the groups who went out that day.  Overall, it was one of the most amazing things I've ever done and I highly recommend it to anyone who's experienced and wants to drop $1000.

THE RIVER WILD

This past weekend a few buddies and I went on a 3 day kayak trip on the northern part of the Potomac river.  The first hour or so we had temperatures of 102 degrees and felt much hotter than that with the humidity factored in.  A small storm system came through around 4pm and it instantly became 15 degrees cooler!!  The first night we camped on this island that was nothing but round rocks, kind of a rocky sleep but we go through it.  Day 2 we floated about 7 miles and halfway we stopped at corner store and got some beer and more ice and cooked some sausages over a open fire, which Will made up.  Night 2 we found this GREAT sandy beach with unlimited firewood and we had a great sunset that I had to take a photo of.  I got in my kayak and went up through some rapids and docked at this one small beach, walked out in the middle of the river, sat down in the 18" deep water and snapped a few pics.  Shortly after, my camera battery died, BITCH!!!  Day 3 was boring and slow and the fish were being lame.

Overall, it was a great trip.  The only negative was the river was flowing -10 miles an hour.  Just over the top slow!!

A Change of Pace-The 2011 US Open

I took a day off from my day job and filming to visit the 2nd day of practice rounds at the 111th 2011 US OPEN.  I rented a Canon 5d mk2 with a 70mm-200mmL.  It was great to walk around and take photos of some of the greats in golf.  Even with Tiger out, I had loads of fun and followed a GREAT group (Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Jeff Overton and Hunter Mahan).  I'm pretty sure those guys were all betting on shots throughout the day.

The camera it self was great and the lens auto focused lightning quick.  It was cool to get away from video for a day and take some photos!!  I did  shoot some video just to check out the great quality and from the 4 times I used the video feature I was impressed with overall quality and depth of field.

I officially can't wait for the canon 5d mk 3 or whatever full framed camera canon comes out with.

Open Skies= Time to film

I kicked off the filming season by taking advantage of a warm and clear day at a very historical military landmark, The Arlington National Cemetery.  This is for my untitled project I started filming last Fall which will include many historical pieces to the VA / DC / MD region.  I hope to have the project wrapped up by Fall 2011.