While I do believe that global warming is happening, lately it’s been hard to. I live on a small island just outside of San Diego where most of the year we wear flip flops and shorts. Not this year. We just had one of our coldest summers ever. Followed by one of our coldest Novembers ever. December is slightly warmer than November but we’ve had this epic fog every morning for the past few days. Today I took the dog down to the harbor to take a few pictures so when global warming kicks in here in Coronado I’ll be able to look back at these pictures and say, “Remember way back in ’10 when it was really cold?”
All posts by Dana Neibert
Being in the right place at the right time
A while back on the way to a shoot, I noticed the sun coming up and I also noticed that about every 20 seconds I was passing (and missing) one epic scene after another. When I saw this scene, I had to pull over, back up 500 feet, get out of the car, put on a jacket, rearrange several camera cases in the trunk, build a camera and then finally shoot. I figure if I’m lucky enough to stumble across a great scene like this, I might as well take the three minutes to shoot it. So many times I’ve just blown it off and then later regretted it.
CB Richard Ellis
A couple months ago we shot some images for Grey New York for their client CB Richard Ellis. I’ve actually seen these ads in just about every airport I’ve been in in the last month which leads me to believe they must be targeting business travelers (or commercial photographers). Despite getting up at 4AM every day so I could catch the right light for each location shot, we actually had a lot of fun on this shoot. There was no talent, hair and make up, wardrobe, car prep, traffic control and all that other craziness that usually makes a shoot day go by so fast that 10 hours feels like it was compressed into about 8.3 seconds. Instead, while waiting for the light to move around each shot (except the door knob and keypad which we shot in studio), we had fairly mellow shoot days which gave us time to eat like humans, catch up on each others latest adventures and of course check/update our Facebook and Twitter accounts. Also, we unanimously agreed that we probably made the most expensive image of a door knob ever.
Storm
A few weeks ago we actually had some rain and storm like weather here in California. I’m a sucker for landscapes and clouds so shooting a storm as it comes onshore is a no brainer for me. As soon as I released the shutter on this shot, the rain came down in buckets.
New York City in 19 hours
On Friday I went to the Big Apple for a pre-prepro meeting for a huge job we’re about to shoot that will take us nearly three months to produce. We won’t actually shoot the job until next year but we felt a pre-prepro meeting with the agency was a good idea since we have 142 shots, nearly enough talent to fill an NBA sports arena and some pretty cool locations around the globe.
I flew into JFK Thursday evening around 9PM and took the E train into Manhattan. I love the NY subway system as it seems to be lit perfectly and full of “scenes” to shoot. All you need to do is show up with a camera. By the time I checked into my hotel and hit the sack it was 2AM. I set my alarm for 6AM so I could shoot more before my meeting because I knew after my meeting I would have to high tail it back to JFK so I could catch my flight home.
