Novak Djokovic is currently ranked alongside the top tennis pros in the world. Only a crazy person would put his life and talent in jeopardy…but that is exactly what Head Tennis Racquets have done for their Untek IG Speed MP racquet commercial. The full commercial is really awesome with mysterious briefcases, seductive women, vintage prop planes, and music straight out of a Tarantino film. As far as I can tell there are no special effects here just lots of conjones by Novak and his tennis trainer.
This month NASA’s space shuttle program turned 30. To commemorate the occasion they decided to take a single image that included every single employee standing together in the shape of a shuttle.
Chase Jarvis is most well known for his commercial images and a history of sharing his inspiration freely on the internet. If you’ve followed his work at all then you know he frequently heads down to New Zealand to gain a head start on marketing campaigns for the northern hemisphere since the seasons are opposite. In this video Chase is shooting landscape shots of New Zealand with the Hasselblad H3D (now the H4D) for a personal project of his. The footage is amazing and I’m sure the photographs will be spectacular too once he gets done with this project. Do I smell another coffee table book brewing from the Jarvis camp?
We have all seen some cool RC chopper videos with dangling DSLRs but AerialPan just took things up a notch. These guys strapped the new Panasonic AF100 to their heli and shot slomo in 1080p. I’ve always found that these small machines have a hard time keeping the camera steady enough for smooth shots but this looks pretty perfect to me.
Bruce Dale is a veteran commercial and advertising photographer who has also taken some amazing nature and photo journalistic images over the years too. He’s worked for National Geographic as well as the White House and companies like Nikon, Southwest Airlines, Caterpillar, and Acura. Finding success in so many fields of photography is not an easy task and that’s why I love this career recap video that shows over 30 years of BAD photos. It moves pretty quick, but Bruce does take some time to explain a few of his most memorable images. I always enjoy watching videos from true professionals like Bruce since they really have ‘been there, done that’ which is not always true of the younger breed of photographers we have today. I hope you enjoy this weekend video and be sure to check out Bruce Dale’s website too.
One of the most famous of all of the national geographic photojournalists is probably Joe McNally. Joe has shot everyone and everything working for Life, Time, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, and countless other highly rated publications. But perhaps his most manic photoshoot of all was a Nat Geo piece for their story The Power of Light. When you step back and think about it, the most obvious photograph for a story on light would be to take a wide angle shot of the guy who changes the light bulb on top of the Empire State Building…yeah most definitely! I never knew there was a video showcasing how this image was created so I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did. Oh and if you haven’t picked up Joe’s very detailed books about lighting, head over to his Amazon Store and pick up The Moment It Clicks or The Hot Shoe Diaries.
Every single time NASA launches a shuttle into space they film it from every possible angle. The purpose is mainly to give engineers documentation for later analysis but also to make sure everything is going as planned during the event itself. Video Producer Matt Melis along with researchers at the Glenn Research Center have put together this lengthy video outlining exactly what happens as a shuttle launches into space. It’s pretty interesting to hear about the lenses and cameras they use on every launch as well as seeing the slow motion footage captured. Enjoy this video because on June 28th, 2011 we may see the final NASA shuttle launch as funding is cut from the space program. Video #2 is posted in the full post.
Have you ever wanted to shoot aerial photos or video but thought that the cost would be too high? Well Tom Guilmette just did something that Patrick and I were considering doing in one of our upcoming Fstoppers originals. I’m glad he did it first though because now I realize our plan wouldn’t work. For some reason I thought a single helium balloon would be enough to lift a GoPro… I would have been about 29 balloons short.
Part of me thinks that Walmart helium is only about 10% helium and 90% air though.
Adam Boozer is an amazingly talented videographer right here in Charleston, SC. His company Jewell and Ginnie has been making a big splash with very cinematic video here in the low country and throughout the southeast. Last night Adam emailed us a BTS video he created on how he sets up his camera for these incredible aerial shots. Besides having the access to a Robinson R44 Helicopter, the actual setup isn’t that complicated: A Canon 5D MKII, a Zucato Follow Focus, a Marshall Monitor, and the piece that stabilizes it all together, the Tyler Mini Gyro. I’ve posted the highlight reel here so click the full post to see the BTS video on how Adam is getting these shots!
Cris Benton is a professor of architecture at UC Berkeley who has always had an interest in photography. His specialty niche is aerial photography but does not shoot from a helicopter or plane. He prefers to attach his DSLR to a Kite…yes a KITE! In this video Cris shows you how he has developed all of his gear and the various prototypes he used in the past. Watching this footage is really quite impressive on so many levels and the photos are unique as well. We’ve all seen small cameras mounted to balloons and kites but nothing has been this complex. After the video head over to Professor Benton’s website to check out other images he has taken from the sky.
Mark Watson is an ‘extreme sports photographer’ and in this video he has teamed up with Red Bull hanglider Jon Durand to produce some amazing photos as well as video. The idea was to mount a D300s camera to his hang glider to shoot both video and still shots while he sails through the Morning Glory cloud. The results are absolutely stunning! I hope Nikon includes the remote video hack described in this video in their next series of cameras.
UPDATE: Mark shares more info about this shoot in the FULL POST!
I hope it is not too soon to feature another video of a camera sent to space with a weather balloon but the footage taken from the Pacific Star II is really amazing! This was all done with two cheap Canon point and shoot cameras off ebay, a weather balloon, and a simple Styrofoam enclosure. It still blows my mind that such a simple setup can produce such beautiful shots.
The only thing this BTS video is missing is the actually images! But it is still really cool so I will give it a pass. They wrote: “Hand launching a custom built Canon 5D Mark II aerial drone from a boat in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico to capture oil spill imagery: Although we are able to hand launch our drones in very confined space, we’ve never done this from the back of a very unstable pitching and rolling boat…in rain and drizzle. Over $10,000 in equipment can be lost in an instant! Between boat movement and gulf winds this was an extreme challenge! What a great show of talent”
If you didn’t know, the GoPro HD is a cheap video camera that shoots stunning HD footage. These guys attach it to a weather balloon and then let it fly (what appears to be) into space and then they use GPS to retrieve it. Is this for real!?!
