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In September, I had the honor of shooting an assignment for Red Bull Photography and Nokia. Redbullphotography.com is a website where Red Bull promotes 60 of their top photographers and I am excited to be among those sixty photographers. Each year, as part of a co-branding partnership, Red Bull Photography and Nokia choose a few of their photographers to go out and create new and exciting work for the Red Bull Photography website to promote both the photographers and the stellar Nokia phones.
For this assignment, the art directors at Red Bull Photography and Nokia chose sea kayaking from the list of possible photo shoots I suggested. Sea kayaking is not, as you might have guessed, the “normal” Red Bull sport of choice, but the point of the Red Bull Photography website is not just to further the “Red Bull” image but rather to showcase great new work. Having been up to Canada last year, on a vacation of sorts in Johnstone Straight, I chose to head back to that location with my good friends Tony Hoare and Joe Nodeland. In addition, this year I brought along a good friend and video expert, Bill Stengel, to shoot a behind the scenes video for the Red Bull Photography website. Bill shot the behind the scenes video on a Red Scarlet DRAGON Digital Cinema Camera. Click on the image below to go to the Red Bull Photography website and view this video.
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As you can see in the video, we had a fantastic time in the Queen Charlotte Sound, which is near the northern tip of Vancouver Island. The weather came in half way through our six day trip and forced us to get everything in the first two days but we were blessed with both clear skies and gorgeous foggy conditions that helped us create the signature images for this assignment. Below are a few images that give a sense of place.
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Of course, a big part of this assignment was to shoot with the Nokia Lumia 930 mobile phone. The 930 has a 20 megapixel camera in it and it also incorporates an incredibly easy to use camera app. The phone is also the only mobile phone I know of that can shoot DNG raw images. We were all very impressed with the camera and the phone itself. The screen on the front of the phone is one of the most impressive I have seen on any device. We shot both video and stills with the phone. Perhaps one of the best images from the entire trip is the one below that was shot with the Nokia 930. As my first assignment shooting with a mobile phone, I have to say that the future of photography is going to be vastly different than it is now. This 20 MP phone wasn’t far off, in terms of image quality, from my Nikon D4 and that is a scary thing to think about as a pro photographer.
To see more of the still images shot with the Nokia Lumia 930 to and to see our behind-the-scenes video, also shot with the phone, visit the partners page on Redbullphotography.com.
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As assignments go, this one was quite stressful because of the logistics involved, the tight timeline for the deliverables and also because we had to shoot everything with four different camera systems. In the end, we came away with some stunning images and an amazing behind-the-scenes video, both of which really give the viewer a feel for this astounding area.
I have to give a huge thanks to Tony Hoare and Joe Nodeland for all of their hard work, for the early mornings and late evenings, and for coming out with us on this incredible journey. Also, my thanks to Bill Stengel for documenting this voyage into the unknown and for all of your hard work putting this video piece together. I certainly could not have pulled this assignment off without a stellar crew and these guys were great to work with. Lastly, my thanks to Red Bull Photography and Nokia for this assignment. It is extremely rare that you get an assignment with so much freedom like this one, and working with the Nokia Lumia 930 was a pleasure. As always, working with Red Bull is about as good as it gets. This assignment was no exception.
To see all of the images and video we produced on this assignment, head on over to the Red Bull Photography Website and check out the Seakaypes Project and the Nokia Seakaypes Project. Stay tuned for more about this assignment in a future issue of the Newsletter.
