June 4th: Day Three

Day 3 saw myself and Caleb reshooting the XT-1 video. This time with a shoot list, a more solid idea and drawings I had made the night before. The footage looks rad. It's on the editing table/cutting room floor or whatever other analogy you'd like to use.

June 5th: Day Four

Zack currently has a buttload of things up on eBay for sale and my Thursday was pretty much filled with shooting said things for sale. So if you're looking at picking up some gear; from light meters to old flashes and lenses I suggest you hurry coz the auction ends Sunday June 15th.

I received praise for my great photos of the gear coz apparently eBay has very low standards for what counts as good photography ;)

June 6th: Day 5

Zack has this friend, Wes Quarles who has been documenting small town rodeos for the past four years. The thing that's kinda crazy about it is, the fact that there are kids who are like 15 or 16 riding on, I dunno, 1000 or 2000 pound bulls. That's terrifying!

So on Friday night we headed to the Shady Dale Rodeo. It was obviously my first time at a rodeo and I was pleasantly surprised when Meg told me it was her first time too. So Zack and I grabbed the two Panasonic GH4's coz he's been wanting to follow Wes around and document him documenting the rodeo :) So we hopped in the car and headed south or somewhere. (Gimme a break, I dunno the place. People sounded southern, so in my mind we headed south) ;)

Miss America! She's like a female Captain America or something ;P

It was a whole different world just 50 miles away, which just goes to show, you don't need to drive or fly 1000's of miles to experience something new or different. It could be right in your "backyard" so to speak.

My favorite shot of the day. Shot it during the prayer.

Wes shoots all this on film. He uses a Leica M3 and a Hasselblad 500C. He also carries a Fuji X100s. His work is so rad, judging by what I've seen on his Instagram feed. Zack shot a pretty sweet portrait of him a little while ago on DEDPXL.

It's nuts seeing teenagers riding bulls and bucking broncos and I have no idea how their bodies hold up to such abuse or if they even do. I can't imagine that you have a very long career doing this.

Nonetheless I had a good time and the folks were really nice. No one hassled 3 random dudes walking around with video and camera gear.

Thanks for reading

June 2nd: Day One

After arriving at Zack's house I got to meet the whole family, offload all my crap, talk a bit and not have a seat compressing my knees for hours on end.

After that we walked to a pub called; "The Brickstore", for some beer and dinner. Had some awesome food and beer and then it was home time and bed time for me.

June 3rd: Day Two

Day Two saw me wake up at 5:30am with one son-of-a-b*tch headache and laying in bed waiting for everyone to wake up so I could get some painkillers. Two Aleve's later to alleviate my pain and I was ready to go. Zack had a 10am shoot with Alton Brown. No idea who that is? Neither did I. You can go check him out here.

We arrived at "The Lab" (Zack's studio) shortly before 9am to get things set up and ready for the shoot. Alton's publicist (Stephanie) arrived shortly before 10am. We all chatted a bit awaiting Alton's arrival, trying to get bits and pieces of info on him. Stephanie warned us that he would bust our chops, but told Zack to go ahead and bust his back, which is great. A lot of the time a client will do or say something and you don't know if you can chirp them back or if they'll storm off somewhere.

Alton is an interesting guy, very to the point and has a, "let's get this done" attitude. His YouTube videos are also pretty entertaining and interesting. Zack was photographing him for Guitar Aficionado, so if music is your thing, keep your eyes open for that in a couple of months. It's quite interesting to me how far ahead of time they shoot these things. Zack got some killer shots in my opinion and there is one specific shot he did with a strip light which he sort of back/side lit and it's great seeing him work and how he interacts with his subject.

An hour later it was done and Alton was off to the next thing. Caleb (Zack's eldest son) and I then got to filming video for the Fuji XT-1 review. Well, he filmed. I kinda stood around. That failed a little bit, coz we shot at the wrong frame-rate and in color instead of monochrome, so the next day we were at it again and it looked even better. Day one was a test run :)

They're currently using the Panasonic GH4's to do the video work and I had a little go with them on Friday night, but more on that later. They are rad little cameras though. They shoot 4K and the overall video quality looks great.

I won't bore you too much more with this. That was about it for the first two days. More coming up soon.

Thanks for reading