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Improvisation

Camera mounted on a pallet jack with plastic wrapSometimes it just comes down to whether or not you have a roll of duct tape handy. And when you don’t have that, then a bit of plastic wrap (“cling film” for my British legion of fan) will do.

This was my jury-rig for a profile shot of the safety officer of the REI distribution warehouse. Since my subject was the safety guy, my suggestion that he run the motorized pallet jack with me standing on it was categorically refused. However, with a bit of ingenuity we cobbled together something that passed muster.

The flash off the left was for filling in the shadows on his face and the camera was set on manual with a slow shutter speed and was set off by an intervalometer (fancypants timer) every couple of seconds. The whole thing was wrapped up and set firing and he drove around until we had a decent image.

Could this have been done more elegantly? Absolutely. We could have come up with exactly the right mounting equipment, set several strobes up, set the camera off by a radio trigger and transmitted the images wirelessly to an art director. But this jury rig got us a good (not perfect) shot in fifteen minutes, leaving more time to go on to the rest of our day’s scheduled events.

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