2011 was incredibly eventful – as you’ll see in the video below.
I just wanted to thank all of the readers of the blog, the blog’s supporters, and everyone I know and have had the chance to meet, share a few laughs, and work with in the past year.
I wish you all a wonderful holiday season and new year celebration! I hope you can spend it with friends, loved ones, and family – not computers! 😉
To that end – I’m going to unplug entirely from my computer for the next dozen days for the first time since I began interacting with the internet. Wish me luck!
A good friend of mine Michael Muller has been working on this series for the Travel Channel on sharks as a photographer and filmmaker. I’ll be making sure to tune in on December 18th on the Travel Channel to watch this episode – here’s an official description of it followed by a quick Q&A with Michael that we did over e-mail – definitely sounds like a super exciting project mixed in with some very fun photography and filmmaking toys!
In this special, Mike seeks eight different species of sharks all converging in Fiji. Mike and his crew are high tech “MacGyver’s”, building big toys to get the perfect shot! They are bringing the Hollywood Photo Studio 70 feet underwater to capture these one-of-a-kind photos. The stakes are high; Mike and his crew risk it all to capture images that will shatter all of our misconceptions about the elusive shark.
SHARK SHOOT:FIJI
Hollywood photographer Michael Muller goes on the adventure of a lifetime – up close and personal with the world’s wildest animals in the world’s wildest places. Through Mike’s unique, irreverent, unprecedented point of view, you’ll see animals, places, and people in an entirely new way. He’s in constant demand as one of the top Hollywood photographers, creating famous portraits of stars like Brad Pitt, Scarlett Johansson and Robert Downey, Jr. But Mike is more interested in a different kind of elusive subject for his camera. In fact, Mike wants us to get to know the real celebrities on this planet – and he’ll do whatever it takes to show us how passionate he is about his cause.
Together with his eclectic group of friends and fellow adventurers, Mike creates all kinds of specialized rigs, shooting platforms and lighting apparatuses to get the job done. These contraptions allow him to get as close as humanly possible to his unpredictable and extremely dangerous subjects – making it possible for Mike to swim with great white sharks, run alongside cheetahs on the attack, plunge into active volcanoes, dive with polar bears hunting seals, fly into the heart of a killer storm, or put himself between a mama grizzly bear and her cubs.
In a nutshell, if we’ve ever been told NOT to do something – that’s exactly how Mike plans to do it. Why? Because Mike has the determination, imagination and mad skills to do what others aren’t willing, or able, or brave enough to do. Mike’s goal is to convince the world that there’s more to these amazing creatures than typically meets the eye – but he needs to get the perfect shots to prove it. Read the rest of this entry »
There are few people in this world that are as special as Tom Lowe. Most of you know him as one of the pre-eminent time-lapse photographers/filmmakers out there who has been redefining the medium for years now on Timescapes. (Tom was named Astronomy Photographer of the Year last year.) Tom has worked with Terrence Malick and many other pre-eminent filmmakers in fact (and given how humble Tom is – he’ll probably be upset I mentioned Terrence’s name.) Tom is also an author, a Gulf War Veteran and generally a Zen master. Tom has lived outside of his pickup truck for more than a year, on top of freezing mountains and in the desert for months at a a time. Granted he’s gotten to witness some of the most beautiful sites that our land offers.
Tom is out to raise the bar even higher now – with his 4K film "Timescapes" that he’s been working on tirelessly for close to two years now. He’s been shooting with Kessler motion control cranes and dollies, lenses from Canon / Leica / RED / Duclos, and Arri Master Primes, with RED’s Epic camera, the Canon 5D MKII and the PL-modified Canon 1D MKIV by Denz as well – to produce some of the most gorgeous footage I’ve ever seen shot on this continent in the last decade.
The level of dedication, passion and just plain hard work (not to mention sleepless nights) that Tom has put into this is unparalleled. He and his team (assistants Dustin Kukuk and Nilo Merino Recalde) have likely seen more sunrises and sunsets over that time than almost anyone else in this country. Their level of dedication to their craft is unparalleled – something that I’ve witnessed many times in person – and most recently during the Timefest get together in Lone Pine thanks to Eric Kessler. Most filmmakers put in endless hours, days, weeks, and years into their films. But we are almost always surrounded by dozens of others who are there to support us (if we’re lucky;) Making a film on your own out in the wild for close to 2 years – with nothing but faith and a dream takes a very special kind of person. A special soul. Like I said: Tom is a Zen master who happens to love Dubstep.
Tom is the truest example of an artist dedicated to his craft – and to sharing with others. While you’ll be hard pressed to get him to lead a workshop because he really doesn’t like to hear himself talk – he’s always there to lend anyone a helping hand, and won’t hesitate for even a millisecond to share one of his favorite shooting spots with you, location, angle to shoot, and time of year. He’s just that kind of guy.
I can’t wait to see this film premiere – and you bet I’ll do my best to have a front row seat. If you’d like to help support Tom you can go ahead to the film’s site and pre-order it. Supporting fellow filmmakers is important – for example, I know that I could easily get a copy of the Blu-ray for free from him – but instead I’ve gone ahead and ordered the limited edition one because I simply want to show my support and keep artists like him busy forever in our community. I think we need people like Tom out there – and I can’t wait to see a lot more people discover who this man is and to follow his example. I already know that many of your will end up following in his footsteps…
For those of you that would like to see more – here is a previous trailer:
