I'm back from a over four-week travel through Morocco. This was an awesome experience. Lots of things happend. We had not the best luck with the waves but nevertheless got some great shots. Now loads of work is waiting for me. I'll put pictures on Flickr asap and start working on the movie postproduction soon. I'll keep you guys posted... This movie is going to be SICK!!!
Later!
Check out my first GoPro shots (video screengrabs) ever. This test was done in the very south (Westsahara). We surfed a spot inbetween two military bases. The locals told us later that nobody ever surfed here before...
I stubbled upon this via a facebook-post by my friend "Tommy Naish" who's surfing Portugal for months now! Yeah man! Leaving for Morocco todaaaayyy!!! :)
Oh and BIG thanks to my friend Conrad who posted my movie on his blog. Thanks man! That makes me proud! :)
Alright I just uploaded my little Panama flick "Passion driven". Yeah, it took me some time but it's online now. Here are some words about it:
I've learned a bunch of things doing this little project on my own. A real learning by doing experience :) This movie is full of compromises. You can also see it as my first camera test with a Panasonic GH-1 because I got the camera just a few days before leaving for Central America in July 09. I'd say 85% of the movie was filmed handheld without any kind of stabilisation-rig or even a LCD-viewfinder. I had a tripod at the beginning but it didn't make it to the end of the trip... So I can tell you that it was (and still is) pretty hard keeping things steady (and in focus) with those hybrid DSLRs without any stabilisation-support. But it was also fun as hell. Some (shaky) footage was supplied by my buddy Hari straight out of his little Pansonic TZ7. We had a cheesy waterhousing for the TZ7 with us but couldn't really use it because Hari dropped his camera on his third day on the trip. So the LCD was dead and he could never see what he was actually shooting. With that said the next drawback was that somebody stole my iPod where I stored the external & better recorded audio of the interviews. I think this sucks the most. So I had to go with the shitty sound by the little in-camera mic. Summarized that makes no in-water footage, lots of shaky footage and shitty sound. Not the best circumstances for making a surf-related flick. Whatever... as I said above I learned a lot :) The same applies to postproduction. For the first time I did a 32bpc color-correction (linear color workflow) including the right color-management in After Effects. An arduous task for my four-year-old macbook pro. But for some reason I still have the Gamma issue (colors and picture looks flat) when exporting for the web, also with the x264 open source codec. This is a common problem since over two years on a Mac exporting h264 Quicktime videos. Let's hope Apple will fix this in future. So all I could do was trying to match the original colors by adjusting it later in the Quicktime player.
All things considered I'm still happy with the result. It makes me wanna go on a trip again... so it's totally cool that we are leaving for Morocco in two days ;) But this time more experienced, even more motivated, with more cameras and generally better equipped. Can't wait for that!!!
"I am a firm believer and that life is to be reached out and taken by the throat, shaken, and lived as intensely as you possibly can." - Russell Slough
Music in order of appearance: "Feedback In The Field" Plants And Animals
"We Are The People" Empire Of The Sun
"Spendin' Days" Japanese Motors
"Gravity" Lusine
"The Boys Are Back In Town" Thin Lizzy
"Bright Neon Payphone" Cut Copy
UPDATE April 2010: When I was in Morocco this March a sad message reached me. Russell died. But I sent him and his son Jay the video as promised a few days before. Later Michelle, Russells taughter send me following message: “My dad just passed the way this morning. Just to let you know he was VERY VERY HAPPY these days with the interview you did. My brother took the laptop to the hospital this last week and showed him the video. I cannot explained to you how excited he was. My brother is planning a memorial at the beach (We are throwing his ashes at El Palmar as he wanted). Thanks for everything.” Michelle Slough
My Dad is awesome! My mom is awesome too, but she dropped my FX35 in Rome haha... So I already thought RIP FX35. Then my Dad bought a new display and fixed the cam by himself. I didn't know that until he was giving it back to me... yeah! I took it with me on the mountain lately. See all the pics on my flickr.
The best thing is that I have a Point&Shoot for our Morocco travels now!
Hi folks! In two weeks I'm leaving for Morocco. Hari & me are gonna travel West Africa with cameras and surfboards for over a month. Exciting!!! (More info about it coming soon.) We are already in Saalbach doing some camera tests and working on getting some nice mountain shots. All good here.
A few days ago I entered a photocompetition and almost made it onto the cover of the new enjoyyourcamera.com catalog with my shot "Interamericana". They told me it was veeery close... Check out their blog-entry here.
Besides that I'm also almost done with my little Panama movie. This should be online soon. Finally... it's really time :)
The sun rises as we fly over some of the most spectacular mountain peaks in the Sunnmøre region in western Norway.
Helicopter: AS350B3 NORD Helikopter, www.nordhelikopter.no Pilot: Bjorn Pilskog Camera system: Cineflex V14 HD Arial Photographer: Leif Johan Holand, leif@fuglefjellet.no, www.Fuglefjellet.no Music: "Call to Beroea" by the composer Luke Richards
Lots of stuff happened lately so there was not really time to update this blog. I'm hanging in Saalbach/Hinterglemm right now (again). Work and shred at its best! :) We finally did it. Our Creative Collective aka. Bubbles & Bones is online now!!! Check out our brandnew website: www.bubblesbones.com and let me know what you think! We are five motivated individuals who are sick of doing unsatisfied jobs and decided to do our own thing. Following our passion and dreams! We also set up a blog blog.bubblesbones.com. Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed. A few days ago we went to ISPO in Munich and had a great time. Met lots of nice people and made some new friends. We also got some really interesting connections... (more on this soon). In addition to that I booked a flight to Morocco and gonna stay there for more than a month in March! Can't wait for that! I already know that this trip is going to be awesome!!! Surf and work - a dream! :) I'll keep you guys posted!!!
_I love to create things. _Love the ocean, mountains & nature. _Passionate about traveling & surfing. _Addicted to all types of cameras & lenses. _Think green! _Life is good! _Peace.