Aerials: Day 5- Back to San Diego
Wrapped up the aerial shoot today! We left Los Angeles mid-morning hoping for the marine layer of clouds to pull back so we could shoot scenes along the beach on the way down to San Diego. Unfortunately, the clouds and fog hung around for most of the trip but we managed a few shots of Huntington pier, Laguna Beach, San Clemente and La Jolla.
Can’t plan the weather!
That’s the tough part of location work- you never can plan the weather! Originally, we were scheduled to shoot San Francisco, but a winter storm prevented us from going much further north than LA before the clouds & rain took over. If you look at the map above, the only section we were able to work was the Southwestern quadrant of the USA. The beauty of shooting stock is the flexibility. While I need to deliver marketable images, the best strategy is to continually adjust production plans to maximize available opportunities.
Trip Stats
The pictures are what count- these stats are just pure fun! Over the last 5 days: 2600 miles, 165mph top speed, from 27 - 87 degrees, 14186 highest altitude, 224Gb of image files and 631 gallons of Jet A fuel. Only 5 states. Oh yeah… 13 power bars.
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Ron,
I want to share with you my flying experince in a very different environment.
I used to photograph the Amazon rainforest from a small Cessna but my pilot is in jail because he was caught by the Brazilian Federal Police with a planeload of cocaine. OK, but your post was about the weather. I always looked the day before and the early morning before the shoot at local weather maps on the internet. Of course on a 3- or 4-day shoot you can only predict the first day. And I have good pictures of a localized rainstorm (I had to get the forest green in Photoshop as on the transparency it was dark gray under the clouds). Good to have an older pilot used to go to garimpos (placer mines). If after 20 or 30 years of flying he is still alive he must be good, he won´t get lost in the forest, and he will be able to land on a muddy inclined airstrip. Your pilot must also have the hability when you make a turn around your subject to raise the tip of the wing in a skid maneuver, so it won´t get in your picture. You have to combine gestures with your pilot to tell him to turn, go down, raise the tip of the wing etc. And in the Amazon there is no place to get fuel so you have to carry it with you, illegally, including one container on one of the back seats.