Never Say Die
by Eric J. Franke
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| For a behind the scenes video of this shot be sure to scroll all the way to the bottom of this page. |
Lava. Sand. Lava. Sand. Lava. Man, this camera gear is
really getting heavy. Today is the day, though.
I’m finally going to shoot it. I’ve
hiked past this photo dozens of times. Dozens of times,
planning how I want to shoot it. This is common for photographers
--- to visualize photos, to plan the shot. This particular shot, the one
I’m trying to finally bring to pixels is of a curiously shaped rock on the west
coast of the island of Hawai'i. It’s about a 40-minute
drive from Maka headquarters, and about a 30-minute hike across an ever changing variety of landscape.
We are almost there now, and my eyes can make out the back of the curious rock
formation, the one I have given the name Skull
Rock.
I look back at Smith, my
young and talented assistant, laboring with the rest of the gear. She is as
pleasant as she is resilient. If she has ever regretted agreeing to help me
capture a photo, you could never tell. I have
put her under crashing waves. I’ve placed her in old cars with questionable brake systems. Deep into pitch-black lava caves. She
has followed me over miles of raw earth. She’s even had the ocean scrape her
across sharp a’a lava, all for sake of my imagination. Always with a smile and
the intention to press on to finish the job. In a few months she will start her
first semester of a photography degree in Canada. She will do well, assuming
she survives whatever repercussions come from trailing a photog whose sanity in
the field has been questioned more than once. But hey, gotta get the shot, right?
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| Not an encouraging assessment upon arrival. |
Miles from any man-made
structure; we are finally here. This small stretch of sand is as fantastical as
ever, aside from the crummy light, of course.
And this is always the plight. The conditions will do as they will. So many
times when you are not ready to properly execute a photo, you will be bathed in glorious light. Light that softly dances
around your subject, kissing it with golden beams, caressing its edges,
bringing a symphonic excitement to your subject. Right now: dull gray. I set up
for the shot anyway.
In order to get the shot
that I want we will need to place two strobe flashes into the two spaces on the
rocks that resemble eye sockets. And when I write that “we” need to place the
two flashes, what you should really read is that
Smith will place said flashes. Swimming out to
and then climbing up a big chunk of razor sharp lava rock while ocean swells
pound against it is an acquired skill. Only a Pacific pro, someone who has spent years
growing up in and around the ocean and lava should attempt such a perilous
task. Someone brave and cool under pressure. Someone exactly like Smith.
With the two flashes in a waterproof Ewa Marine bag to
protect them on the swim out, Smith makes the short trek from shore to Skull Rock, places them, and makes it back to
shore. We need maximum light from the flashes,
which means no protective covering while they are in the “eyes.” The bag
is only for transport. We do a test frame or two. All is ready. Then:
sprinkles. Then harder rain. I face a tough decision: call it quits and hike
back empty handed, or wait it out and hope the gear doesn’t fry in the rain,
with the chance that the clouds might break, and
a worthwhile photo might be had.
“Just a quick shower. It’ll pass soon,” says Smith with her
ever certain optimism. She goes back out to the rock to get the strobes out of
the weather.
Smith packs up the gear as best she can to keep it dry. She
then stands next to a mysterious pair of loafers belonging to neither of us,
while I silently weigh the situation. Lately I’ve been re-visiting some old
Spielberg films, and last night was one of my favorites: The Goonies. Many
films instilled a strong sense of awe and adventure-thirst in me when I was a
kid, not the least of which was this one, where
a group of friends embark on a quest for the gold that will save their families
and friendships. So I had to ask myself, “What would a Goonie do if he were
standing in my size nines? A Goonie would press on. A Goonie wouldn’t give up
searching for the gold. Goonies never say die!
A small patch of clear sky starts to open up and the rain
subsides. It is still pretty gloomy and void of color, but if the sun hits that
area where there’s a cloud break we could be in
for a few minutes of dramatic sky, and perhaps a decent photo after all.
We scramble to get the gear pieced back together. The
daylight is quickly fleeting, and it’s all going to be about timing now. Smith
sets up the tripod and delivers the flashes to the rock once more, and I put my go-to wide lens on
my Nikon D800. I want to show a bit of motion with the water so I’m
going to need to stack some filters on my lens. A B&W Circular Polorizer pretty much stays on this lens. Onto that I screw a B&W 2 stop Neutral Density filter*. This starts to give me a bit longer exposure.
Still a very dull scene though.
Time ticks. We are waiting for the ambient light level to
reach a dark enough point to make the amount of light from the flashes have an
impact on the scene, all the while hoping that that moment will coincide with a
peek from the sun through the clouds.
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| Getting close but not quite the one. |
After a bit, the light starts to get a little more
interesting. Color creeps onto some of the clouds. This is good. I take a test
exposure. Getting there. To help the scene a little bit I decide to try to
bring more color out by warming up my White Balance setting a little. I start
with auto or daylight white balance most of the time, but in some cases, this
being one of them, I find that cranking it up or down manually can introduce
some great results. I eventually crank the WB from 5050K, close to daylight,
all the way up to a ludicrous 12166K, introducing some wonderful golden tones
to the scene that would not be pleasant for many images, but works quite well
for the scene in front of me. I take another exposure.
“This is the moment,” says Smith. She’s right. Light fades
quickly at this time of day, and with each exposure I shoot taking thirty
seconds, I have to get it right in this next frame or we walk away empty
handed. At this point I have stacked three more pieces of glass in front of my
lens, all Gradual ND filters to bring the brightness of the sky more even
with the brightness of the foreground. I look at my previous image on the LCD
display, close but not a winner. I pull two of the grad filters off and leave
just the one for the sky. I have to adjust my aperture to compensate for the
extra light now coming into the lens. There’s no time to do another test exposure,
so I leave my shutter at :30 and open my aperture a few clicks to f/13, hoping
for the best. Thirty seconds of held breath. The sun pokes through and the
scene looks great. Up to this point I hadn’t
been getting quite the amount of light from the flashes that I was hoping for.
I fire the test button on the wireless triggers many times during the thirty-second-crawl,
hoping that as the frame is being recorded each burst of light will compile in
the final exposure of the image. I look at Smith,
and we exchange hopeful half smiles. After a bit of silence I start to say, “I
hope this wor…” and before I can finish we hear the crash of the shutter
slamming back down. The LCD lights up and it becomes immediately clear: we got
it.
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| The final image with warmer tones and bright enough strobe light. |
The sun ducks under the horizon as we scramble to pack up
the gear in hopes of making it back to the car before the darkness of night
completely falls. As we put the last piece of gear in the bag my mind is going
over the events that just took place. What worked, what didn’t work, what to
remember in the future. Smith notices my preoccupation.
“You ready?” she asks. “Everything all
right?”
“Never say die!” I blurt out before I have time to think.
“Huh? OK, I won’t.”
“Never mind,” I say. “Let’s get back.”
Smith shrugs her shoulders, used
to this kind of thing from me. With the weight of the gear on our backs once
more we start the last of our journey. Sand. Lava. Sand. Lava…
*Editors note: in the video I mistakenly state that I used a 4-stop circular ND filter, not the 2-stop that I mention here, which is correct. I'm not sure where I got the 4-stop idea from, since I don't think B&W makes one. The 2-stopper is great, though. I use it all the time.
