Read on for the background on the shoot and more:

The story goes like this,

Last month Kevin Jorgeson, a Santa Rosa CA based climber, did the first ascent of a 50 foot tall boulder problem on the East Face of Grandfather Peabody Boulder in Bishop, CA. He named the route Ambrosia. The ascent is groundbreaking in how it takes the pure difficulty that’s usually associated with climbs close to the ground and applies it to the ropeless no fall zone some 30-40 feet off the deck. Kevin and I had looked at the route together a couple years back and told him I would love to shoot him on it, so when I got the call from him it was a good excuse to race across the desert and get out of the cold and clouds of Salt Lake.

I hadn’t shot much climbing in the 4 months prior to working with Kevin in Bishop (I’ve been shooting other outdoor sports [running mainly] and urban inspired lifestyles) but his psych and the energy from the Big Up Productions film crew had the whole team amped. Besides shooting the historic First with Kevin we banged out several other shots, even a few under the fullest of moons… something I’ve always wanted to do out in the Eastside desert.

The general rule on these shoots (action sport shoots) is that unless you’ve hired the film crew they have the trump card. We do the best to work together so that my stills and and their video look as best they can, but I can crop people out, shoot vertically, and move way faster then they can so I guess its only fair that I make sure they have their shots before I steal an athlete for still only setups. Luckily Kevin is uber pro and had no problem climbing until we all had the shots we needed.

As I mentioned in the opening of this post, I shot this image (and the entire ten day shoot for that matter) with the new Sony A900 (check out the 100% crop above). I’ve been super super psyched with the system for two reasons:

1) The Resolution: Sharp Files that open up at 70mb just can’t be beat.

2) The Glass: The Zeiss glass and other fixed primes available blow away anything else I’ve shot with on a 35mm system.

Although the camera doesn’t claim to be waterproof by any means, I held it in some full on waterfalls during a warm spell in Montana last week just to see what would happen and it kept clicking away. I think this will be my main system (maybe only system) on the upcoming Patagonia and Brazil expeditions.

That’s all I’ve got for now, if you get a chance to see the cover in person, drop aline and let me know what you think. tk

The first major hurdle when you are trying to get optimal image quality out of the D90 is getting the lowest ISO possible out of the ‘Auto Iso’ feature on the camera. The folks at DVX User have figured out a couple ways to trick the camera into the best ISO and keep it locked there.

Consistent quality images

Another issue is that there can be stair stepping or blocky edges on objects if conditions are perfect. There is a quick and easy fix (FCP Plugin) for that that really gets this footage looking top notch.

Stair Stepping Fix (This is a FCP fix)

On another note, the badass climber featured in our ad agency short here AKA Kevin Jorgeson, AKA Balls of Steel, has been ripping it up in England and our friends at NE2C have put together a bitchen interview. Check it out. 

Lastly, if you haven’t read Vincent Laforet’s blog post about the ‘perfect storm’ and you are a visual artist of any sort do yourself a favor and read it.

tk