There were so many things that could go wrong.
This was the most complicated shoot I'd ever attempted. Normally all I have to worry about is the weather and my subject, but this weekend I had the weather (which wasn't looking great) my model (who was looking great as red riding hood) Ella the almighty Alsatian, and my ghetto dry ice system for creating fog (7kg of dry ice, a few pots, and about 7 litres of hot water)
All week my head was full of questions. Would the weather hold? How long will the dry ice last outside? Will Ella freak out with the dry ice, and will she actually stay where I want her?
Saturday morning came round, and I woke to sun streaming in the window, that had me in good spirits, one less thing to worry about. However by the time I'd got all my gear together and made the trip out to Havelock the rain had started and I was so close to calling it all off. Quick calls were made and everyone agreed we'd give it a shot. (as it turned out that was the last bit of rain we encountered)
We all met, and travelled up to the redwoods car park, from there a wee hike down the trail into the redwoods. I think from the time we met up till the time we wrapped up a very very fast 3 hours passed by. Anne was amazing, Ella was outstanding, and both Karen (Ella's owner) and Zoe (Anne's friend) put in great shifts as dog wrangler and human lightstands.
The dry ice was very cool (literally), but really didn't last long enough. I'm pretty sure I had enough dry ice, but I think I lacked the amount of hot water we really needed in this case, with Karen rushing off to get us some more half way through the shoot.
Just how cold is dry ice?
-78°C which is enough to entirely freeze a pot of hot water if you leave it too long.
All in all there were so many things that could have gone wrong, but in the end very little did, everyone seemed to have fun and I think we came out with the very very cool pictures.
So that's enough rambling, I hope you enjoy these pictures as much as we did making them.
As always, click on the pictures to view full screen, and if you enjoy them, please feel free to hit like and share. Thanks for taking the time to check out my work.
