Announcing my debut film, "Southwest Light"

[Tom Lowe]

Prepping gear right in the heart of the Yosemite Valley today.

 

[Andrew Walker]

Looking forward to meeting you out there. Looks like this weekend is going to be great shooting weather.

 

[Tom Lowe]

Photographer Tony Rowell snapped this photo of myself and my assistant Chris walking back from an awesome day of filming bears on MX at Yosemite! It was my first time ever shooting wildlife. What a rush. Kennan, you better watch out out! hahaha.

Bear:

 

[Jon B.]

Awesome Tom,

What lens are you shooting the bear with in that picture?

 

[Tom Lowe]

That's a Duclos 80-200 Nikon conversion. I also have a 2x PL extender on it.

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

Shooting bear(s) in varispeed mode: Very interesting!!!

Looking forward to see the footage!

 

[Roberto Lequeux]

Tom, looks like you keep digging yourself deeper and deeper... love it!

Good luck with the critters, and be safe!

 

[Kennan Ward]

Photographer Tony Rowell snapped this photo of myself and my assistant Chris walking back from an awesome day of filming bears on MX at Yosemite! It was my first time ever shooting wildlife. What a rush. Kennan, you better watch out out! hahaha.

Bear:

Tom,

I am in AWE!!!! I am bummed we missed you in Mojave! Karen and I are suposed to be in Yosemite maybe we could connect!

From the Mojave Desert project!

http://www.kennanward.com/kwp/SkylineBigHornSheep/SkylineBigHornSheep.mov


Also, I have to admit this clip is unusual and worth a whole bunch of belly laughter! For those of you with week stomachs, BE WARNED, this is real wild nature and may be too much for the week of stomach or while eating a bowl of cherries!

Enjoy!

http://www.kennanward.com/kwp/Phainopepla/Phainopepla.mov

We are off on a Sierra Nevada assignment, catch us if you can!


K&K

 

[Tom Lowe]

Hey Kennan. It was great chatting with you today, as always. Hopefully we will catch you later this week in the park!

 

[Tom Lowe]

This is probably only interesting to a very narrow number of people, but that above still shot of me and Chris was shot on Galen Rowell's old battle-scarred Nikon three hundy, complete with a huge scratch he put on the front element in Africa:

 

[Kennan Ward]

Hey Kennan. It was great chatting with you today, as always. Hopefully we will catch you later this week in the park!

Tom,

Get the high water falls, At 150% snow pack you should do Grrrreat!

I have been cleared for take-off, See you soon!


Couple favorite clips for you!

http://www.kennanward.com/kwp/RedRockClouds/RedRockClouds.mov

http://www.kennanward.com/kwp/Gamboa360/Gamboa360.mov

http://www.kennanward.com/kwp/C006_C003_0109JF_BacklightBees/C006_C003_0109JF_BacklightBees.mov

http://www.kennanward.com/kwp/A011_...WM/A011_C122BlackCheehedHummingbirdNestWM.mov


Kennan

 

[Tom Lowe]

Here is a little BTS video filming waterfalls on MX at 50fps: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fZ1w25DSFQ

Kennan, we are heading for the east side early tomorrow, probably to the Bishop area. I am trying to get myself into place for dark skies, which essentially begin Monday! I heard a rumor today that the Tioga Pass may open tomorrow.

 

[ericyoung]

You guys are having fun aren't you!? :biggrin:

 

[Tom Lowe]

Eric, oh yes!

Here is a shot of me working on a camBLOCK timelapse move last night. It was so warm out, you can see that I was wearing flip-flops all night!

Photo by Chris Mierzwinski

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Wow, cool shot! What sort of shutter speed / ISO / f-stop was the photo taken at that didn't require a camera to track with the stars?

Is your slider rig actually moving the camera by motor slowly? If so, how are you powering it and how did you build it? Or are you just manually moving the camera a little after each exposure?

 

[Ketch Rossi]

Yeah definitely great shot Tom, looks as if it was a clip off a movie!

 

[Tom Lowe]

Wow, cool shot! What sort of shutter speed / ISO / f-stop was the photo taken at that didn't require a camera to track with the stars?

Is your slider rig actually moving the camera by motor slowly? If so, how are you powering it and how did you build it? Or are you just manually moving the camera a little after each exposure?

Well for that Manzanar shot, my 5D2 was at ISO 3200, f/3.2 with a 31-second exposure. At around 2:30AM, a 36% full moon came up and struck the white-colored monument at Manzanar, but the camera was able to hold the exposure perfectly. You do not need to track stars. The slight motion blur at 20 seconds actually makes the video look smoother, IMO.

This dolly system is "shoot-move-shoot", meaning that it takes a photo, then the dolly moves while the shutter is closed, "settles" for about 2 seconds, and then another shot is fired off while the camera is still, and so forth. Some of my other dollies are "continuous motion." Both work well.

Here is a location-scouting video from yesterday in Lone Pine, CA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAoAQKxSk7A

And here is the result of what we found during the scout: http://www.twitvid.com/AUHQN

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

Tom,

what lens did you use for that Manzanar night shot?

 

[Tom Lowe]

For the behind-the-scenes shot, Chris used the Canon 24mm II. For the main dolly move I used the EF 16-35mm II at 16mm.

BTW, here is one of the still frames from yesterday's cloud shoot in Lone Pine:

 

[David Mullen ASC]

That's funny... I was up in Ridgecrest, CA near China Lake visiting my parents, it's south of Lone Pine. Snapped these shots of the sunset yesterday, more or less the same clouds as you shot:

That reminds me of the sunset shot at the end of "Astronaut Farmer" -- it was a great sunset and after I got back to the hotel in Santa Fe, I found out that John Toll shot the same sunset for "Seraphim Falls".