A Little Work And Then A Little Play

 Hello Folks,

I am back in Chile after a four months hiatus in California where I spent most of the time working and then had some time left over to go traveling. These are just a few of the images that I captured with my digital camera. Enjoy!

 These two images, that I took with my cel phone, were taken in Chico, California in June right after a downpour. 

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The sun has not come up and the sky is cobalt blue in the Redwood forests of Cazadero, California where we were shooting the film, "The Cow".

These next photos above were also taken with my cel phone. I managed to land a 'gig' on a feature film called, "The Cow". We shot up in Cazadero, California and I worked as a swing grip/electrician. This was the first feature film I had worked on since 1999 and was a blast to get to use the modern lighting equipment and get caught up on the tech. I cannot show any images of the cast or crew(owing to contract stipulations) 
until the film gets sold and comes out so, I will post a few of the equipment I was working with. It is all LED lights now that you can dial from 1 foot candle to 10,000 in a second. You can change the colors, intensity and they are very light weight although a bit fragile. We ran only 50 amps of juice(power) while in the old days we would have large gauge cables running up to 600 plus amps to power the large heavy and hot HMI(daylight 7200k+) or Tungsten(2800K) balanced lights. Although, somewhat fragile compared to the old cast metal Mole Richardson and Arri's,  the lights and their ballasts weigh ounces compared to hundreds of pounds and this is a marked improvement for the crew. The grip equipment has not changed much and humping around hundreds of pounds of sandbags, lighting stands and other heavy equipment was pretty much the same as some 21 years ago. 

The wee hours in the long 12 hour day right before the wrap at 7am.

Getting the grip-electric truck ready to load to wrap out of this location.

Yours truly back in his element. COVID protocols were kept for the entire day where we wore masks and were constantly checked for signs of the virus.

This is what a modern film location looks like as we were shooting 'inside' the house and matched both daylight and night time lighting schemes. 

Needless to say, I was in pig heaven working with all these new type of lights. At least they were new to me. 

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I captured this image in downtown Vacaville on one of my bicycle rides seeking out the perfect chile relleno.

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On my day off from the film, I took the short drive to the coast to capture some images of the ocean in all it's grandeur. 

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After finishing up working I decided to take a quick trip to the great SouthWest and retrace and old bike trip that I made in 1989 after a botched knee operation. On that trip, I went from the Grand Canyon's south rim all the way to Zion National Park in Utah. I will only show the start of my journey where I stayed a couple night in Las Vegas to get away from the extreme heat as I had drove from Vacaville to outside of Vegas with no air conditioning as I did not want to risk overheating my engine.

It was like 110* degree out when an awesome rain storm came in from the north west and made for some wonderful imagery.

 

 

Beams from heaven.

When the storm had almost finished "God's Eye" came out in spurts to blow me away.

 A laser beam from heaven?

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 After the sun set and the heat began to abate,  I went into the streets to capture some images of the bright neon lights and city scape.