Dave White invites you behind the scenes on a board test photoshoot… More at www.davewhite.me

Making the Effort

My cameras don’t always make it out of their box, and while sometimes it’s because there’s nothing happening, on this occasion it was a case of guilt as I’m in the air once again (not that Sally noticed my sacrifice as I was stuck on the computer all week). So I thought I’d pop up a few pictures from the last months to show that, in between the travel and trips we try to put in a little effort.

Some of the pictures have made it into the pages of Boards magazine, but with the help of the team more often than not there are too many pictures to use. Still, at least it gives our design team room to work their magic. Now I’ll admit that all I have to do is press the shutter release, but I also feel for the team when I see another option for a pic just as they think the day is done.

The first six pictures are a perfect example of the “Hey, what about over there” photographic wanderlust that afflicts many snappers when they’re on a mission. Okay, five different locations that spanned 14 hours just for the one pic may seem a little over the top, but the wind failed to show up for work so what else were we supposed to do? (Good job they can’t edit my blog as we added a host of other stuff in between.) The second and fifth pictures were really the first pix we took, but then it all seemed too easy – after all we were about to unleash the Clones into our pages so our shoot evolved into this:

All done, we hiked back up the floors of the hotel to the pool bar for a drink. Did I say all done?

“Hang on guys, can we just try them over there?”

Oh well, that didn’t really work, but hey, we tried.

“Sorry guys, but I think we could do something at that other pool, you know, the main one…”

Now to be fair, no complaints came my way until I said “Beam in the Clones”.

“Do you know how ****** hot it is?!”

If you think standing around is easy, just imagine how long they had to stand in the greenhouse style lifts while we got all the boards and Clones in place.

“Are we done now?”

“Hmmm… I don’t like to ask, guys, but you know that restaurant four floors down?”

All we had to do was carry a board each and walk down there. How difficult could that be? Except that the only way to get the boards there was lower them down on a roof rack strap from the pool in the first pic, wait until it got dark, and make sure we didn’t piss anyone off in the restaurant. But check out  this pic and I think we got it.

Well, the next pic was a lot later. With no one around by now we trudged all the way back up to the main pool, and we had a little time to play. Obviously there were no Clones for this one (they had to go back to the Clone Farm), so I’m left with a couple of mobile flash stands for a shot that won’t even be used, which I kind of knew when we took it (sorry boys).

I’ll own up to one other pic from that night, and for me personally it’s my best of the year – possibly ever – but I’m saving it for the mag first. We haven’t had the opportunity to use it, but with winter approaching I’m sure we will.

Someone pulled me up on the use of Photoshop after a shot of the RRD TwinTip appeared in a mini test in the mag. Sure I touched it up a little, but this wasn’t about what I put in but what I took out. Fishing line is a great thing – particularly when you add a couple of masts and lads into the mix. We suspended the board over the water, but in the gentle breeze the board kept swinging around. Patience paid off eventually and we got the perfect shot, but it was a little too perfect as I could see on the screen it just didn’t look real, so we dipped the board in the water to make the ripples. Unfortunately we never did get that perfect flat board angle again, but it was close enough.

No need to tell you how the JP shot was done then, but if you’re still a doubting Thomas just take a look at the rail. I’d never add in water droplets. Plus, once I was home I realised we should have shot it the other way around to read it. As for the rest I won’t bore you, but let’s just say we wanted to say thank you to Neilson for looking after us in that next bunch, and a personal thanks to the Clones as I really did put them through it.

“Keep still… It’ll be perfect if you wait another five minutes…”