MATTHEW TURLEY » images

Jet-Lag Office Day

Matthew Turley — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 02:01:42 +0000

Phew! Just got back last night from a commercial shoot in France & Switzerland (as well as spending a couple weeks of personal time in Norway, Paris, Andermatt, & Como), which was just the first of three stages on as many continents. I fly out again Monday morning for stage 2 in Oregon, then stage 3 in Australia after that, which makes this really more of a 4-day layover…

Anyway, a lot needs to get done today and things in the office are a bit crazy, but I have a few minutes while the hard-drives are humming away; so I thought I’d start a short journal of my day and see where it goes. Menial stuff for sure but hopefully I can make some of it worth your while:

10:45p arrived in SLC
11p completely crash after traveling for nearly 24 hours

4am wide awake from jet-lag (GMT+2 -> GMT -6)
4:30 sync MacBookPro documents back to MacPro
5 check facebook, or ‘FNN’ (Friend News Network) as I like to think of it / read up a little on the APE blog & some news / get caught up on emails
6 start backing-up 2TB G-Raid2 road drive. Only 451GB to go…
6:10 shower
6:30 research materials for constructing a location/computer case for my 17″ MBP. Inspiration is a mix of the portable monitor kits I saw the film-crews wheel around while on location for The Home Depot jobs, and a video posted by Chase Jarvis a few years back. I have a traveling iMac kit, but it’s too big & heavy for remote and/or mountain locations, and requires external power. This one will be a lot sleeker & mobile
7:15 notice there’s some very nice cirrus clouds outside, which I like to have for my library of background cloud plates. Load up the car with the H3Dii kit and race down the road to Brighton High where I can get a clean horizon
7:25 shoot a few dozen plates of clouds at three focal lengths
7:45 back in the office / download images / catalogue in Lightroom 3
8 backup progress: 300GB to go. I use a program called Intego-X5 to synchronize my primary A drives with backups B & C. Simple, cheap, and easy to use
8:30 unpack / eat breakfast
9 stop by the post office to pick up the month’s mail. Received 2 Awards of Excellence from Communication Arts for image series appearing in the 2010 Photo Annual! A super lightweight mountaineering harness (the ‘Couloir’) from Black Diamond also arrived. Just the thing for quick trips up to Lone Peak or the Tetons, or ski-rappels next winter
9:15 work on finishing up the expense reports for Europe trip. After spending nearly a month traveling by planes, trains, rental cars, and aerial trams & shooting in 5 countries, I’ve got hundreds of receipts / transactions to account for. Expenses are tallied in Numbers, and then summarized in BlinkBid which handles my billing and basic business financials
10 phone call with producer to go over production details for the Oregon shoot. Location permits secured
11 booked travel for Australia shoot. 35 days ought to be enough. Booked it a bit wide since the shoot dates are still being pinned down, and to have some personal shooting/skiing time afterwards in New Zealand. I do almost all my bookings on Kayak.com which has great dynamic filters and a relatively simple interface

12p 2TB backup done. Run to the bank to swap out hard-drives. All of my images are backed-up in triplicate, with the 2nd & 3rd copies rotating shifts in my safe-deposit box every two weeks or after jobs, just in case my office gets robbed, struck by lightning, or worse. Everything is also backed up in triplicate while on location for jobs, only on smaller 250GB FireLite drives. As at the office, the third drive always stays in a separate room, or with me, in case my hotel room gets sacked while I’m out
12:15 phone discussion with ad agency about changes to next week’s shooting schedule & go over the Australia dates
12:20 call with my producer regarding changes
12:25 call to assistant in Oregon regarding changes
12:30p drive downtown
1 lunch at the Taqueria Lolita on 9th & 3rd with my friend Paul
2 picked up a few things at Pictureline: a Pelican 1550 case for the location kit & a Canon 24mm f/1.4 lens. Although I shoot on a lot of different formats, both film & digital, the Canon L-series primes are hard to beat for speed, sharpness, and reliability in extreme conditions. Both me and my 1DsMk3 were completely and repeatedly drenched by ocean waves during a portion of the shoot in France, but the weatherproofed lenses & body thankfully kept the saltwater out (which is why the H3Dii played the role of backup and hid in the watertight pelican case with the 4×5)
2:50 call to my parents, let them know I’m still alive
3 picked up a few things at REI: new TSA locks for 4×5 case to replace ones damaged in Europe and a better travel pillow (I hope)
3:45 another call with my producer
3:50 post office again to pick up today’s mail, return home
4-7 working in the office on the new location/computer case. Contents will include a 17″ MacBook Pro, 3x FireWire 250GB hard drives, a 6×8″ Wacom Tablet, cords & adaptors, extra battery, and ambient light shields for easy viewing outside. Will post some photos when it’s done
7:15 respond to stock image request
7:30 emails with ad agency & Marianne about licensing additional images from the shoot
7:45 keyword & upload a few new images from Switzerland to my stock site
8:30 off to see Inception for the second time with some friends. Hopefully I can stay awake with a mix of serious jet-lag and Hans Zimmer’s musical ambiance (which I love, love love!)
11p crash again, and hopefully don’t wake up till 6 or so…

window light

Matthew Turley — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 16:23:25 +0000

Haven’t posted anything lately as I’ve been very busy with a new project that will be launched sometime next week (stay tuned…)

In the meantime, I thought I’d post some images from earlier this week at my girlfriend’s house (in Norway).

roadside attractions

Matthew Turley — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 05:48:56 +0000

Pikes Peak International Raceway, Colorado

radio tower

Matthew Turley — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:19:12 +0000

Images from an ongoing series…

Quickie test shoot

Matthew Turley — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 18:52:27 +0000

Needed some gritty/muddy running shots for a quick add to my portfolio, so I called up my friend Courtney, a former Cytomax™ athlete who apparently specializes in modeling from the knees down . Although we’d just done a climb/run up Mt. Superior the morning before, Courtney always seems to be up for more pain and suffering – which is probably the best way to sum up splashing through the same creek 100 times in a row. Mother nature threatened us with a blank blue sky for most of the morning, and being August there was no real mud to speak of, but I think we squeaked by with a few workable options. Thanks Courtney!

Wasatch Powderkeg 2009

Matthew Turley — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:33:14 +0000

The Wasatch Powderkeg is a ski-mountaineering race that covers nearly 6,000′ vertical feet of climbing and skiing. That is, skiers start from the bottom of Alta ski resort and ‘skin’ (i.e. hike on skis) nearly 2,000′ to the top before racing back down. Repeated 4 times on 3 different peaks. The top racers often finish in under 2 hours.

While I’ve raced the Powderkeg several times in years past (including a Rec division win my first year!), I’ve always wanted to photograph it. Coming down with a chest cold this year offered a perfect excuse to finally pull out the camera.

As the race covers a lot of terrain, I debated for a few weeks about where to shoot from – thinking I’d photograph the racers as they zoomed by. However, the day before the race it struck me that what I’d really like to do is capture the racers immediately after they finish, in a series of portraits. Luckily my 8×10 holders were already loaded!

Since the finish line was more than a 1/4 mile up the hill, my assistant Kealan and I had to haul about 400lbs of gear up the hill (backdrop, cameras, film, tripod, etc.)

The portraits were mostly shot on 8×10 film, which is somewhat akin to burning $20 bills, with some of the later images shot on my Graflex 4×5 Series D.

Enjoy!

Link to the Portrait Gallery

Portraits of Jim from this morning

Matthew Turley — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:33:48 +0000

I’ve know Jim for several years now, and have wanted to photograph him for almost as long. He and his wife have spent the past 15+ years living in a cabin up in Big Cottonwood Canyon, and are faithful members of the LDS Brighton Branch where I attend church.

Finally got around to photographing him this morning, assisted by my friend, Ashton Rogers. Jim hauled us in on his Polaris, along with two pelican cases of gear and a tripod towing behind in a utility sled.

Jim is an absolute inspiration – he has the enthusiasm and vitality of men a quarter of his age.

We shot a box of Polaroid Type-55 and about 40 sheets of Portra. Until that all gets processed and scanned, however, the digital shots will have to suffice…

Death Valley

Matthew Turley — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:10:19 +0000

Headed down to Death Valley for a few days to shoot some stock images. Kept running into herds of photographers, which was actually a good thing: free models! It was a bit laughable, though, when they kept looking over their shoulder trying to figure out what I was taking pictures of. Or when other photographers would come over and try to shoot from my location, only to leave in disgust because they realized someone was in the shot!

Still editing through the 4×5 film, should have some more shots ready to go shortly.

Fortune Small Business story

Matthew Turley — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:59:15 +0000

Last month I was assigned to photography Black Diamond exec Peter Metcalf and his QA manager, Kolin Powick, on an early morning climb up the south ridge of Mt. Superior (11,132′) for a feature story in Fortune Small Business magazine. We also shot several BD employee/climbers testing winter gear high on Hidden Peak, and taking test-falls on their own gear in Big Cottonwood Canyon.

Super fun shoot! I had along a great assistant (photographer/climber Paul Richer), who helped me lug around the heavy 4×5, 8×10, & digital equipment.

Plus, the BD guys were all great to work with. I’ve got a lot of outdoor gear, much of it made and/or designed by Black Diamond right here in Salt Lake City, so it was fun talking with Peter about the history of his company and his optimism for its future.

Check out the article written by Jonathan Blum in this month’s issue (Nov, ’08) of Fortune Small Business!

Take Advantage Of Your 27-hour Days

Matthew Turley — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 03:24:20 +0000

I’ve had some late nights recently.

Actually, I stay up late all the time, putting-off sleep in a form of procrastination that (ironically) allows me to do more. That’s the general idea anyway…

I’m interested in the mood, drama, and color inherent in artificial light, especially when it plays out in ways that those who placed the lights didn’t likely anticipate.

While I’m very surprised at how well my 1DsMkIII renders scenes in low-light, these images have also allowed me to experiment with HDR, with which I’ve never had much success in the past.

HDR images have always seemed to have a plastic-like quality to them, much like a 3D CG-rendering. Turns out all they need is a little coaxing after converting the HDR images back to 8-bit…