A parachute, a stiff breeze, a death defying drop off and the will to conquer it. All in a days play for a paraglider. . .boy does it look fun!

Exquisite cerulean skies played host to a stiff breeze on Sunday. Blowing straight in off the fathomless blue of the pacific, it was smacking straight into Point Cartwright at the perfect speed from the perfect direction. The Paragliders knew it was going to be a perfect day when I rocked up to Point Cartwright on Saturday afternoon to shoot the sunset and caught them packing up. Enrico, a young italian guy with a ready smile was kind enough to take my phone number and let me know when they were heading down the next day.

When I received the call, it was all hands on deck, battlestations, game on, and a couple of other cliché’s I can’t think of right now. I grabbed up the 7D, lenses, a fleccie and the HVX with the shotgun mic and jumped in the car and sped down there (within the speed limit and obeying all the road rules) as quick as I could.

I didn’t go into it with a plan really, I was just trying to get nice shots, enough make a quick cut and hopefully  get a couple of real crackers to keep for the future. I did know that I wanted it to be pretty mellow, relaxing and convey the fun that these guys were having. My god, did it look like fun! I was so jealous watching these guys just soaring across the sky, up and down the point. It’s not cheap though, apparently you’re looking at around $8-10K to get set up. It would want to be fun for that much!

I used the usual lenses for this, the Sigma 30mm f1.4 was great for the handheld stuff. Alot more stable in the hand than the 500D too. Still got to watch that rolling shutter though. The depth of this lens really allows for some nice bokeh effects at decent distances. I really like that about it. You don’t have to cram your subject right up against the camera to get some depth. The shot of the old people watching the paragliders from the seat shows that to good effect. They were quite a distance away and shot wide open @ f1.4.

The Tokina performed wonderfully, as usual (albeit without the autofocus ability) and was great for my wides. I didn’t use it for much else as all the action was pretty far away.

Now the 75-300, I know it’s not a great lens. Heck, it isn’t even a good lens, but I am consistently surprised at the image quality of the video it captures. It was fantastic this day, all though it did get a little bit of it’s wind wobble, I had it moving so much it didn’t seem to bother it a lot. Manually tracking focus on these guys as they were moving was pretty hard but with practise you quickly get better. It’s not ideal, but hey, what else can you do. . .Get me a follow focus! That’s what I can do! (All in good time, Christian! )

The 50mm 1.8 II worked nicely for some hand held stuff, but it didn’t make the cut here. There is still quite a bit of footage left over, it just didn’t seem to work with the track and the feel I was going for. With a higher energy cut, it would get some airtime, but here it just wouldn’t have worked.

The 7D was a joy to shoot with! It didn’t overheat at all, even though it was going pretty much flat out with it for the two hours I was there and I was in full Queensland sun. I’ll write more about the camera in a later post.

I want to thank all the guys who helped out, let me poke camera’s in their faces and were genuinely nice, decent and great to be around. Enrico, George, Ryan, thanks a bunch guys and I hope we get to shoot again real soon. Next stop, the hinterland!

More soon. . .

Looking to escape the southern winter cold, a seething, roiling mass of people all funnel into the Sunshine Coast at this time every year. It’s school holidays, and for us locals that means for the most part we don’t venture out, preferring to avoid the madness and leave the clogged streets and long lines to the blow in’s.

For these kids though, who are lucky enough to live right on the beach at Marcoola, their secluded little stretch of sand doesn’t attract too many tourists and provides hours of fun when school isn’t on the program.

Now this clip was more of a quick test. I shoot the 500D locked off on a tripod most of the time and after the Fiji trip and watching Brett go absolutely psychotic with the 5D MKII handheld and seeing the results, I decided I would give it a go.

Brett has this full on approach to ‘getting the shot’ when shooting people. He gets right up their faces, into the action, where I would normally hang back and be a little more reserved, preferring to give them some space. I realised that because I wasn’t really getting in there, I was missing classic moments and my shots were at times lacking in excitement because of it. So enter this test at Marcoola Beach.

I went down there with the tripod to grab some general wides, as it was a lovely day and I’d been down there for about 5 minutes when a girl came down with her little brother and 2 sisters. So after a brief chat with the eldest sister, in which I assured her I wasn’t some dodgy lecherous old man and offered to show her my Blue Card (A card provided by the government that says you are allowed to work with Children), she agreed to let me film the little tackers going nuts and having a great old time.

I discovered the joy of shooting children (that sounds a lot worse than it is hey? ) when my father had a little girl about 2 years ago. She was pretty much the cutest most amazing little thing to ever walk the earth (I’m sure there are other Brothers/Dad’s out there that feel their little princess deserves that title. . .I’ll fight you for it! ). She loved the camera and I found her to be great subject matter for all manner of fun little clips. I loved shooting them but I think I mostly shot them for her, as she would watch them over and over, mesmerised by the fact that she was on TV. I got a real kick out of that. But I digress. . .

I started off pretty far away, on my long lens, the old Canon EF 75-300 f4-5.6. After getting a couple of shots with that, I whacked the Canon 50mm f.18 II on there and not being in close enough, decided to get some handheld stuff of the waves. I was just about to pack it up, when they started playing in the sand, digging and drawing things. So up I trot and after asking nicely if I could get right in there, did exactly that. Hand held and just trying to get in and get amongst it. . .There was sand and crap flying everywhere, but it was great fun and I was pleased with the shots. They definitely are a lot more lively than they would have been if I had of stayed locked off on the long lens from 20 metres away.

So did I learn a valuable lesson? Absolutely! I’ll definitely be doing more of this again soon.