I am pleased to announce the release of the first Nature Profiles film in the “phenomena” category, “Feeding Frenzy.” Take a look at the chaos of a feeding frenzy dominated by a wide variety of herons, egrets, spoonbills, storks, and more. If you enjoy the film, please share it with others!
Dealing with Bad Days
https://vimeo.com/85983596
So when I am working on a project day in and day out for three years, I’m bound to have some bad days. It’s life and learning how to deal with those frustrating moments when equipment fails, subjects don’t cooperate, bad weather rolls in, and the world conspires to make you fail is a major challenge for a long term project like this. Take a quick look at this week’s episode of Behind the Lens, Dealing with Bad Days, to learn just how I try and deal with that frustration.
Behind the Lens – The Evolution of a Photograph
https://vimeo.com/85405584
In this week’s episode of Behind the Lens, I take a look at the “Evolution of a Photograph.” I walk you through my process when I am working in the field and use photography to discover what I am seeing and let my image evolve. In this particular case, I show you the evolution of the photography “Ducks, Cranes, and Pelicans.” Enjoy!
Great Blue Heron Courtship
Today, I’d like to announce the latest short film in the Nature Profiles series, Great Blue Heron Courtship. Take a moment to learn about the beautiful displays that Great Blue Herons perform during their courtship and nest building. I had a blast filming this at Viera Wetlands (officially the Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands at Viera). It was great to see a few old friends and make some new ones while working on this piece. A little bit later in the season, I’ll do another film about parental care once the chicks hatch and the action picks up again! Enjoy!
Behind the Lens – Stills vs Video: Handling the Camera
https://vimeo.com/84927855
I have just released the latest episode of Behind the Lens, “Stills vs Video: Handling the Camera“. This is the first in many episodes where I talk about how shooting stills and video is different and the different things I have to think about. For this first installment, I start with the basics–how I handle the camera and some of the major differences I found when I first started shooting video with a DSLR. Enjoy!
Behind the Lens – Filming in the Spatterdock
https://vimeo.com/84283271
This morning I am happy to release this week’s episode of Behind the Lens, “Filming in the Spatterdock.” This is meant to be a companion piece to Tuesday’s “Dawn in the Spatterdock” providing a behind the scenes look at the filming of that episode of Nature Profiles. Join me as I sit on the edge of Lake Jackson in the Prairie Lakes Unit of Three Lakes Prairie Wildlife Management Area south of Orlando. I hope this gives you a small taste of what it is like to sit behind the camera waiting on birds to come near and what is going through my head while I am waiting. Hope you enjoy!
Dawn in the Spatterdock
This morning I have released the first real episode in the Nature Profiles series, Dawn in the Spatterdock. Take three minutes to learn about Spatterdock (Nuphar advena), a common native aquatic plant found in many local lakes. It really is amazing how many different species of birds and other animals use the Spatterdock as hunting grounds. Enjoy!
The First Species
http://vimeo.com/83683371
Join me as I explore the process behind photographing the various species for the Daily Species and how I do it in a boat in this week’s episode of Behind the Lens.
And it Begins!
The sun lights up the clouds over a lagoon with Red Mangrove islands at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge before dawn.
Happy New Year! Filming Florida is now live and I am thrilled. After months of planning, packing, and preparation, I am working full time on this project and can’t wait for the adventures and journey. I’ve got a ton of plans and am really excited to revisit familiar haunts and explore new locations. I invite you to join me on this journey and follow the project on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and of course on this site. The introductory episodes of both Behind the Lens and Nature Profiles are now online with new episodes coming next week. I hope everyone has a great start of 2014 and I look forward to sharing this journey with you!
And so it begins…
Today, I turn 30. It seems to be a bit of a monumental step in life, whether real or perceived, but I am using this occasion to officially announce my new project, Filming Florida. If you’ve read through any other bits of this site before making it to the blog, you are probably starting to realize that Filming Florida is not a small undertaking. It is big, ambitious, and likely more than a bit crazy. If you know me personally, you hopefully are also thinking that it sounds like me. It’s a project only I could dream up and consider embracing.
Filming Florida as you see it today as I launch, is just the beginning, but it is also the culmination of several years of ideas bouncing around in my head. It is the result of a couple years of thinking, pondering, and maybe even a little scheming. It is the combination of my somewhat disparate interests, ideas, and skills finally blending together to form a single cohesive, yet multi-faceted, project. It is a project that is uniquely me.
So what is Filming Florida? Filming Florida is many things. It is my personal journey rediscovering Florida, the state where I grew up. It is the exploration of the natural side of one of the fastest growing states in the country. It is my odyssey as an image creator moving from still photography to the moving image and filmmaking. It is an experiment to see if a one man crew can shoot, edit, and produce media on a regular basis while constantly working in the field. It is a free ticket to behind the scenes of a massive multimedia production. It is an exploration in using cutting edge technology to tell stories in ways never before seen. Ultimately, it is the project that produces a film, book, and multimedia exhibition about the natural history and landscape of Florida.
Filming Florida officially starts today with the launch of the website and blog. Over the next couple months, I will be working to prepare for the start of the field work and media creation phase of the project which will start in January. That gives me just over two months to continue planning, preparing, and fundraising so when 2014 arrives I am ready to hit the road, start shooting, and releasing media through the blog and my two video series, Behind the Lens and Nature Profiles.
I really hope you will join me on this journey over the next few weeks, months, and years as I throw myself into this ambitious project and share my experiences, my successes, and my failures. Starting today, I’ll be posting to the blog as well as across my various social media sites and I look forward to connecting with you there.
Blog and Website Overview
On October 24, 2013, FilmingFlorida.com will launch as the official project website serving as the central hub for all content, outreach, and media created during the project. Not only will it host both the natural history short film series (Nature Profiles) and the production web series (Behind the Lens), but it will also link together all of my social media outreach. From the start, I will employ media centric social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook, Google+, Vimeo, YouTube, and Twitter. These plans may change as the social media landscape continues to evolve, new platforms grow, and Filming Florida reaches a larger audience.
Finally, the website will be the home of an extensive blog—bringing photographs, video, and stories from my life in the field to readers on a regular basis. The blog will provide the majority of the content and be updated several times a week, if not on a daily basis, depending on connectivity from the field. The blog will showcase a wide variety of content including experiences in the field and photographs of the landscape and creatures I encounter. One day I might talk about an incredible moment I witnessed, while the next I highlight a biologist I am working with in the field. Some posts might tell the story behind an image or video clip, while others might share what it is like to constantly travel and work out of a trailer for over a year. Above all, much of the blog will be dedicated to sharing the natural beauty of the state and encouraging readers to get out and explore on their own wherever they live.
Each post will be written for an audience with an interest in nature, exploration, and media. While some posts may be a technical explanation of how I created an image or about the science behind animal behavior, each post will be written without jargon for a general audience and not just a technical filmmaker or trained biologist.
