As well as the commercial work I do for people in the snowsports industry and the freelance work for ski magazine editorial clients, I also shoot some stock photography for a couple of stock agencies such as Getty images. Today I decided I needed to get out of the office for a bit. Yesterday was far too much time indoors for my liking, time for a bit of fun.
I decided to take my snowmobile up to one of the local sled access areas and see if I could make some cool images just on my own out there. Last summer I experimented with taking some POV bike photos and I thought something like that might make some cool images today that I could maybe sell as stock. I mounted my Canon 5dMKII on the end of a Bogen Magic Arm and attached that to my snowmobile in various places. In order to fire the camera when I wanted to, I attached a remote cable to a pocektwizard receiver which was gaffer taped to the magic arm. I could then fire the 5DMKII wirelessly by pressing the fire button from a second pocketwizard that I would have with me.
One potential problem with this setup is that if you are taking photos of yourself, you always end up with a photo of you pressing the button on the transmitting pocketwizard. To combat this problem, last summer I took a trip to a local electronics store and bought a switch, some wires and a mini phono plug. With a bit of careful soldering I created a way of remotely triggering the pocketwizard by flicking the switch. The switch can then be mounted discretely on the handlebar of the bike (or in this case snowmobile) and the transmitting pocketwizard can be hidden out of the shot. See photos below for the setup yesterday. The switch was on the right hand handlebar and the pocketwizard was taped to the left hand side hidden behind the bars. Every time I hit the switch, I got a photo of myself. Sweet!!!
In the end after a couple of hours of experimentation I got a couple of shots that were pretty cool so I called it a day. I think I am going to try this out a bit more in the future but this was a good proof of concept day.
-Dan
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