HALO Shoot Is A Wrap! (Video, Photos, and Behind-The-Scenes)

After about six months of planning, coordinating, and scheduling, the HALO 151 shoot is a wrap. As is typical with every shoot, you spend months planning and visualizing, creating a shot list, and then ultimately, you just work with what you have when you get there. I am extremely pleased with the outcome of last night's shoot. There were some shots I couldn't nail because of the weather, but a lot of shots that were actually possible just because of the weather, and overall, I'm very happy with what we walked away with.

Here's a few shots:

PHOTOS AND TEXT CONTINUE AFTER THE JUMP....



Before I go any farther, I absolutely HAVE to thank my crew and the HALO crew. This shoot could have never been pulled together without everybody working as hard as they did. My two assistants worked tirelessly for 5hrs to make these shots possible, thank you!

Well, we arrived at HALO Base at about 1:45pm, took about an hour to get the gear onto the flightline and get set-up before we started shooting. There were a few shots I really wanted to nail at the airport, the image of the helo hovering behind the medics was one of those shots - I had that visualized MONTHS ago, and it came off flawlessly. We shot from about 3 to 4 down at the airport before packing it all back up. My crew and I then transitioned to Banner Thunderbird Medical Center, met with our contact and got our gear to the roof. Our lights and cameras were set-up just a few moments ahead of HALO's 5:30pm arrival to the pad.

A few months ago, I kind of got my heart set on a cloudy day to get the best sunset we could in our short window on the roof, but didn't really expect that the universe would cooperate and give me the sky exactly how I envisioned it! So, with the sun just about to break through the clouds before setting behind the mountains, HALO was approaching the pad - our scheduling and timing was spot-on. The first shots I did after they touched down were some RAW files to do an HDR image (second photo in this post), and then moved back into crew portraits.

The lighting was fantastic, but I still had about 5 or 6 flashes popping off for each image. That's where my crew came in, I could never have gotten anything done if I had to set the camera down to make the dozens of small lighting adjustments that each shot required. We just rolled with the lighting and I shot until I had that moment of "closure" when you know you're done. We finished just a couple minutes ahead of the schedule I made, and moments later HALO 151 was in the air as we repacked all the lights and gear. I really could not have asked for anything better than what we got, from the perfect weather to the gracious cooperation from Glendale Fire and Banner Thunderbird. It was a dream shoot.

I made a time-lapse video of the entire shoot, from the initial set-up at the airport until the sunset at the hospital, check out the video and some behind-the-scenes shots Phill took at both locations: