Wednesday 15 September
3.20pm. After countless meetings and phone conversations, the T&D editorial team decide to go for the magazine’s November issue as the 3D special. It’s already been put back a month, mainly due to uncertainty over how many images will appear three dimensional, who will handle post production, etc. It’s fair to say that at this juncture, none of us have any experience of handling or producing these types of images. The deadline for everything on the visual front is Friday 01 October.
One of the early test shots
Tuesday 21 September
11.11am. The decision has been taken that I will provide all three features for this issue, the Editor’s Choice lead item plus two others. The lead will be Pollock (Scotrans) Ltd., with Charlie Lauder and Andrew Bilton dropping into second and third slot. Post production is to be handled by David Burder, an expert in the field who also runs a specialist 3D imaging company down in London. From the off David was brought in to convert my 2D images into 3D, but after some trails with Sims Images down in Horsham, we’ve decided to go the whole hog and shoot the lot as anaglyph. “Avoid reds and blues, oh and make sure there’s plenty of stuff in the image,” David tells me.
Friday 24 September
9.10pm. With a decent weather forecast for the weekend, I’ve booked Charlie Lauder’s Mercedes-Benz Actros Megaspace for the Saturday and a Pollock Scotrans MAN TGX XXL on the Sunday. By 9pm on the Friday night the car’s packed and I head for the overnight stop in Dumfries.
Saturday 25 September
8.33am. The easy way to do this is to shoot with two cameras, bolted together 70mm apart, both fired simultaneously, everyone reckons. That’s easy enough done with a pair of cheap DSLRs, but for the high-end magazine double page spreads I really wanted to use the Phase One kit. What to do? Well, I’ve bought a Manfrotto tripod rail normally reserved for tweaking macro photography, which just happens to give me the all important 70mm spread. This way, I can shoot one image to the far left, then one to the far right (as if I’d shot the same image with two cameras instead of one). At this point I’m still not 100% sure I know what I’m doing... Great stuff! The shoot goes well nevertheless, next stop Bathgate.
Sunday 26 September
9.52am. I always knew the location would be critical to pulling this thing off, but just how critical is really starting to sink in. Despite the fact Scott Pollock had requested an 11am kick off, I’d decided to spend the buckshee time digging myself out of the sizable location backdrop hole. Then came a lucky break. Early that morning I found a perfect office park development just off the A8 at Eurocentral. Completely deserted, the builders had long since gone but no one had actually moved in. The glass and steel would give depth to the image and enhance the 3D effect perfectly.
When you’re stood there in the middle of nowhere carefully moving the camera left and right along a rail there’s a quiet voice in your head saying “will this work... ?”. Of course there’s no way of knowing - until it’s too late, that is.
Monday 27 September
7.12pm. David Burder FTP’s the first of the Pollock images back and I prepare to forward it on to an overly-anxious Will at T&D. It’s a nice image, but it definitely lacks a certain punch. There’s still not enough foreground action to make the thing jump off the page at you. We’re definitely picking this whole anaglyph thing up though.
Tuesday 28 September
10.35am. Back in the studio, I decide it’s time the devil made work for idle hands. I’m going to have a go at 3D conversion myself. I mean, how hard can it be? Quite, is the blatantly obvious answer. The principle is relatively simple, working on a process of chromatic opposites, with each eye viewing a slightly different version of the same image.
One thing you certainly notice is a degree of ‘dumbing down’. Just like the Avatar movie makers reported, when you’re shooting for 3D, the process overtakes absolutely everything, including some of the creativity.
Wednesday 29 September
2.27pm. Looking back, this will probably end up being one of the most hectic days in the entire three week period, with test shot after test shot being fired over the FTP wires with Will Shiers at the end of the phone in the T&D office. We make a last minute decision to pull Charlie Lauder’s Merc from the 3D issue, replacing it with an (as yet) unknown Eddie Stobart vehicle. There’s nothing wrong with the bright blue Actros or the way it was shot, but the general consensus of opinion points to keeping it for something bigger than the four pages we had planned in the special issue.
Friday 01 October
9.44pm. I’ve had a brainwave: I’ll go to Truck & Driver’s printers, Polestar, and photograph the web offset presses running. Bugger, they print our mag in Colchester. Never mind.
Saturday 02 October
6.22am. I’m sat in my office with the obligatory mug of coffee and lit Marlboro. Today I’m off to shoot a bloke called Andrew Bilton, who runs a brand spanking new Renault Magnum and brick carrying crane. This vehicle would probably make the mag in its own right, but the added attraction (for us) is the fact it’s got a potentially three dimensional aspect in the crane jib. In varying test shots, what we’re finding is that sometimes a full shift from left to right is way too much movement (much depends on the focal length of the lens). In medium format speak, a full 70-80mm shift is fine, but at 35mm you’ve got to rein it in a bit. The experts recommend shooting up to five images - we now know why for good reason.
Andrew’s Renault was originally planned for a brick and block yard location, where the stacks of construction materials would yield themselves perfectly to our brief for depth. For a multitude of reasons out with our control, that wasn’t to be. With the truck able to go no further than his father’s driveway, it was a stroke of luck that his sister owned the house across the street - and kindly allowed me to stand in her garden for a different perspective!
3.25pm. I’ve made a snap decision to light the vehicle at dusk. I’ve seen plenty of 3D anaglyph images in daylight, but none in the dark. This should be interesting... I started with five images and the rail shoved to the far right. I then bracketed by 1/2 stop either way, then lit the vehicle in 5 separate places (bellowing at poor old Andrew Bilton as he ran round with the Profoto lighting generator!).
Sunday 03 October
12.44am. I’m conscious of the fact we’re now past the magical first of the month deadline with only two of the three 3D image sets complete. I’ve been given the contact details of Eddie Stobart’s PR man from Will, so hopefully they’ll be flexible enough to do a mid week day - and pronto! Another seven or eight days and we will be completely run out of options...
To create one solitary image, I’ve ended up with a mind boggling 75 images from yesterday’s Magnum at dusk shoot, which were then whittled down to 10 (5 left and 5 right). I’ve shot jobs with half a dozen components before, but never 75 to get one picture.
The image I’m left with is by no means perfect, but it’s the first lit 3D effort I’ve ever seen. I am now left wondering whether I could shoot a moving 3D anaglyph from a rig... I reckon it’s not impossible.
It’s now 1.07am, but before I get my head down, I tap an e-mail to Will: “I know it sounds simple shooting five images on a sliding rail, but believe you me, this thing has practically taken over my life! I have no means of tagging the images in camera, so the first thing I have to do is decipher hundreds of file numbers, colour coding them as I go, to make sure each and every component appears in the correct order... ”
Monday 04 October
7.24am. Will’s replied to last night’s e-mail: “Give me a call so we can discuss it. I would
call now but I suspect you're still in bed since you were still doing this in the early hours... ”
For those of you who ask, “when’s it going to be in the mag?”, this diary will probably give you a good indication of why I often say “I haven’t a clue”. We’re thinking about swapping Pollock for something else too... On the production front, we’re finding a difference between images shot specifically with 3D in mind, and images which have to be shot in 3D. Ours, of course, is the latter. Post production is fun, but it’s a weird experience manipulating images with a pair of red and blue cardboard glasses on!
Tuesday 05 October
6.56pm. Pollock stays, but on Thursday I’m snapping Fiona Soltysiak and Mark Dixon - both stars of Channel 5’s ‘Eddie Stobart: Trucks & Trailers’ documentary. An e-mail from the firm’s ever helpful PR man tells me a brand new Scania R-series and trailer will be at my disposal from 9.30am onwards at their Chilled Division depot in Newark. By the the power of t’internet I’ve had a quick butcher’s at the Newark site using Google Earth. The facility is usual well-presented Eddie Stobart-spec’, but the loading bays face north. This could be an issue...
Thursday 07 October
11.12am. You can say what you like about ‘Britain's Best Known Haulier’, but they always know a good, clean truck makes for a decent picture. In fact the same could be said for the personnel. They’ve done a full shift prior to my arrival, but both look clean and presentable, proving knackered old jeans engrained with susie grease needn’t be the truck driver’s only apparel option.
Hurray... it’s a doubled-ended warehouse! We can shoot with our backs to the sun after all.
What we know from the previous shoot is the foreground and background are to 3D photography what a nut is to a bolt. One is completely useless without the other. Newark is a nice cold store, with a clean yard and no crap lying around in the yard. But as I hammer the shutter button I know I’m struggling for foreground action. As it’s a cold store, I’ve got no pallets, no forklifts, no nothing. This one could be a tough cookie.
Tuesday 12 October
7.22am. The 3D Stobart images left last night by FTP but I’m still unsure as to their impact. Without a foreground they didn’t look anywhere near as ‘boxy’ as the previous Magnum shoot. Deputy editor Chris Turner has three stories and the mag’s designer Steve Gale has three image sets. The next time I hear about this will be early November when the mag hits the newsstands.
Thursday 28 October
4.32pm. I’ve just had a text from Will: “The mag looks great!” I couldn’t make it down to Colchester to watch the presses running, but he did. In little over a week from now the issue will be on sale. "Some of the trade ads look good too, especially Scania... " he enthuses. It's typical Scania, I murmur, they've done what they always do, sat down and actually thought it through!
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