Heli Shot over the Everglades.

Did some heli work shooting Airboats in the Everglades the other day for VISIT FLORIDA shooting stills for a print and for a TV campaign. Here's a series of production stills of us making a low pass over the airboat shooting for TV.

Gotta give props to our PJ pilot from Cameracopters! Those guys know how to fly. Earlier in the day we were hovering over a 38 foot cabin cruiser on the ocean going about 40 miles per hour and we were so close I got hit by some of the bow spray from the boat!

Fun Stuff!

VISIT FLORIDA!

'Tis the season for Tourism.    Just finished two weeks of Prepro and starting a week and a half of shooting for VISIT FLORIDA this week shooting with our friends at Alma DDB.   Shooting for print and TV commercials.    Great stuff!   Shooting all over Florida.    Should be a fantastic shoot.    Will post images as soon as I can release them!

Miami GMCVB

Just completed another shoot for Turkel Advertising for the Greater Miami Conventions and Visitors Bureau.     Continuing last year's campaign.    Shot 3 more ads for them for this year.   Knee deep in retouching as we speak.  Cool stuff!!  Will show the work as soon as I can release it.   

Yee Haw!!!

A photo from a while back of my buddy Jim Nork rippin' it up in Portillo Chille.

Rippin'

New work for the Sports book from a previous shoot in Aspen Highlands.

Painter in Quebec

Personal image.    Ran across this man painting a wall while on a trip to Quebec recently.

On The Road To Success...

We did a shoot recently for MyBusiness Magazine. The story was of a young entrepreneur named Jay Shectman. He is a smart high school kid who started his own tutoring business and ended up turning it into a successful company with many young tutors working for him. When I met him he was already setting his sights on his next company. Pretty impressive to see someone so young who just "get's it".

On the road to success!

Gotta Little Captain In You?

So some may ask, "What do you guys do all summer up there in Maine?" Well how about dressing a guy up in a pirate outfit and pulling him on water skis behind a plane? Sounds perfectly safe right? Had some fun the other day shooting Adam Gardner getting his "Captain on" for the Captain Morgan "get a little Captain in you" promo.

Step 1: Get a boat that goes really fast.

Step 2: find a pilot willing to break a few rules.

Step 3: find a guy willing to be dragged behind a plane.

Step 4: Add a few shots of Captain and make magic! Fun stuff.

Chumley Takes 2nd Place in IPA Photo Awards!

Entered the photo of Chumley the Walrus in this year's International Photography Awards and it won 2nd Place in the Underwater Pro Category! Many thanks to the judges for picking my shot. It's an honor. This is the second time to be included in the IPA Lucie Awards.

To see all the other talented winners go to http://www.photoawards.com/en/Pages/Gallery/winner.php

4th of July

some new personal work shot earlier this summer.

Shooting for Lyrica

Just got news that we have been awarded a global consumer campaign for Pfizer!      Shooting for their Lyrica brand with Euro RSCG out of NY.    Starting production later this week,  Shooting begins early in August in Florida.   Should be a great gig!   Will post images as soon as the campaign hits the streets.

New iPhone Photos Blog

I started a new personal project shooting photos with my iPhone and started a new blog to show some of the work.    It's a great creative outlet to be able to shoot whenever and whatever.    The quality is not great but it kinda reminds me of my days shooting with a Holga or the Diana camera.    Fun stuff.

 Check it out.    http://petebarrettiphonephotos.blogspot.com/

Going Retro...

So after 9 years of shooting digital I started getting an itch to do something different.     I remembered with fondness the days of shooting with my Fuji GX 680 and getting that large format feel and the latitude and richness of shooting neg film...   

I know... shooting film!   Madness right?    Well call me a glutton for punishment but its just something I had to do.    First of all,  good luck finding a lab that still processes c-41 in a dip & dunk machine.   My old lab in Miami that I hadn't visited since 2003 had just trashed 3 large Refrima film processing machines two days earlier.   Almost a million bucks to purchase originally were now worth nothing.   Seems we'll be sending our film to NY to process.

After exploring several options I decided to get my hands on an an old Graflex Super D 4x5 SLR camera.   This is a quick film test we did the day after receiving the camera.   Just a quick shot of my son Jordan playing in a puddle.    I love how the depth of field drops off so quickly,  much like my old Fuji's used to.   Plus it has this cool funky old feel to it.   Add a little bit of magic in post and it tweeks up nice.   Looking forward to doing some new personal work with it over the summer while up in Maine.

Ready, Set, Go!

Some new swimming stuff for the Sports portfolio.

Early Morning Runner

Running Girl

Cuba Cars

I took a trip to Cuba a few years ago and shot a bunch of stuff at the park in Havana where all Cuban Taxi drivers hang out and play dominos. Many of the taxis there are the old cars from the 50's. This is one of the shots that I worked up for a wall print.

You like me, You really like me!

Always nice to get accolades and recognition from your peers for work that you do. We recently had the pleasure to enjoy such fortune. I won First Place in the Advertising category of PDN's Digital PIX contest this year for the work we shot for BBDO and AT&T.

Many thanks to all the judges and also thank you to all of you who have sent congratulations this way. This campaign has generated quite a bit of buzz and I look forward to the opportunity to do more great work with them!

Case Studies

I've always enjoyed looking at Case Studies. It's fascinating to see how an image comes together in post.

Below are a few case studies of the retouching sequences of some of the images from my Portfolio. In reality there are usually a zillion layers and masks to create these things, these case study movies are sort of the "Cliff Note" shortened version.

*Note, please excuse Blogger's lousy video quality. Check out the images just below the video (double click on them to see them larger) or on my main portfolio site to see how they look finished.


This one was from a shoot for Remicade with Dorland Advertising. The athlete is David Garrard, Quarterback for the Jacksonville Jaguars. We shot this in a locker room on the ECU Campus in Greenville North Carolina (David's alma mater)

























This next one is from a shoot we did for The Collection, which is a high end car dealership specializing in the luxury car market. We were hire to shoot 4 ads with 4 different executions of each ad. What I mean by this is we shot each ad with 4 separate vehicles so they could feature different brands at different times but still have the same shots. Additionally many of the ads were to have different aspect ratios, meaning each one would have to be built and repurposed specifically for that ad. To do this, everything had to be shot as it's own layer, including the talent.



Here is the final image and again below with an Audi in place of the Aston Martin.































Anyone like hockey? See below... The folks at Dorland liked the way operate and loved the photos of David Garrard we shot over the summer so they asked us to shoot an ongoing part of their campaign for Cetocor's Remicade Drug. This one had us up in the great white north.... Edmonton Canada... just a few days before Christmas. Our subject this time was Fernando Pisani, Right Winger for the Edmonton Oilers. He was awesome to work with. Very cool guy. He had actually broken his ankle right before our shoot so every shot we did with his lower half showing, we had to shoot a body double and drop in the other guy's lower half. Made for an interesting shoot and an even more interesting retouch.

























This one, (see below) was from a personal trip to New Hampshire on an ice fishing trip. The state Ice Fishing Derby was in full swing. If you've never been to Lake Winnepesaukee for one of these derbies you have got to go. Nothing like going out on a frozen lake with a bunch of good ol boys, drinking beer, drilling holes in the ice and trying to catch fish. They are a trip... I ended up shooting a ton of stuff and have created a few composite images for the portfolios. This one was a composite of about 12 different components and was built originally for my source book ad in "AtEdge" and has since been added to my portfolio as well.
















Below is another version of the same shot. This one was worked up on a different background and is more like what the real experience is. People everywhere doing a million different things at once. There is a bit too much going on for the portfolio but I still like it enough to show it here on the blog.

Gren Goes Green! Earth Day Booklet

My NorthEast Rep, Paula Gren Representatives just released her second set of Green friendly promo booklets featuring the work of 10 very talented photographers that she represents.

I am proud to be part of this eco friendly partnership. Creation of the book, timed to come out just in time for Earth Day, involved using all green certified suppliers; using all recycled and post consumer products.

We are also working closely with the Conservation Fund, donating a portion of our fees to help preserve our nation's land and promote sustainable uses of our natural resources.

To learn more about this charity, and how your everyday activities can help protect the environment and reduce waste, please visit http://www.conservationfund.org

Boy Wonder for Allegra

Back in February we shot a campaign of ads for Allegra with BrandPharm. The work has hit the public so I can now show some of it here. The original photos for the client had a little less post work done on them. I've taken them a bit farther here for my book, adding on the textural elements. (click the images to see them larger)

Skyway.

This is from an ongoing project of images of fairgrounds.

If it keeps on raining the levee's going to break....

Listening to bit of Led Zepplin IV as I was working on this image. Don't know why but "When the Levee Breaks" seems sort of struck a chord with me. (no pun intended) ;-)

Things that make you go "hmmmm..."

Kinda looks like this just erupted out of the ground like some kind of stonehenge'ish thing. Actually this is a prop from a shoot we did for Turkel a while back. Shot this wider version without models and shifted the color as a personal version for my personal work .

What are you looking at?

Personal image shot a while back on a day that I had to get out and shoot something.... anything... something to 'stir my soup' so to speak. I saw this and it intrigued me how it seemed like it was looking at me.

Quiet Places...

Here's another new personal image I made last month on a trip out to Park City. Shot this over the Great Salt Lake on our initial approach into SLC. Every time I fly into Salt Lake I'm always amazed at how different the lake can look depending on the light and atmospheric conditions. On this day it had this strange ethereal quality to it and the reflection of the mountains in the still water was somewhat surreal.

Hockey Anyone?

I thought I'd post a few images from a shoot we did about a month & half ago for Dorland Global for Centocor's drug Remicade. It was a pretty cool shoot. We flew to Edmonton Canada to shoot Fernando Pisani, (Right Winger for the Edmonton Oilers) He was really great to work with... very patient and gave us all the time we needed to get the job done right.

The biggest challenge we had was that he had recently broken his ankle and was in a cast. This meant every shot we did with his feet showing required us to shoot a stand in body double for the legs and skates in the same position and lighting. Once back in the studio, I then removed Fernando's legs and feet in the final shot and substituted the body double's legs and skates.

PDN "Tech - E Project" Feature Article

Well February is on it's way out and March is coming in with a bang. I was honored to receive another feature article in PDN in this month's March issue. They did a 3 page article in their "Tech - E Projects" on the work we did for Turkel Advertising for the current Campaign for The Miami Conventions and Visitor Bureau (MiamiCVB -Tourism).

We've been getting some good PR lately in PDN, with winning 1st Place in the Advertising category in the Digital PIX contest, then a small "Behind the Lens" Feature in the following month's issue (both for the AT&T work we did with BBDO). I'm going to have to send some cookies as a thank you! :- )

To read the article, double click on the image of the magazine. If you would like to download a PDF version of the above mentioned project, cut and paste the following web address into your browser.
http://www.petebarrett.com/clients/eprojMAR09.pdf

Think Snow!!!

Ok, so it is no secret that I am a bit of a winter activity freak. After growing up in Maine until I was 14 years old and then being transplanted to Gainesville Florida, I never really lost my love for the snow and all the fun things that come with it. It has been a bit of an obsession over the years to get back and spend as much time as possible in cold places skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing, snowmobiling, you name it. I have the good fortune of being a photographer and can create my own schedule... so when the winds are howling and snow is falling, there is a part of me that kicks in and off I go to get some much needed snow time. I always bring my camera along on these trips and try to shoot as much as I can. This generates image sales and a few assignments along the way which goes a long way toward funding other trips. Sort of a self fulfilling prophesy.

Many of my travels to places ranging from out west to Colorado & Utah, the Italian, Swiss and French Alps and as far south as Portillo Chile have left me with a stockpile of images that I am now putting to use in a series of fine art images. This is an ongoing project. I will post some of the images here from time to time. The image above is actually from trip out to our place in Park City that I shot last month. Hope you like it. Think Snow!!!

Canon 5D Mark II Video Test

Recently did a test with the new Canon 5D Mark II camera to test it's video capabilities.

Just a quick test shooting running shots hand held with a gyro stabilizer out the back of the van the day we shot for Bloomberg. Still pretty bouncy as we did not have a proper car to car camera rig, but overall I was impressed by the quality from Canon's first attempt at HD in an SLR camera.

Vrooooomm!!!!!!

We recently completed a very cool shoot for Bloomberg Markets. They hired us to shoot a story about a driving experience put on by a company called World Class Driving. It's a very cool concept where exotic car buffs can pay to drive a handful of extremely fast and really expensive exotic cars at over 200 miles per hour on a rented airstrip for the day. There were a couple of Lamborginis, a Mercedes Mclaren, Koenigsegg, a Ferrari and a very cool little Alfa Romeo 8C with values ranging from a mere $200,000 to a daunting $1.5 million each.

It was actually very funny to see us racing down the runway in our rented minivan shooting the Koenigsegg.... the van straining to get to 100 mph and the Koenigsegg barely getting out of 2nd gear!

All in all a very cool day on the track and I'm looking forward to shooting again with WCD on a follow up shoot in April.