I’ve been asked by a few people to show photos of my rig. I’ll start by saying a lot of photographers that work with rigs will not show photos of, or describe their rig. This is not something I really understand. My attitude is that your work should speak for itself without having to shroud your methods in secrecy.

Perhaps this is because my photos aren’t good enough to be in print and so it’s easy for me to be open about what equipment I use…

In any case after that it would be churlish of me not to post a photo of my rig.

It’s really quite simple:

1.) Manfrotto suction cups
2.) Arri clamps
3.) 5/8th” Aluminium round bar.

Please note, I’m not saying my system is perfect or the best you could do – I know of people using single bars to get huge distances but as they wont share how they do it, I can’t say any more than that. All I can do is share what I use, and the results in my rigshots pages.

If you have a question, ask me!

In the spirit of sharing I’ll post a photo here that I don’t want to use as an example of my rig work. There are several serious problems with this photo which would mean I’d never normally post it except for one thing… The magic van.

I know the processing work on this is bad, and that it’s not sharp. But look at that van! The entire background is a blur, except for the silver van on the right. This is not faked or photo shopped.

I can only assume it was travelling at the exact same speed relative to the camera panning. I can’t see how I’d ever achieve this if I was trying to, this has to be a one in a million shot. Shame that can’t be said of the rest of the photo!

Two photos today, how exciting!

First, I promised the next rig shot I posted would not be of my car, and as a man who occasionally attempts to keep the odd promise, I present to you a Seat Leon!

This time round the image is slightly disappointing, because I didn’t consider carefully the interaction between the grey car, sky and road. My excuse I was rushing, but that’s a rubbish excuse.

Next up, I decided I’d get a canvas print done of my favourite photo – Yokohama by night – which I then had to frame myself. Of course the wife then points out the existing decor in the living room doesn’t suit this, so we re-decorate and get new sofas.

I’m very pleased with how the print came out and how the room looks, and more importantly, so is the wife!

Coming soon – BMW Z4 and Audi TT rig shots. Oooooooooh……

I’ll eventually run out of appalling puns where I try to replace any word with something involving “rig”, when this happens either;

- The world will end
- I’ll have to start taking photos of something else

I don’t like to overstate my powers but I fear it will be the first, so any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Moving swiftly on, any day that has a “y” in it’s name is a good day for taking photos, and as I’ve proved before I’m a one trick pony most of the time. My new trick is using my whizzy new rig to photograph cars travelling at break neck speeds.

By “break neck” I mean an insane 1mph which is the fastest I can push the car when I’m on my own. I know, pretty fast by anyone’s standards.

I will now promise that the next rig shot I post wont be of my car. By promise of course I mean that I’ll maybe post a different car, but probably not. I’ve been thinking about ways I can attach the rig to a dog, but apparently stuff like that is cruel, so I’ll attach it to a person instead.

I went out and had another go with my new rig last week, the intention is that I learn and make mistakes with my car, rather than when I’m doing a shoot with someone else’s car.

This time, I was much more careful with the rig placement – this meant that when processing the shot I didn’t have to do nearly as much post processing work as the first attempt.

Issues:

1.) The rig isn’t long enough. I’ve got some extension poles being delivered tomorrow which should take car of that problem, as long as they fit!
2.) The car isn’t lit as well as the first attempt, so it’s a much less dramatic photo.
3.) Huge problems with odd speckles and highlights all over the frame. Some research suggests this might be due to dust/dirt on the lens elements. A retry will confirm this.

So, progress of a sort, I’m almost ready to start sticking it onto other people’s automobiles and see what happens!

I’ve also got some Cokin ND filters on the way, which should help me with using the setup in daylight, proving that as with everything else photography related, the first purchase is really only the tip of the iceberg. And my iceberg is melting…

I mentioned in my last post that I had spent money on a new gadget, namely a rig. This is a moderately complicated contraption which is used for affixing a camera to a car. You then move the car about taking pictures and then do some jiggery pokery image editing and end up with a photo of a car looking like it’s zooming around at breakneck speeds.

With my stomach bulging with beer and pizza, I got Tuan to drive me to a car park in my car (Chauffeur service no less) after picking up our mate James we then proceeded to make the first attempt at using the rig.

A few problems were obvious when I came to post process this – not least the fact that my image editing skills are limited to cack handed selections and over the top adjustments.

The biggest issue was that the rig was almost completely obscuring the front light. The net result is that the front 1/4 of the car doesn’t look right at all – but I learned some valuable lessons. Aside from the dodgy front light area I really like this image, and will be back to recreate it very soon.

The following morning, I set out alone and had another try. Although this second image lacks the drama of the first, it was much easier to process and the whole result gels together a bit better, thanks to the lack of obvious low quality image editing!

All things considered, as my first and second ever attempts I’m fairly pleased with these. I’m already planning attempt number three!