Fast Times in the Desert

That’s not me in the photo above. God’s no. I’ll live my whole life and never get on one of those things. That’s a promise. But I hope I get to shoot more cause it’s just as fun for me shooting as those guys have riding. I think it’s just as fun anyways. No, it’s not me. It’s a still from video I shot Tuesday. But lets back up…

Sunday I spent 14 hours finishing the edit on a music video. I think the director left around 8pm and I got to bed around 10. I probably fell asleep around 11:30 or so. I rose at 5am on Monday and drove through a downpour to Hermosa beach and spent 12 hours on set shooting a pilot. I got home around 10pm to a power outage so I just went to bed. Tuesday I got up at 5:30am and in another downpour I drove north into the Mojave desert for the first of two days shooting the bikes. Dani finished shooting the pilot in Hermosa for me as I was double booked and really wanted to shoot the bikes. I’m lucky to have a partner like that.

I wore a t-shirt and light jacket and as an afterthought threw a thin Gore-Tex jacket in the backseat. But I left the Gore-Tex in Lancaster when I carpooled from the teams hotel out to the track in the desert. being from Alaska and having done the things I’ve done in this life I pride myself on always being prepared for the elements. I’ve been through some bad weather, on mountains, at sea. I’ve spent days without shelter and only the cloths on my back. I know how to dress and I have the gear to get me through about any weather the God’s can dish out. But I was not prepared for how f-ing cold it was out there. I still hear desert and I think hot. I should know by now. I really should.

By 10 it had stopped raining and the track was dry enough to ride so the bikes took off and I started shooting. It was about 39 or 40 degrees Fahrenheit out but the wind was wicked. Wicked. I humped my heavy camera and tripod up and down the track all day. Probably a couple miles. I shivered and cussed and spit and yelled into the wind. The bikes were topping out at over 140 mph. It’s not easy tracking anything going that fast. Pulling focus, zooming and just plain keeping up with frozen hands. I had been invited to stay out there at the hotel but I drove home that night. Not about to suffer through another day of freezing cold. I drove an hour home with the heat on full blast and took my first bath in years. Ran the hottest water I could. Probably looked like a big bald hairy lobster, red as the water made my skin.

I came back Wednesday with long-jons and fleece and gloves and hats. But the sun was out most of the day. It was maybe 10 degrees warmer. I didn’t care. I was catching up. I wore all my fleece anyways. I came home last night and took another bath. had some footage left on my camera and that’s the still you see. I’d post some footage but it doesn’t seem right to post it before the client. Pretty awesome stuff though. World class bikes on a world class track with world class riders. Frozen or not I had a blast. It’s always fun to spend time in another universe. Another culture. I love those jobs, elements or not. People doing things, work and play, that are completely foreign to me. Most of the work I end up doing is scripted, narrative work. Or Music videos, planned out, calculated, crafted. But it’s just plain fun to go out and be a fly on the wall and try and find the best way to capture a story with your camera. Especially when you have no idea where the story is going or how it will end.

I was so exhausted after 4 long days that I was just a babbling idiot when I got home last night. Less intelligible than my writing on this blog. I sat on the couch and drooled for a couple hours and fell asleep around 10. But I look forward to doing it all again soon…