On Location - Taking Commercial Drone Interior and Exterior Photos for Endo Lighting
During pre-production on a corporate video for Endo Lighting to show their lighting installation at AEON 3, the client requested some drone photography to use on their website.
While Simon Toffanello was doing the photography for them, it made sense for me to take the drone photographs as I would be operating a drone for video I was shooting.
Endo Lighting requested a series of exterior and interior drone shots to show the building and their lighting installation.
The exterior drone photographs were taken with a Mavic 2 Pro. They were taken at dusk so the photo gives the impression of it being dark will retaining detail in the background and reducing the noise due to there still being a bit of ambient light.
Due to the height restriction on the Mavic 2 Pro, I hired a Mini 3 Pro, which is a lighter drone that is better designed to fly indoors.
You can see the corporate corporate video I made for them here and check out other examples of my drone photography here. As predominantly a videographer, I mainly use the drone to shoot video and take photographs as an afterthought. It would be great to make more of an effort to explore the creative potential of drone photography.
Veasna's Story - Working as an NGO videographer on a case study for VSO
This is the second case study I made on assignment as an NGO videographer for VSO.
The video tells the story of Veasna and the positive impact VSO’s RECOVER project has had on her livelihood.
As part of the project, Veasna received agricultural training and financial support to improve her growing facilities.
Held in the community with other vegetable growers the training shows Veasna best practices about what to grow, how to grow it and pest control.
Veasna has used the financial support she received to construct a net house for growing higher value crops.
VSO have also set up agricultural cooperatives. This gives the vegetable growers additional selling power as the cooperative can sell larger quantites direct to market.
They sign contracts to guarantee fair prices for their vegetables and a constant source of income.
A storage facility has also been built in the community so the vegetable growers can store their vegetables to cut down on wastage and to be able to control the sale of the vegetables they grow to the market.
It was great to see the positive relationship Veasna had with Ravuth, the trainer, and how she is looking to expand her growing activities in the future so she can support her young family.
Below is the final video:
And here’s the shorter version I made for social media:
On location in Phnom Penh as a lighting camera operator for ITN Productions and Everland
ITN contacted me to work as a lighting camera operator in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on a shoot they had for Everland. They also asked me to recommend a journalist to write and present the piece and conduct the interviews.
Everland help to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo and Cambodia counties the REDD+ initiative. Hopefully, giving Cambodia carbon credits to not cut down their trees will preserve the natural forests and their ecosystems, allow people living traditional lifestyles in the forests to continue do so.
The scheme will hopefully have a positive impact on the environment as a whole. Unfortunately, the reality of the situtation is that there’s too much money in the timber in the forest, so the only viable option is to provide a financial impetus to conserve the forests.
Everland partner with a local production company here, so they kindly provided me with a sound recordist for the day while we shot all the Phnom Penh footage and I worked as a lighting camera operator for the interviews and pieces to camera for the intros and outros.
The studio intro was shot at the ITN studios in London, where I had the privilege of working for a few months when I was based in the UK.
On a personal level, it was an interesting project as I’ve spent extended periods working with indigenous Bunong in Mondulkiri while working on Last of the Elephant Men and have since worked with the mahouts at Elephant Valley Projects for Wild Animal Protection and on a self-funded pilot for a travel show.
Lighting camera operator on corporate shoot with CEO of Forte Insurance
Ooshot contacted me to work as a lighting camera operator on a corporate video shoot with the CEO of Forte Insurance Cambodia as the main interview on some branded content for Scor, a global reinsurance company. I also filmed b-roll of the CEO in their offices in Vattanac Tower and interiors and exteriors of the office space.
The brief was clear and Ooshot provided me with a good samples of what they wanted.
It was a 2 camera, 4k set up with 3-point lighting using Aputure 300c MKii lights. One of the cameras was locked off on a Miller DS10 tripod and the other was on a Zhiyun Crane 3 gimbal to add movement and dynamism to the interview.
We worked as a 3 person team with me acting as the producer, director and lighting camera op. The other team members were a lighting/ camera asssitant and sound recordist.
For the sound recording the we used a shotgun mic on a boom stand and a radio mic as a belt and braces approach to make sure we captured optimal sound.
For the lighting, we used the hyper reflector and the 2x fresnel mount through scrims to maximize the brightness of the lamps to balance the light with the bright outdoor conditions.
You can see more of my work on corporate videos as a lighting camera op here and more of my work as a camera operator here.
Covering the UNDP IP Conference as an events photographer and videographer in Chiang Mai, Thailand
I was assigned as an events photographer and videographer to work on the UNDP Indigenous Persons Conference, which was actually 2 conferences, the YECAP Indigenous Fellows Training and the Youth CO:LAB Regional Dialogue on Indigenous Youth Social Entrepreneurship conference.
While a lot of the indigenous youth face pressure and uncertainty in their lives, both conferences were conducted with a genuine sense of collaboration and conviviality. I hope my photographs and videos do justice to this.
At the CO:LAB Conference, participants were mentored on entrepreneurship with people giving presentations through the final day. Young indigenous entrepreneurs presented their ideas to the group. It was great to see participants so eager to listen and to learn about how best to develop their ideas and their skills and to see how open everyone was to the constructive criticism and feedback that they received.
The YECAP Conference was conducted with a similarly convivial atmosphere. The participants learnt about some of the issues they face and the steps they can take to mitigate the impacts on their communities.
One of the highlights was the group project that looked at the issues indigenous youth across the Asia Pacific are facing. Groups worked together to explain the issues and look at the solution.
The final results where a collaborative drawing made up from contributions from each of the groups.
You can see other examples of my photography work here and other examples of my videography work here.
You can see a selection of the photos I took below:
