In September 2018 I was contacted by STUDIO at Getty Images about a commission to shoot publicity stills in Bali, Indonesia for the Animal Planet series Fish or Die.
The details where a little vague at first but after a few emails back and forth with Kerry from STUDIO and then a phone conference with Robin from Discovery I had a good understanding about both the show and the brief.
It was a new series about four die-hard fly fisherman who were determined to be the first to fish the most remote waters in the world, or die trying (see a preview of the series here).
The cast members Chris, Thad, Brian and Jay and their producer Vince where going to be in Bali for a 5 day break between episodes in Mongolia and Borneo and they were keeping one day free for the shoot.
The images needed to be shot in a river location and the client also required some studio portraits on a clean white background. This meant that many of the most scenic locations in northern Bali were too far and we had to find a location within a 90 minute drive of where all of the studios were located in southern Bali so that we could accomplish everything in one day.
I realised that I was going to need some local knowledge to find the perfect location and I contacted a number of fixers and production houses. In the end I choose to work with Baliprod as they presented themselves as highly professional and as they also shared 2 locations that seemed perfect for the shoot.
Ayung River looked great but BaliProd sent a scout to the location and they informed me that access to the river bed was via difficult and steep terrain and they thought that it would be too hard to transport lighting equipment down to the location. The river is also a white water rafting destination and they said that rafting groups were passing regularly and I thought that this would be too problematic.
The scout also found this location which consisted of a shallow river in a quiet countryside location amongst rice fields. It was only a 90 minute drive from the cast’s accomodation and it was the perfect location for our shoot.
I sent the scout back to the chosen location a second time at sunrise to get an idea of what first light would look like and I also asked him to make sure that there were plenty of shaded areas where the cast could rest and that I could shoot in as the sun became unbearable later in the morning. Robin was very happy with the location and I booked in a producer, 2 assistants, lighting equipment, transport and a studio.
I arrived in Bali 2 days before the shoot and the following morning Omri and Minet from Baliprod met me at 4:30am and we headed to the location. We arrived at the river just as the sun was rising and we decided that we would need to leave earlier at 4am the following morning to make sure that we arrived in time to set up before sun rise.
The hero shot would be a posed group shot to camera and I wanted to do this with the sun rising in the background. We also needed to do a selfie of the group and a shot of the group in action crossing the river. It made sense to do the 3 group variations in one location and then we needed to find 4 locations for individual portraits. All 5 locations needed to be in walking distance from each other and below are the locations that we chose and a rough schedule of when I hoped to shoot each shot.
We headed back to where I was staying at Perenan Beach and then in the afternoon I went to meet the cast who where staying in a nearby villa. I joined them for lunch at the beach and I went through my scouting images with them and they where really excited about the location that we had found. We talked through my ideas and they gave some input of their own and over the next few hours I learned a lot about their backgrounds and the adventures that they had been on around the world.
Late that afternoon I headed to the BaliProd office to make a final plan and Omri had prepared a map of the site. They would pick me up at 3:45am and then we’d pick the cast up at 4am and head to the river. We would be dropped off as close as possible to location 1 and then we walk in with all of equipment. Upon finishing the first shot everyone would move further up river to a base camp near the bridge that was within a 5 minute walk from the remaining locations.
After all the preparation the only thing left to worry about was the weather. The report was for a beautiful sunny day with a chance of showers and on the way down to the first location we had a sprinkle of rain but it was over by the time we arrived at the river and the shoot went very smoothly.
I tried a number of compositions for the posed group shot but I felt that this low down angle with the sun rising behind the group was the strongest. The group where lit with two Profoto B1 strobes. I used an octabox on each side to soften the light and positioned the lights at a 45 degree angle from the group and on either side of the frame. The shot is taken with my Sony A7RIII and my Canon 16-35mm F2.8L lens.
The client was keen for me to use a fisheye lens for some shots so I rented a Canon 8-15mm F4 fisheye and whilst I used it for the selfie the client ended up using the less distorted version that I took with my Canon 16-35mm F2.8L lens and I much prefer this version.
The biggest difficulty with the action shot was getting into position without drowning my camera. If we had more time I would have put my camera in an underwater bag but the sun was rising fast and I didn’t want to loose time so I waded out with just the one camera body and my Sigma 35mm F1.4 Art lens and hope for the best. Thankfully I made it in and out without falling over and the guys made it look a lot easier than it was!
I chose Chris Owens for the bridge location as he loved the location when I showed it to him the day before. The sun had disappeared when we arrived at the location but luckily it came out towards the end of our session. I had been shooting with flash but the flash didn’t fire in this frame and I preferred the more natural look.
The sun was high in the sky when I shot Brian Jill’s portrait and I positioned the sun in the background and then Brian was lit by just the one light to the RHS of frame.
We walked past this location on our way in earlier in the morning and Thad Robison told me that he wanted his portrait here. It had clouded over a little by the time we shot it so I used natural light for this portrait.
I choose this shaded area for Jay Johnson’s portrait and as he was being lit by even light I felt that natural light was the way to go as well.
A behind the scenes look into a TVC production stills shoot that I did on the set of an action and adventure TVC for FWD Vietnam. It was a really fun shoot but challenging as the film crew were on a tight schedule so everything was shot with natural light and most of it was shot with fast shutter speeds in a documentary style.