Beetles from a Costa Rican cloud forest

Back in 2008, I was in Costa Rica working on what would become Canopy in the Clouds and one night while sitting around the dinner table with my collaborators, Greg Goldsmith and Colin Witherill, we got talking about how to showcase all of the crazy bugs we were finding.  After a long discussion, we ended up deciding to try shooting them on white or black background, isolated from their environments and thereby emphasizing their crazy shapes, colors, and forms.  This was in no way a new or original idea, but something we decided to do on the spur of the moment in the field.

Weevil species from Costa Rican cloud forest

The next day during a rainstorm, I spent the afternoon figuring out how to build the setup and eventually came up with a very makeshift studio that was based around a piece of white poster board with a bunch of flashes set up around me with a diffuser.  Not very convenient but it seemed to work.  For the next few weeks and during our next field season in early 2009, we would spend all day in the field doing our normal field work and whenever we would see an interesting bug, we would grab it and stick it in a plastic bag to take back to the house to shoot in my little makeshift studio.  There were a couple very memorable nights when we were up shooting well past midnight trying to get through everything we had caught that day.  I vividly remember Greg, who was acting as “bug wrangler” chasing a moth all around our little living room as it kept flying away whenever we tried to photograph it.

The project was a lot of fun and we ended up with a couple cool galleries of images that are now available on our site.  However, our technique was pretty primitive and the results were decent but not spectacular.  In 2009, a couple of photographers, Clay Bolt and Niall Benvie, founded an international collaborative project called Meet Your Neighbours.  The basic idea was to create a set protocol for shooting local species in a white field studio and get photographers from all around the world to participate.  This would highlight the biodiversity of local communities and work towards “reconnecting people with the wildlife on their own doorsteps.”  It is a really amazing project with a bunch of very talented photographers participating.  As part of Filming Florida, not only will I be participating in Meet Your Neighbours, but I will be publishing a new species every single day.  This means that in the three years of the project, I’ll be posting well over 1,000 species from all across Florida.  It is a monumental and daunting task but it should be a ton of fun and a great learning experience.  Stay tuned over the next few weeks as I work on perfecting my own techniques for this process!

Keeping a low footprint while traveling alone is much easier. Here, I am sleeping under a nearly full moon just above the beach on Getullai Island in the Torres Strait, Australia before photographing a tern colony the next morning.

One of the constraints that I have placed on myself for this project is to operate primarily as a one man crew.  What does this mean exactly?  Well, basically it means that I get to do everything.  The means I will be operating the camera, recording the audio, writing the scripts, doing the editing, color grading the final videos, cooking dinner, driving the vehicle, repairing and cleaning gear, hauling the gear into the field, etc, etc, etc.  You name it, I’ll be doing it.

Why would I want to take all this on myself?  Quite simply, for four reasons.

1. I want the experience of doing all of these things and sharing that experience through the Behind the Lens series.  Part of the goal of this project is showcase all the different roles that go into making a film.
2. I want to operate with a very low footprint on the landscape where I am working.  I don’t want to have a large crew with me while working in sensitive environments where we might damage the ecosystem, scare the wildlife, or cause harm to wherever we are filming.
3. My third reason is simply practical and logistical.  Because of the full time commitment of this project over a minimum of two years, its hard to find someone that is willing to join me for that entire period and that is before I even have to find additional funding to pay someone’s salary full time for multiple years.
4. Finally, my fourth reason is simply control.  I relish the idea of having full creative control over every aspect of the production and I love learning new skills in order to make my creative ideas a reality.

What about the whole “jack of all trades, master of none” concept?  This is something that I have to acknowledge and realize that I will be working within my own limitations.  I realize that some aspects of the production might suffer, particularly early, because I am not an expert at all things.  That is a reality that I will have to deal with, but it is also part of the journey of Filming Florida.  It is the story of my experience, what I learn, where I succeed, and even where I fall short.  It’s a tall order but it is all part of the story and I look forward to learning if a single individual can actually pull off all of these roles.

I will also state that I do plan to work with other people in the field.  I have already had several individuals offer to help out in various capacities throughout the project.  My wife may even be able to join me for some portion of the project and she will take over some of the roles in the project if she is available.  However, for the majority of the project, I will be working alone in the field and be performing all of the various tasks as a crew of one.  It is a bit overwhelming but I am actively forging ahead and building my skill set so that Filming Florida is the high quality production I have envisioned.