June 14 was the Estevan Business Excellence Awards, or EBEX, put on by the Estevan Chamber of Commerce. This is one of the top social events for the year. It’s held ever second year in Spectra Place.
Congratulations to the winners! Click on the photo to be taken to the gallery, which should be completely uploaded by 6 p.m. From there you can share photos on Facebook or Twitter. The same photos are also posted to http://www.facebook.com/BrianZinchukPublishing/ Feel free to tag and share!
Below is a small sampling of the photos seen in the above galleries.
The call was an interesting one, to say the least. The client needed a brochure for his product, and a video, and all of this had to happen pretty quickly. He was out of the country and would be for several months. Not only would he be out of the country, but soon he would be on another continent! On top of that, he wanted photos for use for an updated web page, and his web page designer was on a third continent, on the other side of the planet. In the meantime, I had holidays coming up soon and I, too, would be out of the country. Would I be able to help him out, and get it done before either of us was on an airplane?
The answer was “Yes.”
It was a big challenge because this would be my first commercial video project.
The company was Gilliss Oil Tools, and the project is for the “Bulldog Clamp.” It’s a mechanical clamp for picking up oilfield tubulars on service or drilling rigs. It sees a lot of use with service rigs. Instead of wrapping a sling around a pipe and then unwrapping it, the clamp grabs on, and then is manually released. It has a safety lock to ensure it will not let go unintentionally. Some people who don’t have this tool actually lift these very heavy pipes by hand.
All-in-all, it’s a pretty useful tool. From the video editing work, I found it takes about 15 seconds to unlock it, move it to the next pipe, and engage it again.
Tabletop photography of the Bulldog Clamp
The photography part was relatively straight forward. I picked up for different sizes of models and brought them home. My kitchen table became a studio, with a white paper backdrop. I also did some tabletop video work, showing how the tool works. After, oh, about 20 takes, including several slow motion takes, I was satisfied with the in-house work.
The next stage was to line up a service rig to visit and film. Dean Gilliss’ son, Logan, did the leg work, and came out with me that day. The conditions worked out very well. It wasn’t too cold, and the cloudy day made for nice soft lighting.
Finally, I went to the plant in Estevan, Axis Services Inc, where they are manufactured and got still and video media there.
The brochure was printed at Del’s Commercial Printing in Estevan. The final result looked amazing.
The excellent website design was done by Tareina Hunt of Nut-Nae Art Websites & Graphics. She has done a substantial number of websites for local businesses and organizations. I recently worked with her on the Captive Oilfield Rentals website, providing photography and a virtual tour. However, during this project Tareina was in the Philippines, 10 time zones away. She used the still photos for the web photo gallery, and included a PDF of the brochure to make it printable anywhere. The focal point of the web design was the video.
I used three video cameras in the shoot. The Nikon D4 did the bulk of the work. I also used two point of view cameras. The GoPro was positioned in several odd angle using the heavy-duty magnetic mount I made for it. I even put it on the clamp itself to get a unique point of view.
The music is a very catchy, manly tune that really drove the video editing process. The clips are timed so that actions occur in time with the beat. The slow-motion occurs during the slow part of the song, and the quick slideshow during the speedy part. I especially like the end, where the welder strikes an arc just as the music crescendos at 4:13. I tried to use a fast-cut editting feel throughout. The video slideshow of still photos, which worked as the underlay for the whole video, is specially done to be in perfect timing with the music. This allowed for very sharp effects for the opening and closing titles.
As someone who has worked with still photography for, well, ever, I have to say, in this case, the video presentation really makes the product shine. Seeing it work immediately shows the potential customers how effective the product is. In a flash, they get it. You see, one, you want one.
Southern Range Rig 8
The testimony by Southern Range Rig 8 driller Clint Law was totally unscripted. I simply asked him what the Bulldog Clamp is and why they used it.
The video was hosted on YouTube. The choice of YouTube was very deliberate. It is universally accessible. It means the web host does not have to deal with different media players or transmitting large video files. It was shot in high definition, and can be viewed in 720p. YouTube is also important for the client because it will allow him to track the analytics very closely to monitor the effectiveness of the campaign. I set up a YouTube channel for the client to make all this happen. Similarly, I set up a Google Analytics account for the client to track the performance of the revamped website.
I spent my week in Vegas attending WPPI 2013 – Wedding and Portrait Photographers International. There I was able to pick up an number of tools and resources that will improve future video work, including professional audio recording equipment meant for work in outdoor conditions. A professional camcorder is in the works, too.
For my first time out, I have to say I am very happy with the results. Already this video has led to two other similar projects planned for this spring. Watch from them here.
Estevan Mayor Roy Ludwig beside his new canvas print for his office. As a miner for 36 years, I am guessing he has been on every inch of territory seen in this photo.
It’s been a pretty exciting week, with several fine art canvases being delivered this week.
First up was one picture that is now hanging in Estevan Mayor Roy Ludwig’s office in Estevan City Hall. It’s an aerial shot that was taken last fall while I was doing another shoot for Panther Drilling. The pilot was kind enough to take me over the Aquistore drilling site near Boundary Dam Power Station.
When I zoomed in on this shot, I was surprised at all that was in it. It basically has everything important to the Estevan economy in one shot.
Boundary Dam Power Station
The Boundary Dam Unit 3 carbon capture plant
Shand Power Station
The Bienfait charcoal facility
Three draglines
Coal haulers
A large mining shovel
A triple drilling rig
The Aquistore injection well, which was the deepest well in Saskatchewan until…
The Aquistore observation well was drilled next door. That’s the well the rig is on in this picture.
Souris River Valley
Farmland
The only thing it’s missing is a pumpjack. I’m sure there are some in the far background, but they are not visible.
This was one of the largest prints I have ever made. It’s 36×48, or 12 square feet. It’s about as big as the door I hung it from to dry after printing. What’s even more remarkable is you need to blow up this picture that large to see all the details I just listed. That’s what amazed me – how much detail can be found in these photos now.
This is the second lobby I have decorated for the Western Star Inn & Suites Chain
The second sale is to Western Star Inn & Suites. I provided several prints, including canvas and metallic paper on gatorboard, for their Carlyle location last year. This is for their new Stoughton location, which just opened. The four prints are, from left to right, CanElson at Stoughton, Vortex 1 at Lake Alma, Panther 4 at Benson, and Betts 1 at Northgate.
The CanElson rig (I’m not sure which one) was photographed just half a mile from the hotel location, southwest of the intersection of Highways 13 and 47. You can see the resulting pumpjack from the breakfast area window.
The large blue print, Vortex 1, is the same size as the mayor’s print – 36×48. The remaining prints are 24×36.
Finally, one of my 24×60 Kisbey fenceposts and three rigs prints was delivered on the same day to a service rig hand who is working near Estevan but staying at the Carlyle Western Star. It’s a copy of the print hanging in that hotel’s lobby. Out of the roughly 400,000 photos I have taken since 2003, that photo has received more interest than any other. It’s my signature piece these days.
My prints were available at Estevan’s Pharmasave until this past Christmas. Watch for more to be available at Ron’s the Workwear Store in Estevan and Weyburn in March. There’s one of the Kisbey fenceposts and three rigs in Weyburn right now. Otherwise, you can contact me directly.
This shoot was a follow up of one I did earlier this year for Canadian Advanced ESP. They make electric submersible pumps as well as horizontal pumps for water handling. (Click here or on the photo above to be taken to the gallery)
The assignment this past spring was to do a virtual tour of their shop in Estevan, as well as a single HPS skid package built by Brent Gedak Welding, also of Estevan. They wanted something to show at the Global Petroleum Show in Calgary in June. The virtual tour was loaded onto a laptop, I believe, for display in their booth.
Later this summer they asked for a follow up shoot of a dual HPS skid package. Apparently they liked the first shoot enough to follow up with a second. It took a while to get all the ducks in a row, but this is the result.
I did some exterior shots in the daylight during the golden hour. But the main focus is the interior. I have to say that the folks at Brent Gedak Welding and Canadian Advanced ESP had it spotless when I arrived. The only dust in the building was what came in on my boots!
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The trouble with shooting during the daylight was the mixed lighting and lack of sharp contrast. I found from the previous shoot that using strobe lights at night made the red really jump out and provided consistent colour and sharp contrast. As a result, I did most of this shoot at night, after sundown. I spent several hours crawling over the skid, getting every conceivable angle I could think of.
The centrepiece of this shoot are the three 360 degree panoramas which can be found at www.zinchuk.ca/CAESPDUAL/. They were added to the initial tour under the headings “Dual HPS 1 2 and 3.”
The first is shot from the centre of the skid, the others at each end. There are numerous popup photos showing details or alternate angles of items like valves, piping and motors.
The addition of the three scenes to the original tour meant some editing of the spooling, test bench and HPS skid scenes to provide links to the new scenes.
Virtual tours like this are rapidly becoming a specialty of mine, and they seem to be in high demand. I use a $1000 tripod head, nodal rail and L-bracket setup to ensure I have the millimetre-accuracy needed for it all to line up. The result is 22 or so 16 megapixel photos all merged into one. That is then reduced in size to be manageable for web viewing. The result it a fully panable and zoomable virtual tour that you can show a client anywhere using the iPhone in your pocket.
The highlight was when I dropped off the thumb drives with the final product. Apparently they were “giddy in Edmonton” when they saw it. It made my day.
I had a recent request for some selections for wall art. As a result, I put together a few of my favourite oilfield shots in this gallery.
Click on the photo to be taken to the gallery. These photos are for sale, so if you are interested in buying one directly from the website, click on the buy button in the top right corner. They are available in photo paper, canvas, or metal prints. My preference is canvas or metal. I’ve been decorating my house with canvases, and they look awesome.
This particular picture is my first choice for a large wall print for a lobby. I used it in the Vortex Drilling album as a 32-inch wide, full two page spread. It was the photo that by far got the most attention from that album when displayed. In the album, the top and bottom quarters were cropped off.
I had a request to take some photos for Canadian Advanced ESP for their display at the Calgary Global Petroleum Show, which is taking place right now. (You can find them in Halls D, E – Booth 7711.)
I suggested doing a virtual tour, a niche form of photography I have recently been specializing in.
In this case, I did three different rooms – the test bench, the spooling area, and a completed horizontal pumping system (HPS) skid.
This tour has a substantial number of pop up photos detailing different features, such as the laser alignment tool and the Megger. I’m not entirely sure what a Megger is, but apparently they are used on nuclear submarines as well, according to a blog I read.
There were initially two versions of the HPS tour, one shot with daylight spilling in the windows, and one using strobes to illuminate the facility. I chose the strobe-lit version because the colours were sharper, the contrast was better, and the detail showed up much better.
To create a 360 degree panorama, each tour involves 18-22 frames shot on a very special and very expensive tripod head/levelling base/nodal rail/L-bracket system. It’s exacting, millimetre accurate work. It then takes Photoshop CS6 about 15-20 minutes to chomp through what turns out to be 22 photos x 16 megapixels = 352 megapixels. That’s truly enormous – so large that I have to substantially reduce the size of the final product so it won’t take forever to load.
The results, however, speak for themselves.
These tours are extremely technical, and therefore I have to charge more for them, but I feel they are worth it, and so do the clients, apparently.
Click on the photo above to be taken to the gallery of photos for this shoot. Click here to be taken to the complete tour. While the tour can be viewed on an iPad or iPhone (perfect for showing a client over lunch or coffee), it’s best viewed full screen, such as on a laptop. To activate full screen, click on the furthest right icon on the menu bar at the bottom of the tour. Your scroll wheel will zoom you in and out.
The Estevan Chamber of Commerce holds an annual leadership seminar at the Estevan Alliance Church. This is a great shot I got from the event. (Click on the photo to be taken to the gallery.)
This photo, believe it or not, was not possible for me to take just a month ago. It was shot at 1/100 of a second, f/2.8, at ISO 6400 at 200 mm with a Nikon D4. The lens was the first generation 70-200 f/2.8 VR with the vibration reduction turned on and a carbon fibre Induro monopod below it.
The noise was cleaned up slightly in Adobe Lightroom, but just slighly. It would have been usable, out of the camera, without noise reduction. Even the ISO 8000 shots I got were quite usable, almost indistinguishable from the ISO 6400 shots.
The reason this photo is remarkable is the lights in this room were turned down so that the participants could see the big screen. The room was very dark, and has no windows. To give you an idea of how much light you need to properly light this room, a few years ago I was asked to take the 50th anniversary photo of the church. I used five strobe lights and a flash, all turned to maxium power and mounted along the walls, to get a good group photo of the whole congregation. When I clicked the trigger, they all went FOOOMP! This shot, in comparison, was taken without a flash.
I’ve shot weddings in many poorly lit churchs, but this one takes the cake. I didn’t think it would be possible to do an adequate job in the Alliance Church (my home church), but it appears that is now the case with the new gear.
Adobe makes the best creative software in the world. They are the industry standard for everything from photo editting (Photoshop, Lightroom), video editting (Premiere Pro) to page layout (InDesign), web editting (DreamWeaver, Flash) and document standardization (pdf via Acrobat). The problem is, this software, when purchased one at a time, is incredibly expensive. Even if you buy the Master Collection of all of it, it’s US$2,599, and needs regular updates.
Starting this week, Adobe is introducting a new pricing structure and system, called Adobe Creative Cloud. You get access to EVERYTHING, including continual upgrades, for the monthly cost of just US$50. When Photoshop itself costs $699 or $999, depending on the version, this is incredibly cheap. Plus, it’s a lot easier to cough up $50 a month than $699 a shot.
For one project, I recently experimented with my new Nikon D4’s video capability. I mixed video from the $7000 D4 with the Flip Video camera I was given at a trade show as a door prize. (My wife Michelle was the A-camera operator while my daughter Katrina ran the B-camera. Spencer provided plenty of opportunities to yell “cut!”)
I did all this video editting with Premiere Pro, the top notch video editting software – good enough to do movies on. But I didn’t feel like dishing out $799 for this one time use, so I just used the 30 day trial version. However, I didn’t finish the project within 30 days, so I was stuck. However, as of this week, I will be able to use the new version of Premiere Pro and finish it up.
The long and the short of it is as of this week, I will have full access to the top of the line photo editting packages at all times. It should make a number of things, like the 360 degree panoramas I have been specializing in recently, much easier to do. The results should be quite impressive, since recently most of my projects have been highly exacting, millimetre precision commercial work. Photoshop CS6 should be a great help.
It took two visits to the field, several visits to the rig up site in Estevan, and well over 30 hours of editting, but I think the results are worth it. This is Betts Drilling Ltd. Rig 1, the first of two rigs this new drilling company has put together in short order. It went to work in southeast Saskatchewan on Nov. 29. Rig 2 is just about complete, and is expected to go to work this week.
The first day I was there just after sun-up, but there was no real nice sunrise to shoot. I stayed the entire day to get the sunset, only to find it, too, was not too great. That necessitated a second trip to the rig at the tail end of my day when I was in the area later in the week. I got there literally three minutes before the sun went down, and got the shots I wanted.
In this shoot I tried to get the scenic nature of the skies, since there aren’t many mountains near where they are drilling. I also focused a lot on the details, from the mud leaping up in little balls on the shaker, to the effort the roughnecks put into removed drill pipe caps.
I also did three 360 degree panoramas, one inside the doghouse, one on the drill floor, and one on the roof of the doghouse. Unfortunately the hoarding around the drill floor limited the view, but perhaps that can be revisitted in the future. These panoramas were the result of using the new Acratech GP ballhead and nodal rail, combined with a Really Right Stuff L-Bracket for the D700. It’s about $1,000 of kit, but I think the results speak for themselves. Stitching of something like 18 photos for each was done in Photoshop, with final adjustment in Lightroom.
Click on the photo to be taken to the gallery. You will be able to see these photos later on Betts Drilling’s website.
The individual photos can be found by clicking on the photo above. Feel free to share them on Facebook! Just click the Facebook share icon on the bottom. Be sure to tag youself, and please tag Brian Zinchuk Publishing.
June 14 was the Estevan Business Excellence Awards, or EBEX, put on by the Estevan Chamber of Commerce. This is one of the top social events for the year. It’s held ever second year in Spectra Place.
Brian Zinchuk Publishing 