I first met Ethan at the Strobist CERN workshop a couple years ago. Since then we’ve both grown our photographic styles and meet up for a coffee in Zurich to bounce ideas off one another from time to time. I’ve been getting into video and short film production, and Ethan was interested in doing a video project on his work. So it was a natural thing to make a video together about his photography. The goal was to do a behind-the-scenes video during a shoot, and then bring that together with the story behind the images. After the Dancing with Water shoot, I dropped by his apartment and filmed him talking about his work and the images from the shoot. During the shoot I also shot some footage of one of the dancers, Alexa, coming in and out of the water and put together a shot film called Birth-Kraft. Basically I just took everything I learned from watching Vincent Laforet on his CreativeLive film workshop, and produced this short video of Ethan Oelman and his photographic vision.

I had a wonderful time producing and shooting this video. I was getting intimidated a bit watching the CreativeLive workshop, but once you break things down to the essentials and put together the essentials of what you need for your project, all you need is to focus on your vision and forget about the rest. To see more of Ethan’s work, check out his website, Ethan Oelman Photography.

Tech Details

For those who are interested, the footage was shot with my Sony NEX-VG10, using a couple of different lenses including a Mamiya 645 80mm f/2.8 both on a tripod and using the Jag35 Field Runner rig. I used a Manfrotto 501 fluid head when on a tripod. The audio was recorded using an old Zoom H4 and was synced to the original footage using the Dual Eyes software. Everything was cut together in Final Cut. I’m looking forward to picking up a lapel microphone and also a shotgun mic to improve my audio gathering capabilities on future projects. The music is from Moby Gratis.