• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
•  

A good friend of mine Michael Muller has been working on this series for the Travel Channel on sharks  as a photographer and filmmaker.  I’ll be making sure to tune in on December 18th on the Travel Channel to watch this episode – here’s an official  description of it followed by  a quick Q&A with Michael that we did over e-mail – definitely sounds like a super exciting project mixed in with some very fun photography and filmmaking toys! In this special, Mike seeks eight different species of sharks all converging in Fiji. Mike and his crew are high tech “MacGyver’s”, building big toys to get the perfect shot! They are bringing the Hollywood Photo Studio 70 feet underwater to capture these one-of-a-kind photos. The stakes are high; Mike and his crew risk it all to capture images that will shatter all of our misconceptions about the elusive shark.

SHARK SHOOT:  FIJI

Hollywood photographer Michael Muller goes on the adventure of a lifetime – up close and personal with the world’s wildest animals in the world’s wildest places. Through Mike’s unique, irreverent, unprecedented point of view, you’ll see animals, places, and people in an entirely new way. He’s in constant demand as one of the top Hollywood photographers, creating famous portraits of stars like Brad Pitt, Scarlett Johansson and Robert Downey, Jr. But Mike is more interested in a different kind of elusive subject for his camera. In fact, Mike wants us to get to know the real celebrities on this planet – and he’ll do whatever it takes to show us how passionate he is about his cause.

Together with his eclectic group of friends and fellow adventurers, Mike creates all kinds of specialized rigs, shooting platforms and lighting apparatuses to get the job done. These contraptions allow him to get as close as humanly possible to his unpredictable and extremely dangerous subjects – making it possible for Mike to swim with great white sharks, run alongside cheetahs on the attack, plunge into active volcanoes, dive with polar bears hunting seals, fly into the heart of a killer storm, or put himself between a mama grizzly bear and her cubs. In a nutshell, if we’ve ever been told NOT to do something – that’s exactly how Mike plans to do it. Why? Because Mike has the determination, imagination and mad skills to do what others aren’t willing, or able, or brave enough to do. Mike’s goal is to convince the world that there’s more to these amazing creatures than typically meets the eye – but he needs to get the perfect shots to prove it.  

Every mission means another location and a whole new set of challenges. Mike’s busy work schedule means that they only have a limited amount of time to come up with a strategy, build their rigs, travel to the location, set up their equipment, get the perfect shot and get back in time for Mike’s next assignment. Balancing his Hollywood career with his passion for high adventure and protecting animals is what keeps Mike’s life interesting, and always on the edge. SHARK SHOOT is an adventure series that takes the audience to some of the most exotic locations in the world for a unique perspective on animals, places, people and our place in the world. Mike Muller and his friends combine intriguing challenges, exploration of exotic environments and the thrill of the hunt with a quest to help us experience – and therefore appreciate – the natural world in an entirely new and deeper way. 

VL: Can you tell me a little more about the background to the story – and what the show is about? 

MM: The show follows me and my team shooting sharks with 1200watt strobes that I invented with Lee Peterson and Erik Hjermstad.  The gear allows me to bring a full blown studio to animals in their natural habitat.  It is a process driven show that documents me and my guys trying to figure out how to shoot in ways that have never been done before.  Overcoming Monsoon conditions, broken gear, and everything else mother nature and man could throw at us.  It was the most gratifing shoot I have ever done, to be surrounded by 40+ very hungry bull, Tiger, and other species of sharks with NO protection at depths of 70-80 feet using lights, etc,  Nothing has topped it in my 25 years of shooting.
VL:  Is this the first of a series? MM: This is the first of many expeditions that will take place above and below the water.  This episode is running as a "speacial" and we are working on the getting the series underway. VL: With all of the "Shark" series out there – what makes this one different?MM: No one has ever photographed sharks with 2600 to 4800 watts of lighting because these lights did not exisit until we made them.  When you see these sharks lit up with strobes, it shows them in a way people have never seen before.  You can see some sharks using these lights on my websitewww.mullerphoto.com. As for equipment, PHASE ONE gave me the FIRST 180IQ that was in the US to take with me….under water in one of the most amazing housings I have ever used called a Nauticam (http://phaseoneunderwater.com/  )which is mind blowing.  PHASE ONE has been sponsoring me for over a year now.  For SLR I use Canon with a Subal Housing system. Equipment is key when your working in these conditions. You can check out a bunch of fun behind the scenes videos on the Travel Channel site.

LED Lighting will continue to grow in my opinion and become a greater and greater part of how we light things in the cine/docu/photo world.  To date a major limitation has been power…  most LED cannot output enough light to fight daylight.   But as you’ll see in the upcoming year or two – that barrier is about to be breached.    That makes things very interesting as we will need to rely a bit less on hot lights (literally burning hot lights) as well as generators as many of these lights can be adapted to work of batteries such as the Anton Bauer Dionics all the way up to the big Anton Bauer "lunch box."
 

Litepanels has recently released two new lights that are pretty cool for filmmakers.  The first is the Sola 4, which is the younger sibling to the Sola 6, a DMX controllable light, with an embedded touch screen.  And while the Sola 4 does not have the touchscreen control, it does have DMX input for control from a lighting board which can make this a pretty versatile tool especially if you don’t have easy physical access to the light.   What I find of particular interest for filmmakers is that they are fresnel lights, which are a staple of Hollywood and the film industry.  They are named "fresnel" for the lens that the lights have at the front of their casing.  This lens provides a uni-directional source that can be more accurately controlled than say the 1×1 Series lights, which are less controllable in terms of how focused the light is.  A significant improvement over traditional fresnel lights is of course the fact that these lights are LED – so they don’t get incredibly hot.  A Traditional 1k fresnel pulls 1000W of power out of the wall, and outputs an equivalent amount.  The Sola 4 pulls just 30W from the wall, and outputs up to 300W (the Sola 6 is 75W/650W).  You can also dim these light from  0 – 100% brightness, which is not possible on traditional 1k fresnels unless you have a separate ballast.   Therefore these lights give you a pretty incredible level of control relative to traditional lights.

The other light is called the Croma.  This light appears to be an evolution of the MicroPro.  Like the MicroPro it is either stand- or camera-mountable, can be run off AC power or AA batteries, draws 9W of power, and outputs approx. 50W of soft LED light.  The added advantage of the Croma is its adjustable color temperature (like the 1×1 Bicolors) – from 3200 to 5600 degrees (tungsten to daylight).  Also like the MicroPro, this light seems to be most valuable to documentarians or photojournalists in run n’ gun shooting conditions.  However, with the aid of the Croma, they will now be able to adjust the temperature of their camera-top light so that it can match the ambient light and look more natural.   I’m not as in love w/ the design of the Croma as I am with the MicroPro (it’s built like a tank – or a brick to be more accurate) but the ability to adjust color temperature is a big plus…  to some AAs may also be welcome.   Like the MicroPro it does have a 1/4-20 mounting port on the base of the unit.