thrills per minute

(click image to enlarge)

This last fall I was asked by a client to come up with an interesting image that featured a transportation company’s truck for a yearly poster size calendar. We talked about some nice scenic shots with fall colours and waited for approval. Well, things got busy for everyone and unfortunately there was no groundhog to tell us that winter was to arrive early this year.

Before we knew it there was snow on the ground and the fall foliage was long gone. I didn’t think they were going to go for an 18-wheeler with chains on following a snowplow so I needed to rethink the original idea. The shot needed to have empty space reserved for the actual calendar (Damn!) so I came up with a sketch that showed a dynamically blurred road with a truck coming forward. The client liked the idea so we arranged to shoot a truck the next weekend. Time was running out. My idea was to drive my minivan ahead of the truck and shoot out the open hatchback at a high rate of speed to get some nice motion blur.

A couple of days before the shoot I headed up a remote highway with the hatchback open to make sure the hatch wouldn’t slam shut while I was shooting. I felt like a test pilot as I pushed the van to cruising speed and enjoyed the 100kph wind blasting my thinning hair. I decided this was probably good enough and besides, I didn’t want to lose any of the unsecured child booster seats that were being tossed about in my mobile wind tunnel.

As luck would have it, the snow had melted and so on appointed date my client and a likable, wild haired trucker named Willy showed up with his beautiful Peterbilt at the local weigh scale. He was proud of his rig and had the right to be. After a few minutes of us buffing the bling, we took a few still safety shots from the same angles I was planning on shooting on the road. I had taken the booster seats out of the van and positioned the tripod in the back as close to the rear as possible.

My high-energy friend Mike agreed to drive the van while I took pictures. Mike gauges life experiences in the adrenaline charged TPM scale (thrills per minute). “Motorcycling gets double the TPM score of mountain bike riding,” he says as he tries to convince me to take up motorcross. For a minute, I thought of the possibility that the camera and I could somehow bounce out the back of the van and into the path of the tailgating semi. I wonder what his TPM score would be for that? I only had enough seatbelt for either the camera rig or me and in the end the $6000 camera got the belt. I could hang on to the camera if needed, I thought. I knew Mike’s considerable driving skills and concern for safety wouldn’t let me down, I just hoped I wouldn’t get pulled over by the police.

I planned to, but didn’t bring, my walkie-talkies so we resorted to the well-known international water-ski hand signals for faster, (thumbs up) and slower (thumbs down). Luckily, “Hit it!” and “skier down” were not needed. We made our way out of town with me giving Willy lots of thumbs ups while I shot away. He didn’t seem to want to get too close, perhaps he knew Mikes’ driving capabilities better than I did.

We reached the turn around point under cloudy skies but as we made our way back towards town the sun came out and backlit the vehicle. I signaled Willy and Mike to straddle the centerline to get it in the frame. Click.

As we were shooting a vehicle came along side the truck riding the horn, waving and motioning for us to pull over. “Great!” I thought, as our little convoy slowed down and came to a stop on the side of the road. This guy is going to report me to the police for obstructing traffic and seatbelt violations. It turned out the guy that pulled us over was one of Willy’s trucker friends and his young family. After they ribbed him for being a supermodel, we all exchanged pleasantries and finished off the shoot without incident.

You can plan everything out but in the end circumstances or Mother Nature might not cooperate. Sometimes things just fall into place and when you are there to take advantage of it, the TPM score can be pretty high.

Bill Frymire