Chris Garrison Photography: #BTS Behind the Scenes Video

A good while back I was approached by Cory Teunissen with an idea he wanted to do for a long time. We were able to produce one of our favorite images ever, but it did not come easy! Here is our favorite image form the shoot. It was all produced in a single shot with no post processing after.

To save a ton of technical talk on my side, here is the link to the article that Red Bull Photography wrote up on our shoot. Below is also another article that was written up on an outside perspective on the shoot. Be sure to go all the way to the bottom and check out the full BTS video!

Nocturnal Collaboration

Leaders of the Pack At the top of their game, great talents play for keeps. That’s precisely why, if your job is your passion, there is a thin line between work and play. When all the elements come together, the chemical effect is high-tech art. Recently, Australian wakeboard champion, Cory Teunissen lead the charge for this cutting edge night time photo-shoot. Veteran photographer, Chris aka “FlashGarrison” Garrison loaded up the f-stop RedBull “Ajna” bags with the Nikons and Elinchrom Flashes. The team working in close collaboration and synchronicity, would achieve the goal of one epic “Hero”shot. In total, a crew of seven met up with a 150ft Boom Crane, a jet ski, and two Supra Powerboats towed by Yukon XL’s. Thus the elements converged upon The Sunwest Mine.

Dinner time with the team

On Location The Sunwest Mine, better known in the industry as “Gary’s Lake,” is a Limestone Quarry north of Tampa Bay, Florida. The water color takes on a gorgeous blue due to the sediment from mining the limestone. It’s a cool little place in the middle of nowhere, popular in the Wakeboarding world. Central Florida has a numerous variety of lakes, boats, and nice weather with barely any wind. It is headquarters to 90% of professional wakeboarders during the summer season. Cory typically lives in Orlando, Florida along with other Aussies pros, who return “down under” to Australia for the Southern Hemisphere summer at the opposite time of year.

The team working on how close we can get the 20x20 scrims to the water

Setting the Stage Cory’s career started at a young age on water skis, and by age four was on a wake board. He moved on to break numerous records as the youngest person to add a slew of complicated tricks to his repertoire. From the “Switch Toe Side 900” at 13, to landing a “Wake to Wake 1080” at 15. In August of 2016 he won the Nautique WWA Wakeboard World Championships in Toronto. Cory’s current aim is to master double flips. At 19 years-old, he is a three time world champion and trend setter in the sport.
This photo shoot came about through Red Bull Australia who wanted to celebrate Cory’s birthday and championship. Cory had seen a photo effect in a magazine that inspired him to apply it to wakeboarding. There is much more than meets the eye in achieving a shot like this, and it presents a puzzle in need of problem-solving. Award winning photographer, Chris Garrison, is known for his many years experience with extreme action sports and athletes. Cory presented his ideas to Chris, who knew how to accomplish the sophisticated effect using the contemporary yet traditional process. The objective was to create the photographic effect at night, of Cory’s silhouette against a white backdrop, above the crystal clear blue water, with a little bit of smoke.
Before constructing the set, the athlete and photographer went out in the Supra Boats for a warm-up and to investigate the riding conditions. Physical data was to be collected in visualization of where to set the stage on land. Cory was in the zone. He relished the chance to perform for a fun and high-profile gig, without the weight of the contest jersey. The guys on land were unloading the gear and watching boats proximity to shore. The photographer’s boat driver is getting cues from Chris where he wants to be lined up with markers on land. The athlete’s boat driver is following cues from both Cory on where the launch area is, and keeping the right focal length from the photographer’s boat. The jet ski driver and lighting assistant followed in the wake behind Cory and his boat.

The backside of the setup

The Problem and The Solution Quite a bit of planning would go into putting all the ingredients together. With every penny of the hefty budget spent and error factors ruled out to a minimum, the weather took a turn to the unexpected. As fate would have it, the normally calm and windless lake was now experiencing a storm front with 15-20mph winds.
Originally there was going to be four 20x20ft scrims for the white backdrop. It took every sandbag, every heavy duty light stand, the 150ft boom crane, every ground anchor, and plus they went out and bought extra rope to tie down to the rental cars. Yet, with only two of the 20x20ft white background scrims, they were still lifting off the ground. In the case of the smoke machine, the wind actually helped. The smoke spread out nicely to fill in the gaps between and around the tops and sides of
the white backgrounds.
The amount of details that needed to be conveyed between the drivers, athlete, photographer, and light assistants was crucial. Luckily, everyone was in shouting distance of each other. With half the previously planned backdrop in use, the shoot’s inherent challenge became twice as intense. Cory and Chris surveyed the situation and discussed logistics from where to launch airs to where to shoot from. When the rider went to connect with the wake, (the kicker or take of zone) he had not much more than a 6 inch area to nail it. If he was a foot off, he was already outside of the white background scrim area. Although everything had been planned to a T, the rare weather occurrence could not have been foreseen or else a different day would’ve been scheduled.

Cory digging one out on the way back

Technical De-construction Perhaps the most important technical aspect of this shoot were the flashes, and FlashGarrison has his nickname for a reason. He’s established a reputation for his own brand of stylized and mind-bending technique. To capture fast action with limited
light is no small feat. Six Elinchrom ELCs were employed to do sequences and experiment with rapid burst and advanced functions for various style shots.
The front-lit shots for the sponsors required Elinchrom Rangers providing heavy duty portable batteries for full power flash. A lighting assistant on the athlete’s boat handled a flash and battery setup to make sure Cory was fully illuminated for his split second grab in air. The jet ski driver followed behind with the second assistant to have the flash synced from both sides. Chris took his shots from a front angled perspective of Cory in the air. Essentially, you have a boat that’s running parallel to the shore. The closer Cory is to the white scrim background on the shore, the easier it is for Chris to get the shot lined up. From 100ft deep offshore, it drops to only 60ft at the shore, allowing Cory’s boat to go right along the shoreline. In pitch dark night, they’re coming from the black area straight into the light. The boat driver is going about 22mph, and has to drive straight past the background, through the lit area, go into the dark again, do a U-turn and come back through. From the athletes perspective, he has a 6-12inch area where he has to boost off the wake. He must get in the air and do his trick in the proper location, perfectly framed in either the upper right or upper left of the white backdrops. The athlete can barely see the little bit of white water from the wake and splash. Once he’s in the air, and moving at 30+ mph, all he can see is a little bit of white water below to try and land it. It is definitely visually hard on the athlete.
Likewise, in pitch dark, the photographer had to manage his gear, focus on the athlete, and make sure all the strobes fire. For focal point and perfect framing, Chris’ boat had to be perfectly centered between both the scrims and then within a 25 to 40ft area between themselves and Cory’s boat. There’s another concept that most people won’t get when shooting on land, at night, with lights. Whether it’s snow, or cement, or grass; a lot of that reflects light. Water absorbs light. You can
see a boat perfectly bright. However for the photographer shooting towards the set, and the athlete lining up his marks, they’re really only seeing essentially 10% of that light when the lights are on.
Plus being on the water, there’s not much benefit in using a tripod! The wind issue required tricky positioning for the photographers boat driver. The lake is 100ft deep, so there is nothing to anchor to. He’d have to go into wind and turn it sideways, letting it drift into the 5ft shot zone as the Cory’s boat was driving into it’s location. Technically, getting the 10-12 strobes to consistently fire on every image over distance and water also required workarounds. Using the Elinchrom Skyport Transmitter on his Nikon, when Chris clicks the shutter, a wireless signal triggers the strobes both on land and on the Jet Ski following behind Cory’s boat.
After due diligence and tons of tries to get the timing and angle just right, there was mutual confidence that the goal was achieved. The final shots turned out epic and if you didn’t know how it was done, you might think it was Photoshop magic. On the contrary, the end results indeed represent the height of modern digital photography combined with years of traditional experience. The crew of nine, worked from afternoon to 4am to get that one “Hero” shot they were after; the silhouette photo
with the perfect blue strip of water, white background, and perfect timeless stance.

A version with a single 20x20 scrim

It worked! Over the course of the intense around the clock production, it was only through close teamwork that success was realized. Chris was beyond impressed with the group synergy. He explains: “We showed up in the day with Cory’s original idea and hung out for a bit to visualize our strategy. We went out on to do a little riding session to get to know the lake, where to set the location up, the wind direction, and all that fun stuff.”
If you do the math, a crew of 7 times a 25 hour shift and you have a substantial unified effort going focused on each shot. “It’s a big team effort,” says Chris, “You know, not only between the athlete and photographer. The boat and ski drivers, the light assistants, the smoke machine guy... there is so much work that’s going into it.” When asked if their were any memorable quotes of the day, Chris suggested, “Is it gonna work? (Laughing)” Elaborating further he says, “The set up was about 80% of the battle anyways. It was the hardest thing I’ve set up in while, for sure.” He estimated that all the marks were hit in unison on an average of 1 in 20 tries. There were about 5-8 passes that because of
the limited, back-lit lighting, plus the fast moving subject, the camera couldn’t lock focus to trigger the shutter. “You’ve already got the factor where the athlete may not be in the right location,” said Chris, “the shooters boat may not in the right location, focus is a massive issue. You want to take every factor you have and push it to the side. You want to try to narrow everything you can, and control everything that you can when it comes to error factors.”

Cory goes Sunwest from Red Bull Photography on Vimeo.

The Author
Moolar (Moo Man) Devar is a self-proclaimed “eccentric,” and digital nomad. You may find him
in a far flung surf camp, trading websites and design work for beach front lodging in either prime
or off season.

Additional BTS images