Saturday, January 30, 2010

Venoco






Many times photography can lead to unexpected adventures. I've shot politicians, sports stars, and musicians from the front row of concerts. These are some images of my biggest adventure to date. They are of an off-shore oil rig I shot this past summer. I was working for a magazine at the time and they were doing a story on a company that operates oil rigs just off the Santa Barbara coast. I gave them a call to see if I could come down and take some pictures. It just so happened that later that week they were giving a tour of one of their rigs as well as doing some aerial photography, so I asked if I could come along. They said yes. So, a few days later I found myself riding in a boat at 5 am and then hanging out of a helicopter taking photographs. This was both my first time taking a boat out on the ocean and riding in a helicopter. I thought there was a possibility that everything could go terribly and I might just wind up being sick the whole time. Luckily, that was not the case. I wound up getting the cover shot and the images were featured on the magazine's web site.