Michael Mauro shows us what’s in his bag for commercial shoots.

Since we are a small productive company our days are usually packed pretty full.  The day started with a 4:00 am wake-up so that we could get up near Mount Evans for an early morning photo shoot for one of our clients.

iPhone snap…Early Morning Photo Shoot near Mount Evans, a 14,000+ ft. peak west of Denver, Colorado.

The crew…Mike Larson – our “in house” model and graphic artist, Caleb Tkach – photo assistant, Missy Winters – behind the scenes iPhone photographer and myself – the photographer.

Mount Evans Photo Shoot

Then it was back down the mountain to the studio where Mike and Caleb downloaded/keyword/processed the images into the main Mauro Media lightroom library.  I quickly changed my clothes and was off to Derryberry Audio for a Voice Over session.  We are producing a video project for the same client that we had shot stills for earlier in the morning.  Even though we have the ability to record audio in the studio…we always use professional voice talent and a recording studio.

VO recording session at DerryBerry Audio

After we got an amazing read by our voice talent Norm Silver and a sweet sounding recording by Mark Derryberry at Derryberry Audio it was back to the studio to prepare for a dinner meeting.  We’ve teamed up with Tim and Kim Tripp at Grizzly Creek Framing and photographer Jackie Shumaker on a huge booth at a convention here in the Denver Metro area early next year.  The meeting proved to be very productive the show will be here before we know it.

We decided to add another production camera and went with the Canon XF300. We currently have a several Canon DSLRs which we use all the time for our commercial video projects as well as a Panasonic P2 camera for the run and gun ENG style shooting. We did a bunch of research and I read nothing but good about the XF300. One of the big reasons was the fact that it uses the same Compact Flash cards we use in the DSLRs. The camera also has traditional audio inputs and has zoom built in on the lens…two options not available on the DSLRs.

We didn’t go with another P2 mainly because the P2 cards are expensive and we didn’t have the P2 card reader. We have been using the camera to ingest the footage which only comes in on a 400 FireWire and is extremely slow. We have a 800 FireWire card reader for the compact flash cards and this we believe will speed up the footage transfer.

We’ve not had a chance to use the camera yet as the battery is charging. As soon as we get a chance to use it we will post our initial thoughts. Just as a FYI we purchased the camera, two additional batteries, 2-32GB cards, 2-16GB cards…all Sandisk Extreme Pros, a hotshoe shotgun mic holder and a Gepe card vault.

If you are a coffee drinker and you happen to be traveling through Alaska, look for Raven’s Brew Coffee. I found it at the Black Bear Coffee House near the entrance into Denali National Park and Preserve. Another blend (Three Peckered Billygoat) caught my eye but I never made it back to the shop to give it a try. I know this post doesn’t have much to do with media production but it gave me a chance to try out my iPhone word press app on the new Mauromedia blog. And as with most media professionals coffee happens to be almost as important as a working camera in the field. Cheers

As part of our efforts to stay on the leading edge of marketing and technology we just launched our own search-able stock website. http://www.maurostock.com The web has opened many opportunities for businesses especially within the creative field. It wasn’t to long ago that you had to belong to a large stock photo agency in order to reach potential clients. Now with new software and other technology we have the ability to be our own agency. We are not trying to compete with the big agencies that are still around…we see ourselves as being more customer service oriented. Essentially we are using the site to service our existing editorial and corporate clients and hopefully along the way we will be able to pick up a few new clients that find our images on the web. If you would like to see what we are up to visit: http://www.maurostock.com.

maurostock.com

We have been working with SPOT shooting both stills and video for the last 3 or so years.  This ad will appear in a winter gear catalog for 2010.  We shot the image for this ad and Jason Chase-Dobiash at Power Plant Design designed it.

SPOT Satellite Messenger

In addition to the ad campaign we also produced a series of “How To” videos for the new Spot II Messenger.

We just produced this video for a new product launch by DeLorme and shot all the footage exclusively on Canon DSLR’s.

New ad just shot for a new product release by Adventure Medical Kits We shot the image and it was designed by Massive Studios in Bozeman, MT.

AMK's new SOL survival kit

2010 has been a busy and productive year…Spot hired us to produce this piece for a summer online ad campaign.