Duct Tape

I was recently hired to shoot a series of images for a company called FLEX Solutions in Orange County California. FLEX Solutions is an industry leader in the area of 3rd party logistics and their goal was to convey their speed and efficiency to their clients. Motion-filled images were the ultimate goal and the obvious solution towards recording these motion filled images would involve some rather precarious camera positions.
Among the 1520 images I shot over the course of two day’s, about 30% of them of them required attaching the camera to several of the many lift trucks that operated inside their 200,000 sq. foot warehouse. Ask any commercial photographer what one vital tool of their trade is, and the answer will be ‘duct tape’ and on this particular shoot, duct tape was once again KING! With my tripod at full extension, I was able to jam the lower 18” of the legs in between the pallet of Dole Pineapple and after wrapping the legs and portions of the pallet in duct tape, I was “off to the races”.


With my camera and 12-24mm lens mounted securely to the tripod head and as the lift truck driver drove between the many rows of products, I walked in a hurried pace, firing the camera with the attached cable release. With the camera in Aperture Priority mode and with my aperture set to f/22, my exposure times varied between ¼ second and 1 full second. (The light values would vary as the lift trucks ventured down different aisles.) In addition, due to the tungsten lighting that was in the ceiling overhead, I had set my white balance to TUGNSTEN. A number of exposures turned out quite well that day and if I could offer just one piece of advice, duct tape would be it!

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