Heliskiing portrait shoot: Behind the scenes with Darren Hull and Tim Feeny on assignment for Canadian Business Magazine

Vancouver photographer Darren Hull had an assignment recently that took him up to Revelstoke, BC to shoot some environmental portraits of the President of Mica Heliskiing, Paul Norrie. It was a great assignment for Canadian Business Magazine and Darren wanted to document the shoot with a behind the scenes video. All it took was one quick message to videographer Tim Feeny, and he was on board to capture a BTS video of the adventure.

Feeny shares his account of the shoot below:

Weather was terrible on either side of this day so we couldn’t have timed it any better. As the video shows, it was blue skies, light clouds and light wind — ideal conditions for a shoot, let alone flying a helicopter. Pilot Matthew Callaghan, safely flew us up amongst the glaciers and landed in an open spot called Tilley Basin which set the backdrop for the shoot. Things started out relatively warm and dry but we ended on a cold and wet note — all of which made for the best shots of the day.

Huge thanks to Darren Hull for his skills and invitation. Another massive thanks goes to Darryn Shewchuk of Mica Heli for being the GoPro handler for the shoot. It added such a great element to the film having some behind the scenes documented. Finally, the shoot wouldn’t have happened without the talented pilot Matthew and of course our subject, Paul.

For the still photos Hull says he used one Canon 5D mark III and one 5D Mark II. Everything was shot with a 15mm f/2.8, a 24mm f/1.4, and a 85mm f/1.2. He also used a 580EX II flash for some of the portraiture (off camera flash) and a 600EX-RT flash on camera.

Given the logistics of the shoot, the video gear had to be light as well, so Feeny says he only brought the necessities:

2 Canon 7D’s
1 Canon 5DM2
2 GoPro’s
Manfrotto Tripod
Glidetrack Hybrid
24-70mm f/2.8
70-200mm f/4.0
10-22mm f/3.5-4.5
Sennheiser lav and shotgun with boom (Rycote Softie for wind noise)
Zoom H4N

Credits:

Video // Tim Feeny // limelightstudios.co
Photo // Darren Hull // darrenhull.com
Heli // Mica Heliskiing // micaheli.com
Music used with permission through freemusicarchive.org
Artists // Co.fee – “Calabash” and Broke For Free – “Something Elated”

Be sure to watch for the photo feature in an upcoming issue of Canadian Business Magazine // canadianbusiness.com