Sandy Nicholson – Exotic Animals in the Studio II

Once again we had the opportunity to shoot video behind the scenes of one of Sandy Nicholson’s exotic animal shoots. This one concentrated on flight.

To insure that the area of flight was evenly lite, Sandy used the Para 170 with a Pulso Twin Head as the main light. For some of the shots, the Twin Head was plugged into two Scoro A4S to make sure Sandy would have enough power and the quickest recycle time if needed.

GEAR USED ON THE SHOOT:
Para 170	Scoro A4S	Pulso Twin Head

Behind the Scenes

Working with animals can be challenging.

Sandy, along with the handlers from Hands on Exotic, made sure that that all the animals were safe and not distressed by the shoot. Some of the animals, like Ruby (the Eurasian Eagle Owl), are recused animals. Ruby, who has very bad eye sight, would not have survived in the wild. Extra care had to be taken to insure she would fly in the right direction and not into a wall.

On the shoot the crew was serenaded with many songs by Poncho a yellow headed Amazon parrot, ‘Old MacDonald had a farm’ being repeated the most. During the day, one of the packs kept beeping, or at least we assumed it was – only to find out Poncho had copied the recycle beep.

There were some concerns about the flash and the animals, but these animals work with an outreach program so they are around people with camera flashes all the time. The beeping of the packs seemed to distract the animals more than the flash. When the beep bother the animals, it was turned off.

Little known fact about Sandy: He discovered he loved the tarantula’s touch!

“They have such soft feet and when they walk on you it feels like a feather brushing you.”