5 Weeks (4): TWiT Brickhouse Behind-The-Scenes

And yet another one in the 2012 North American Tour recap marathon:

TWiT Behind The ScenesI don’t know about you, but when it comes to stuff like TWiT, I *love* finding out how things look and work behind the scenes. I love to get my hands deep down into the tech of things, following cables and ending up in the basement where the servers emit their soothing hum around the clock.

Or in short: I’m really really (really) curious and this is my equivalent of taking apart kitchen appliances to find out how they work!

So when I was at the TWiT Brickhouse studio, I couldn’t help but record a little behind-the-scenes video tour, asking John Slanina (jammerb) to show me around.

Also find out where my brick ended up.

Watch the videos: part onetwothree

» more from the 2012 tour

5 Weeks (2): Photo Day at TWiT

Photo Day 2012 at TWiT with Leo Laporte The recap continues. After the Washington D.C. workshop, I continued to San Francisco, or rather north of it to Petaluma in beautiful Sonoma County.

As in previous years, Leo Laporte was super awesome to let me have the TWiT studio again for a few hours to talk to interesting guest from the photography world, including kite aerial photographer Cris Benton. Over three hours of the four-hour event survived as a video on YouTube (but don’t worry if you don’t have the time to watch the whole thing, I will put pieces of it on the TFTTF podcast over the next months)

While up there, I also spent time at the TWiT studio to take a few group shots of the team:

TWiT group shot

» more from the 2012 tour

How good can you operate your camera upside-down?

We’re lucky that we have access to one of the best views during the Toronto Urban Photography workshop. The roof on the building that Sean Galbraith lives in reveals a stunning skyline…

…and a high ledge that my tripod is just a little bit too short for.

Well okay, it’s not too short, but in order to get a proper view of the city, I’d have to fully extend the middle column which for a 2-second exposure is a bit too shaky. So in order to be able to peek over the side and have a solid and stable foundation for longer exposures, I have last year decided to completely collapse the legs of the tripod (very stable!) and hang the camera upside down under it (low center of gravity, also very stable).

Tripiod upside down

As you see, the only potential problem with the setup is that right behind the edge of the railing comes an eleven floor drop, which is why I had the stap hanging this way. During the exposure and the setup, my arm was always through the loop. There was also no wind and no real chance of the tripod being bumped, and the rubber feet did a great job holding it in place. Still, just the slightest bit scary.

But in the end it was worth doing it like that:

Toronto Skyline

What are your unconventional tripod setups?

[sc:workshops]