Well this was awesome. Lara wanted to use the big umbrella on the boom for a baby shoot today. I had it all set up but Lara needed it to be lower to the ground, so we started to fiddle and twist to get the umbrella low enough and at the right angle.
If you don’t know about these Matthews booms, if you tighten the knob to the right and then press down on the boom clockwise you can make them really REALLY tight. If you do this in the correct position, the boom won’t sink at all. But you know how it goes, with enough leverage you can move the moon, right? With enough leverage, you can snap that metal boom connection and send your studio into a mild panic, especially when the client is due to arrive in five minutes.
Yeah I totally destroyed that thing.
Man if only you could have seen the looks on our faces.
But, as they say, the show must go on. We still had a baby shoot in five minutes, and we still needed to use our big giant umbrella, and I didn’t feel like standing there holding the boom for the entire shoot, so out came our trusty hand cart, the gaff tape, and two 15lb sandbags.
I am so proud of this. If I could use this for everything, I would. I immediately named it “The Baby Battering Ram.” If you’ve ever wondered why I’m not the photographer, I’d like to draw your attention to the top left corner of that photograph. Yeah that’s my finger.
Fig 1. Gaff tape detail. I cannot tell you how much I love this stuff.
Fig 2. Gaff tape detail. I actually gave some thought to what color I’d use. It was a baby shoot, so I went with white.
And here’s The Baby Battering Ram in action.
This is a marvelous rig as long as our subjects are less than about 18″ tall. Sorry Hobbits, not for you.
I can’t tell you how satisfying it was to maneuver the cart with the caster wheels in the front to get the light at the right angle. Super stable too with the weight of the cart and 30lbs of counterweight. It moved so nice that I wanted to roll it out the front door and take it for a spin around the block.