| The Treetop Walk
Photographed at the Valley of the Giants, near Walpole in Western Australia
at 6.00 am WA local time on Saturday 21st March for
Global Synchronous Shoot #1 of A Wrinkle In Time 2. This shoot was synchronised with 11am Hawaii time. At that instant in time, a horde of photographers around the world were also taking panoramic snapshots of their environment. View the entire global panorama collection at the Wrinkle in Time 2 website.
Location Notes: The Treetop Walk in the Valley of the Giants at Walpole-Nornalup National Park in Western Australia was constructed and is maintained by the Department of Conservation and Land Management, as a unique way for humans to visit these ancient trees while causing the least disturbance to the fragile forest floor environment. The walkway is accessible by both foot and wheelchair. The walk starts at ground level, and climbs upwards via a series of gently inclining ramps. However, at the same time, the Valley drops away dramatically below you, so that while you may only ascend a relatively short distance, at its highest point the walkway is 40 metres above the ground. Hats and cameras dropped over the side at this height are not retrieved.
Shoot Notes: We spent the night before the shoot huddled in a caravan park nearby, listening to the first wild storms of autumn to hit the area. Walpole is at the extreme southwestern end of the Australian continent, and the winds were blowing straight up from the Antarctic. The caravan park owner woke us at about 4.20am for the shoot, although in truth we were so hyped up we had hardly slept. We dressed the kids as warmly as possible, hoping and believing that the worst of the weather had passed. The winds were diminishing, but the world was still a black, stormy void around us when we set foot onto the Treetop Walk with our guide, Chris, at about 5.40 am by torchlight.
We had never been to the site before, and in the darkness we had to guess at what was going to be revealed as the sun came up, and hope that we'd chosen a good location. Our torchlight revealed masses of wet leaves close to us, the ground was too far below us in the darkness to be seen, and we had to guess at the rest of the layout. Geoff set up the tripod by torchlight, huddled under an umbrella in the middle of one of the high spans. At the end of each span is a platform supported by a single freestanding column, up to 40 meters off the ground. Movement is controlled by guy cables to the ground, but the whole assembly sways gently whenever people walk on it. Barb, the kids and Chris stood on the next platform to minimise vibrations during the shoot. The walkway floor is made of steel mesh, so you can see between your feet to the ground below. The leg of the tripod got trapped in the mesh at about 5 minutes to deadline! As Geoff struggled in the dark and rain to free it, he was also worried about dropping his levelling bubble as it would have gone straight through to the ground some 25 metres below.
Geoff shot the first frames in the dimness of the predawn. Blustering winds were tearing apart the low clouds and the lighting changed rapidly as the overcast sky started to open up. Scatterings of rain suddenly stopped as the sun rose and we were finally able to see how far down the ground was below us! Standing 40 meters up in the air amongst the canopy leaves of the giant Tingle Trees at dawn was a magic moment. Crows and other birds sounded the day's arrival but their calls were almost lost in the surging and soughing of millions of wet eucalypt leaves. The combination of dim, highly variable lighting, rain and strong breezes made this shoot technically challenging, but ultimately very rewarding.
We managed to shoot a second node further along the walk before the rain resumed and drove us off the platform, and then visited the Ancient Kingdom Walk, which guides you through the understorey at the feet of these giants.
Acknowledgements: Our thanks to CALM, who gave us exclusive access to the area at this very early hour, thus making this wrinkle possible. Thanks also to Chris Goodsall, our helpful and knowledgable guide, and to Robert Frith, at Acorn Photographics, for the loan of his 17mm rectilinear lens, which gave us such a tall field of view to capture the tall trees.
Technical Notes: Shot with a Canon EOS 620 on Kodacolor Gold III 400 ASA film, using a 17-35mm rectilinear zoom lens set at 17mm. Exposure fixed at 10 sec, f6.7 with flash fill. Camera and camcorder were both liberally wrapped in plastic food wrap to ward off the high humidity. Pano gear: a custom panorama head on a Manfrotto Triminor tripod. We scanned the negs at high resolution, and the resulting panoramic pict, stitched with QTVRAS, was 125Mb! It makes a fine panoramic poster! |
