Best Camera Angle – Bo Bridges’ first photo shoot with Big Geek, a five-foot long, radio controlled helicopter, didn’t end well. The plan was for underground skateboarder Saul Weber to hit a curb, slide down a rail, jump off a picnic bench and then, round a telephone pole and make a speed run back down the course. The shoot was set up in an empty parking lot off Aviation Boulevard in north Redondo Beach. Rob Moscato of Gyro Hobbies in Laguna Beach was at the RC controls. Bridges directed Moscato to fly a few feet behind and a few feet over the head of the skater.
The first half of the run went well. But then, as Big Geek began its pursuit of Weber back down the course, it smacked into a telephone pole.
“Depth perception problem,” pilot Moscato explained.
Bridges’ $5,000 Canon and Moccato’s $10,000, hand built, one-off copter were destroyed. But that wasn’t the bad part.
“I was thinking if the camera card recorded the crash it would have been worth it. I rushed the card back to my studio, and the early images were good. But the crash images wouldn’t render,” Bridges said.
Barnstorming RC pilots
Mounting cameras on radio controlled helicopters isn’t new.
Bridges said he first heard about it five years ago when the Crusty Demon photography team used one to video Motocross X Games star Brian Deegan doing his Mulisha Twist (360) jump. Unfortunately, Deegan flew too high, or the copter too low and he ended up with a blade slicing through his protective gear into his shoulder bone.
Since then, according to Moscato, who built Big Geek with partner Chris Cloutier, RC pilots and their helicopters have gotten better.
In January, shortly after the telephone crash, Bridges, Moscato and Cloutier met up with former Mira Costa surf star Dayton Silva at the El Segundo Jetty on an evening with overhead surf and a crimson sunset.
Moscato lifted off Big Geek II from an improvised heliport on the rock jetty with Bridges’ new Canon D5 mounted in the nose. For the next hour, with touchdowns to change batteries every 10 minutes, Big Geek hovered over Silva like a lovesick seagull. The images from that day, of Silva hugging the jagged jetty as he paddles out, and riding long, swooping waves back to the beach, have a dream-like quality that could only have been captured by a camera floating overhead.
“You can’t get that perspective from the beach, or even from a pier,” Bridges said. “Even for land sports, though you can get overhead shots with a cherry picker or scissors lift, you can’t follow the athlete the way you can with a copter.”
Above and Beyond
Bridges said shooting from the air comes naturally to him because he got his start in photography doing aerial shots for Realtors.
Inspired by his father, who held a private pilot’s license, Bridges took up flying while majoring in photography and minoring in marine sciences at the University of Miami.
Soon, he was banking his Cessna at low altitudes and pointing his camera at the ground through the open window.
“I was looking for abstract designs – cornfields, water skier trails… Then one day I shot our house, which was on a lake in northern Tampa. My dad suggested I try to sell the photos to our neighbors. Within an hour, I had made $1,200.”
His Above and Beyond Photography’s clients soon included ReMax, Prudential and Century 21.
“The only way to photograph the inter coastal homes in Sarasota, St. Pete and Clearwater, with their circular drives, tennis courts, pools and docks, was from the air,” he said.
After two years, Bridges had saved up enough money to accept an invitation from two girlfriends to stay with them in Vail, Colorado.
“I told myself I’d give it a month. If I didn’t find a job in photography, I’d go back home. Or to Alaska to become a bush pilot. Or to the Caribbean to become a dive master. I just wanted to keep my options open in case I couldn’t make a living as a photographer,” he said.
He found a photo job on his second day in Vail, processing tourists’ pictures in a one-hour photo lab.
To supplement his income he resumed taking aerial photos for Realtors.
“I’d fly out of Leadville, the highest elevation airport in North America. You have to take off early in the morning, when the air’s heaviest. To reach Vail, you have to fly over Mt. Holy Cross, which is 14,000 feet, which is where you start needing oxygen. Even when it was clear, you could run into a wind shaft and the plane would suddenly drop 20 feet. My palms would get so sweaty that I’d open the little vent that Cessna’s have over the windshield to blow dry my hands. The only place to make an emergency landing was the interstate or the side of a mountain. I wasn’t comfortable with it and didn’t do it for long,” he said.
Instead, he began assisting Rex Keep, the owner of the photo lab, on shoots.
“World Cup skiing, visiting celebrities, the Bolshoi Ballet, golf tournaments, restaurants, architecture, interior design. We did a bit of everything for the next two years,” he said.
Then Bridges went out on his own and began to land clients who required him to travel internationally.
One day, in 2001, on his way to Tokyo, he had a two day layover in Los Angeles.
“A friend took me surfing in Manhattan and we ended up at the Hermosa pier. I was trying to decide between moving to Los Angeles or New York because I needed access to an international airport, and to assistants and equipment, which are hard to find in Vail.”
Surfing settled it. He moved to Hermosa Beach. Bridges began surfing as a kid in Florida, and surfed throughout Europe and North Africa during high school when his dad moved the family to Switzerland. During college, he spent a year abroad in Sydney, Australia, surfing with the notorious Bra Boys, made famous by the recent film of the same name.
The move to Hermosa proved beneficial, professionally, and personally. He met his wife Susan in Vail while pitching her for assignments on the Ford Downhill Series/Jeep King of the Mountain. Since moving to Hermosa the couple has had two children, Kai, 6, and Tosh, 4. A third child is on the way.
As action sport companies expanded into apparel, they needed modeling shots for catalogues, print ads and web sites, which meant more work for Bridges. His client list grew to include Oakley, Rip Curl, Nike, Red Bull, Coors, Pepsi, Mountain Dew and Target.
Three years ago, he opened a 3,000 square-foot gallery in downtown Hermosa Beach for studio shoots and to exhibit his photos and work by other artists.
Bridges’ oversized images on the 20-foot-high gallery walls show motocross riders spinning across the sky, volleyball players with their feet in the sand and heads in the clouds and big wave riders Garrett McNamara and Kealii Mamala surfing mountainous waves created by calving glaciers in Alaska,
“I like there to be an edge to my work, for my subjects to be on a pedestal, to appear heroic or iconic,” he said.
Bridges photos are also notable for his signature lighting.
Most photographers set up their lights in a fixed position. If they are shooting action sports, they mount the lights where they hope the athletes will pass by.
Bridges gives radio controlled Pocket Wizard lights to his assistants and has them move with the subjects.
To photograph bicyclists on the Tour of California, he shot from a motorcycle while an assistant lit the riders from a chase car. At the Spyder Snow Fest in Hermosa Beach last December, Bridges shot from the top of the snowboard run, into the sunset, and positioned his lighting assistant at the jump, midway down the course. The images he captured showe flash lit, tack sharp snowboarders flying into a naturally lit sunset.
For his next shoot with Big Geek II, Bridges has asked Moscato and Cloutier to bring along a back-up Big Geek. Big Geek II will carry the camera and Big Geek III the lights.
Bridges won’t have to worry about telephone poles, but the shoot won’t be without risk. The shoot will take place over flat water in either Hawaii or the Bahamas for the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week.
Don’t miss Bo Bridges’ helicopter photos and video.
