This was a shot I had always wanted to do and there had been many hours thinking about it. The location is Trout Pool Falls on the Kaituna river, a spot in my home town of Rotorua, New Zealand. This drop is quite dangerous and if you get it wrong you can be stuck in the hole going around and around – not a place you want to swim out of your kayak.
Elite kayaker Mike Dawson and I had been discussing trying to create something cool, something different. He wanted to run the drop in his slalom boat; I wanted to shoot at night and light it up. So after some planning we headed to the river at 5pm to set up lights, generator, smoke machine and camera gear.
It was a bit of a mission carrying all the gear in but totally worth it. Multiple powerful high speed flashes were used as well as gel filters. We got some attention from a few people as they could see smoke coming up out of the river in the distance so they came to investigate. We shot until midnight, Mike ran the drop in the dark a bunch of times and was tired and cold but was stoked with the result.
The camera I used for this shot was a Canon EOS 5D Mark III with a Canon EF24-70mm f/2.8L II USM. The focal length was 30mm. Flashes were fired by RF remotes.