SPOTLIGHT - Mexico
A few quick phone calls, a booked flight and before I knew it I was scheduled to go to Mexico to document a desert sheep hunt for the great folks at Mathews Archery. It seems as a freelance photographer many projects come out of the blue and being able to quickly adapt and jump on a trip often makes the difference between landing gigs and not. On this trip I think I was #2 on the short list and having availability and an immediate “Yes” response to the trip meant it was set in stone before I knew it.
Flying over the Grand Canyon en route to Phoenix and then Mexico.
Now this would be my first time to Mexico. Honestly I was most stoked to eat the food but being able to document my first desert sheep hunt would also be rad. Now on International trips like this it’s always wise to be aware of travel restrictions when going from country to country. In this case we would only be allowed one checked back on our flight from the US to Mexico. Now for this trip it wasn’t an issue but definitely don’t overlook the small details prior to packing your gear and getting to the airport.
Here’s my gear kit that I traveled with. One checked bag and two carry-ons.
In our Online Course we cover travel gear and how we pack for trips like this but I’ll touch on it briefly here. A few notes, all lithium batteries must go in your carry on and you want to take enough gear in your carry-on that you could shoot for a few days if your main checked bag was delayed. My carry-on gear consists of two pieces:
Stone Glacier Solo Backpack - This had my rain gear, an extra pair of sock/boxers, a extra base layer, headlamps, drone, computer and hard drives, an audio gear, binos, first aid kit and anything else I’d need to have on me to survive a few days in the field if my checked bag didn’t show. Now this bag is a touch large for some overhead bins on smaller planes so I try to not max it out. To this point I haven’t been hassled but expect to get a few weird looks as you attempt to cram it into an overhead bin.
Pelican iM2300 case - This has been a workhorse for me and carries all the essential camera gear. It’s primarily camera body, extra lenses, batteries, sd cards, and cleaning equipment.
My checked bag is a SITKA Gear Nomad duffle. It works great but it’s definitely not waterproof. If you’re getting to your destination and your gear is going in an open truck bed expect your gear to get wet if it’s raining hard. I’d prefer something waterproof if I purchased a new bag for this purpose. For this trip, this bag had my tripod, energy bars, water filter, extra layers, boots (i wore a pair of shoes I could hunt in otherwise I would have worn my boots), 2nd camera body, and any other assorted small gear. Just make sure it weights 50 pounds or less (or whatever the weight requirement is by your airline).
Morning #1 filming sheep up on the mountain.
On this shoot my primary focus was to document Joel’s desert sheep hunt for a future film Mathews will be producing around Joel and his time with Mathews and his hunting endeavors along the way. He was the first employee at the company and spending a week with him was a great time. Hearing his stories and learning about Mathews early days was awesome, especially now that they still are carrying the torch as strong as ever. Back to camera nerd stuff. There’s not a shoot I go on where I don’t shoot photos and video. Now that poses a problem since the two ideally are shot differently from a settings and gear standpoint. You can make it work obviously but it’s more tedious than shooting just one or the other. Case in point, the ideal frame rate I’d shoot on something like this is 24fps for video. That means I shoot a Variable ND (to reduce light) most of the time so I can keep my shutter down to 2x my frame rate so in this case 1/50s. The variable ND also allows me to shoot f2.8 in the bright sun and keeping my shutter slow at that 1/50s mark. But let’s say there’s a 400mm lens on and I film a clip at 1/50s. Now I want to immediately switch to photo. On the Sony’s this is harder than my Nikon just FYI. For that same photo I need to shoot ideally a shutter speed of 1/500s+ So I have to then adjust both my shutter and aperture to shoot that photo. Now that takes a few seconds and that’s a lot of time in a photographer’s world. Capturing pivot moments in the field is key so having to make this hurdle means some missed shots. That’s the trade off in the shoot both game though, we’ll take it.
The million dollar wall. Deadheads found on the ranch over the years.
Driving and glassing long distance was the name of the game.
On this hunt, the primary way to go about locating sheep was driving and glassing from the roads to cover country and look over rams. Highly effective but a bit of a tough subject to shoot over and over for days. This brings about another thought to have prior to shoots, what to focus on shooting if a hunt is highly repetitive or not ideal for a wide diversity of shots. For example, on this hunt rather than hiking in each day, glassing from unique vantages this hunt was glassing from chairs off the road by the truck. The second a bit tougher to document and doing so took some searching for new angles and coaching my subjects to keep the shots fresh.
The crew burning holes in the side of the mountain.
Forcing myself to look at this creatively every time we stopped when some days we might stop 20+ times became a necessity. This was key. Another thing I learned early on was to be ready for photo opportunities you know about. Every day we would drive by a few locations we often would see mule deer in.
Ready to have the 400mm on in seconds. Most days in the truck I had the 400 on immediately. Also, TP at the ready haha!
Some hunts provide you more time to switch gear than others. On this hunt we didn’t have tight timelines to get to our glassing spots so I probably had a few minutes if I needed to dig a lense out of my backpack hunt. But when your goal is to go look for a desert ram on a once in a lifetime hunt, I don’t want to slow up the program and start impeding on the actual hunt. So after that first morning I always had both lenses in my lap and was ready to roll at a seconds notice.
Every time we’d stop to shoot photos the bucks would slowly walk away, not ideal for photos but take what you can get.
Overall, it was a great trip and Joel was able to shoot a great ram on the last day of our hunt. I hope this blog taught a few of you something and I hope everyone had a great 2019! We’re excited for 2020 and some new programs we’ll start working on.
The new 2020 VXR.
A nice ram skylined, ignoring the intense Mexican sun.
Stories around the grill after a successful hunt.
Written by - @zackboughton