This past Wednesday night, Vincent LaForet paid us a visit here in Minneapolis for the local ASMP chapter’s May meeting. The event was held at Minneapolis College of Art & Design (MCAD). The lecture was very well attended, as you might imagine… everyone from the weekend photo enthusiast, to the photo student, to the commercial advertising shooter.
If you don’t know of Vince and his work, I would encourage you to come out from under your rock. Just in case you missed Reverie, Vince’s ground-breaking video shot from a prototype Canon 5D-M2, you can see it here. It was great to hear Vince talk about the whole experience… how begged Canon to lend him one of the seven prototypes due to ship out the same day he was visiting their office… how he had a speaking engagement that night that he couldn’t get out of, so had to ask his wife to start pre-production work without him to line up models, locations, etc… how he and his friend threw together a storyboard in about an hour, at midnight, after his speaking engagement… how he began filming the next evening with little knowledge of the 5D-M2’s video operation… how he didn’t know he could take it out of auto-focus mode… and on and on. Essentially, Vincent and his small crew pre-produced and produced the Reverie film short over a weekend, shooting only at night! Truly amazing when you consider the lighting issues he had to deal with, commandeering a helicopter for one of the scenes, tethering automobile rigging for many different city street motion shots, and many other elements all thrown together at the last second because the 5D-M2 literally fell into his lap late one Friday afternoon! Reverie has actually opened new doors for Vincent, and he is relocating to Los Angeles to be closer to new clients and opportunities.
Despite the success and acclaim of his recent video work, there’s much more to Vincent LaForet than just Reverie. Vince has been primarily an editorial and commercial photographer in New York for over 15 years. His recent primary focus has been on aerial photography, with many published images in national and international magazines and newspapers. His Drying of the West series ran in National Geographic and created a desperate new awareness of the state of water in the southwest United States. Vince was also a staff photographer at the New York Times, and sports photographer. You may remember his coverage of the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
I could literally go on and on here about Vince just from his one night he spent with us in Minneapolis, which was truly inspiring. But, the fact of the matter, is that you can learn everything you could ever need to know at his website and blog. So go check him out!
http://www.vincentlaforet.com/
http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/
