Saturday, October 16, 2010

KGB? In the USA?

Yeah - if you count radio station KGB, San Diego, CA. For the last 35 consecutive years, they have put on a pyro event called the SkyShow at QualComm (old Jack Murphy) Stadium, usually after a San Diego State football game. I know a few of the folks who work on the show (it's invitation ONLY to work on it!), and the show I was going to shoot that night was shot by another company, I decided to hoof it down to San Diego to see what all the hubbub was about. My son (Kyle) came along (his first try at shooting pyrotography), and the two of us headed south. Before the trip, I scoped out the area with Google Earth. There was a very promising spot to the north up on some hills overlooking the whole stadium area. "That would be cool!" There were even some bike tracks through the area so I knew it was used. Well, right before leaving, I tool a closer look and realized those weren't bike or motocross tracks - they were for utility trucks to service the high-power electrical lines in that area. Site B (a bit to the east) looked the same way. Nuts! Well, how about Plan C? Put the stadium between me and the pyro? There is a shopping center due to the immediate west and what looked like a truck/fire access across the back. Looked like that was open.

Armed with this knowledge, we headed south and made sure that when we got there, there was enough light to scope out the sites. Yup, Site A was gated and razor-wired off. (Kinda expected that after Sept 11...) Site B was the same way. Oh, we could have hiked around some nasty looking brush, but I didn't relish doing it at night, especially with some weird drop-offs. We went over to Site C, and it was PERFECT! Almost - where I wanted to go was blocked off, and there were trees in the area. The access road was wide open, but the way to the stadium was blocked with a 6' fence covered with thorny bushes. And there were also some young trees - that left two spots to catch all the action. I had one, Kyle had the other. For me, I had to prop my camera as high as it would go on top of a curb. The legs were only spread about 6" apart, and the post was all the way up - but the view from the camera was great. Kyle forgot the tripod, so he found a spot along a fence where he could balance his camera on his camera bag. And there was about 4 hours until the show. Sooooo.....

We went to the local Fry's, got something to eat, took a nap, he scoped out a Borders, and slowly cars started showing up. The locals knew this was a good spot. I got my place on the fence around half time and waited for the show. The SkyShow does comet launches from the light ring, so putting the stadium between me and the pyro got me some great 3-D kind of images. It was a LONG trip home, but it was well worth it. Hope you agree!

http://tccphotography.zenfolio.com/p1040203286