I have been to the Shining hotel, and with all due respect to Stephen King, who did after all,create the place, it’s nowhere near Colorado. It’s in a small town not far from the northeast edge of Yosemite called Bridgeport, and if Jack Torance isn’t a resident, I’m pretty sure he has a timeshare on the second floor.
Last summer, my shooting partner and I were wrapping up a three week stint of what can only be called a dream assignment. We were shooting travel videos for a startup travel website planning a 2014 soft launch before the major rollout. The site creator needed as many videos of attractions and activities in California as we could produce, and we happily obliged. Over the course of the late summer, we shot our way down the California coast and back up through the Sierras. By the time we pulled into Bridgeport, we and shot close to seventy five videos.
We had also made what can charitably be called the tactical mistake of camping most of our way through the assignment. In our minds eyes, we entertained visions of shooting the most breathtaking spots in California by day, relaxing by a campfire by night. Buffalo would roam, deer and antelope would play, and there would be nary a discouraging word.
The magic hour always got in the way.
The “magic hour” is so-named because it’s the best time of day to get the magical play of light and shadow that produces the perfect shot. It’s that hour right around sunrise, and the corresponding one around sunset. The closer the sun is to its apex, the flatter the light, the harder the shadows, the less dimensional is the shot. The lure of the magic hour is strong, and in an assignment that had us shooting all day, every day, we wanted to have at least two sites a day containing those beautiful shots from the magic hour.
This of course meant we would be setting and striking camp in the dark for days at a time, and getting precious little sleep in the interim. I might add that places to recharge camera batteries do not seem to be a priority for the National Park Service. Go figure.
As the lights of the greater metropolitan Bridgeport area began to appear, the siren song of the first hotel we had stayed in since what seemed like a time well before we had learned to read beckoned like the caress of a lover or the toy at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box. We had booked the hotel online weeks ago as a reward for a job well done, and the screen shots were fairly etched in our brains. A charming Victorian with cozy rooms. comfy beds and showers. for the love of God, showers. The close we got, the hotter that shower became. Perhaps we would even be welcomed by the world weary yet disarming friendliness of a rustic innkeeper, awaiting our aerial with a fresh pot of coffee and tales of travelers pst.
You know where this is going.
TO BE CONTIENS…
