Vincent Laforet in Amsterdam

The well known photographer Vincent Laforet was a few days in Amsterdam to chair the second World Press Photo multimedia contest. Canon and Adobe arranged an evening where Vincent told about his work and projects. I was lucky attend the session in the Beurs van berlage, Amsterdam.


The stage just before the start of the presentation.

Vincent told about his career as a New York Times photographer and how he got famous by shooting the first 1080p video with a still camera. The video is called Reverie, and you can see it here:


Reverie from Vincent Laforet on Vimeo.
Director/DP - This was the first 1080p video widely released that was shot with the Canon 5D MKII. It was viewed more than 2 million times in the first week of its release.

Vincent talked about his passion for shooting photos from a helicopter (equipped with twin engines just to be sure). He also made a lot of photos from the Empire State Building.



The second part of the presentation was about the various films and commercials he made.

Famous Footwear - "Neighborhood" Spot from Vincent Laforet on Vimeo.

He told about the work that had to be done before the shots could be made.

BEHIND THE SCENES - "Neighborhood" from Vincent Laforet on Vimeo.


Some facts I learned:

• Photographer Clay Blackmore was supposed to have a first look at the Canon 5D Mark II just before it came out. Vincent saw a prototype at a Canon office and begged for four hours to test out the camera. He finally got the camera for just a weekend and had to promise to send the camera to Clay on Monday. That weekend Vincent shot the footage for the movie Reverie.
• Vincent's father was a set photographer.
• Vincen'ts nick name is 'Spidey' because he made a lot of photos from the top of the Empire State Building, and dangling outside helicopters.
• favorite iPhone photography apps: Sun Seeker, Artemis, pCam and Focalware.

His latest movie is Mobius:

Mobius from Vincent Laforet on Vimeo.

This version is a 720p version of the film that is optimized for fast playback on the majority of systems. It does not show the optimum image quality in terms of resolution and compression.

For the High Quality 1080p version of this film go to:

http://vimeo.com/laforet/mobius

You can see many of the images presented in the iPhone/iPad App Visuals.

VISUALS by Vincent Laforet from Vincent Laforet on Vimeo.

I would like to thank Canon, Adobe and Vincent for the event!