Behind the Scenes, Gear, Photography, Filmmaking, Adventure, and More
Blog for Wilkinson Visual, aerial and documentary video production and photography services in Lexington, Kentucky.
Our short film, Gone Tomorrow, the Story of Kentucky Ice Climbing was accepted into the Banff Film Festival, so of course we had to make a trip out to Canada to present it!
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Trading puffy jackets for swim shorts, last winter I spent a week island hopping on the coast of Florida while working on a series of travel videos for Tampa Bay, St. Pete, and Fort Myers.
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Ice climbing in Kentucky?! This adventure documentary takes the audience for a bourbon-fueled ride deep into the bushy hollers of Appalachia with a crew of harmless misfits as they race to search out and climb new ice routes before they're gone, with a few surprises along the way.
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Last summer I got to take a trip back to my old stomping grounds in Michigan, as I was hired to film some tourism video content for a destination marketing agency.
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This winter was a busy one, and the peak of that season (small pun intended) was an unexpected trip to Africa, to join a group that was going to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro! I would be one of two people filming interviews and b-roll over the course of the hike, plus a few days around town in Tanzania.
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The busy winter season ended with a super-fun project for a returning client, who now are the proud owners of not one, but TWO amazing climbing gyms. They liked the videos and photos I shot for them at their Lexington location so much that they asked me to create some content around the opening of their new facility near Cincinnati, Ohio.
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Back in the fall season, I scored some cheap tickets for a flight to Denver, and made plans to connect with my buddy Jon Jugenheimer for a week of ice climbing in Cody, Wyoming. February 1st came fast, and before i knew it I was waiting at the Denver airport to be picked up, only to drive straight through the night to Wyoming.
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Kentucky is really wet. And in 2018 many counties set records for rainfall. This, coupled with the terrain that includes large rock overhangs, can result in some spectacular waterfalls. Many of these are named and are popular hiker destinations, but most are off-trail. After a good rain, there are seemingly endless waterfalls hiding up every drainage, these are just a few that I’ve found.
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As much as I love to work on video projects related to the outdoors or hanging from a fixed line to capture stills of climbing, I enjoy diving into a video edit and flexing my post-production skillset to craft a good story. It also gives me a break from long shoots where I’m on the road for a week or more. I really enjoy traveling but I also appreciate spending time working from home on my laptop. I wanted to share some background on the video editing projects I’ve been working on, but also provide insight into what it’s like to be a contract video editor.
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I was contacted by a team from Merrell and Camp4 Collective, who were looking for outdoor photographers to participate in a group photo project. The concept was simple: one photographer in each state would go out on an iconic trail and capture candid portraits of the hikers and landscapes, all on the same day. No models, no athletes, nothing staged. The idea was to show how “one trail unites us all” as images of people all over the United States would be brought together in the final piece.
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The 2018 Rocktoberfest Event in Kentucky put on by the Red River Gorge Climbers Coalition was a huge success! We were brought in to capture images during the weekend, here’s just a few of the shots!
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I had about a week to myself hanging out at the American Alpine Club Climber's Ranch in Grand Teton National Park. I had no fixed plans and no set partner. My only goal was to climb part or all of the Exum Route on the Grand, one of the 50 classic climbs in North America. Here's how it went down.
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It seems that every summer Jen and I find ourselves out west for one reason or another, and we've really dialed in the recipe for a great road trip. Start with the centerpiece of the meal, a job or project that's located deep in the American West. Rub liberally on both sides with a few days of rock climbing, add a dash of hiking through classic national park trails, and finish with a pinch of seeing old friends and making new ones, and voila! That right there is tasty road trip.
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Over the past 12 months, we've been plugging away at a few different tourism video and photo projects in Kentucky, through an agency that hired Wilkinson Visual to create content. Patiently waiting for them to go public, the wait is finally over! Here's a brief writeup on the two jobs and the final videos.
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Stand up paddleboarding is booming in popularity these days, as both casual and avid outdoor enthusiasts seem to enjoy the calm, relatively easy looking way experience some adventure on the water. In response to this growth, companies like Endless Summer Paddle Company are staying busy every weekend with classes and paddle trips. This summer, I worked with ESPC to craft some new photography for their digital marketing and social media.
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This past weekend saw the return of one of our favorite non-profits to the Bluegrass, Paradox Sports. Paradox runs adaptive adventure programs across the United States, and they hosted a rock climbing clinic at Torrent Falls, where Wilkinson Visual was asked to be a part of the action.
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Every spring, various land management agencies and natural government groups, such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Nature Conservancy, come together for controlled land burns. These burns are done to prevent the buildup of dead brush and reduce the chances for large wildfires in the future.
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The Nature Conservancy works to protect natural lands and water, and in 2017 I had the opportunity to work with the Kentucky chapter of TNC to create imagery for their 22-page case statement.
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I spent two days taking stills of competitors at Peabody Ice Climbing, in Fenton, Michigan, for the 2018 North American Ice Climbing Championships.
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