Looking back through the rain

Ah…the May long weekend.  The unofficial start to summer in Canada, and almost guaranteed to rain in BC as everyone heads out camping.  That held true this year, and it was a wet weekend with no flying locally (although I did find out just how much rain you can golf in!).

This past weekend was also the anniversary of my first solo flight, but without any flyable weather here to celebrate I'm looking back to some recent (ish) paragliding fun.  Last year around this time I was lucky enough to take part in filming a commercial for the L Series lens from Canon.  The commercial featured Canadian Red Bull athlete Will Gadd (video link at bottom of post) and followed him using a Canon camera while pursuing some of his favourite activities.  In the course of a couple of days he got to climb, paddle and paraglide, all of it right here in Beautiful BC.

For the paragliding portion we had 2 tandem paraglider pilots and of course Will flying solo.  I took the stills photographer for the print campaign (check out her amazing portfolio at http://jackiebeale.com) while another local pilot took the videographer. Here's a behind-the-scenes shot of Will (centre of photo) and the videographer-tandem as we all flew into position for the next portion of filming.  It was a very cool learning experience, figuring out how to get shots without being in the shots and flying around Will while trying to keep in the thermals!  

Behind the scenes in the Fraser Valley (click to enlarge)

A long time ago, I used to work "in the movies" as an assistant director, but this was unlike anything I had ever done before. Between the weather magically clearing as our "call time" approached and plenty of thermals popping up to help us get the shots, it was a perfect day that I was proud to be a part of.

So without further ado…here's the finished video (you may have already watched this on the big screen last year waiting for your movie to start or seen the huge photos while picking up your bags at the airport):