Friday, February 10, 2006

Uncommon Cold


I went to Columbus today to photograph these nice people inside a deep freeze room with a vast collection of ice cores. When I got there, I asked them just how cold it was in that room and they said "about minus 20". "Excuse me?" I was expecting it to be just below freezing. I had no idea if my camera gear would even work in there. The camera gear was less trouble than my fingers which started hurting real bad after about 15 minutes. Poor Dr. Thompson's nose turned white but he's used to it. That's me on the right saying "We're done... why are we still in here??" Thanks to Jack Houvouras for manning the camera to get a shot of me. At first Jack said he wasn't even going in there, but then he proved his manhood and stayed in there just as long as any of us.

5 comments:

kenju said...

Yikes! I remember once when I was in college, the temp and wind chill combined to make it 17* below one morning when I had to stand at a bus stop. The moisture on my eyeballs froze as did the moisture in my nostrils. It was awful; be glad you didn't have to be in there too long.

MShane said...

That's cool Rick, no pun intended. I've always wanted to find a way to feel temps that cold without going to the poles.

Rick Lee said...

Shane... arrange a trip to Duluth sometime. I was pleasantly surprised that my equipment actually functioned ok. The LCD panels on the Fuji S3 got really slow. The White Lightning X1600's worked flawlessly, but the power cords were stiff as bailing wire. I actually broke the plastic casing on one wire when I bent it. After that I just dragged the cords out in whatever funny shape they were frozen into so that they could thaw outside.

Ian said...

Sounds like just another outdoor location shoot for us up in Canada! :-) I am always amazed with how well the gear DOES work in this kind of cold!

Rick Lee said...

Good to hear from you Ian... I actually contacted the nice folks at White Lightning to tell them how pleased I was that the strobes worked ok. They told me that supposedly their strobes are rated to work between 40 below and 120 above... but they were really happy to hear the report that everything went ok at minus-20.