After purchasing a second location vehicle in order to have two teams capable of doing professional industrial and mining photography on location, we thought a little background into how they get fitted out to purpose may be interesting.
We have found over the years that the best configuration for our type of work is the double cab pickup truck fitted with an enclosed canopy for the load bed. We’ve been through the usual assortment of vans and station wagons but for what we do the modified pickup definitely fits the bill.
Our other vehicles have always had the conventional single door at the rear of the canopy with a sliding bed to allow easy access to the equipment without having to climb in and out to reach items towards the bulkhead. This has worked very well for us but on this vehicle we did a bit more research and decided that ditching the slide out loader and going for three point access would work even better.
Having used it for a few shoots so far it has worked out even better than we thought. Getting at all areas of the load bed is even easier than using the slide-out and the whole thing is also more secure with the positive locks on all three doors and no windows on the sides.
Of course, it’s always going to look a bit “plumber’s van” but function overrides style when it comes to everything but the photographs!
Aside from the canopy itself there are always a bunch of other fittings that need to be made to get it where we want it. These are a comprehensive tool kit, a fire extinguisher (in the load bay as well as the cab), 20 liter jerry can with siphon hose, rotating light storage, interior load bay light, wheel chocks holder, buggy whip flag socket and storage, a water storage tank, first aid kit and u-bolts for tie-downs on the roof of the canopy so we can transport long items such as the high-mast system or background rolls when required. The other thing we always do is to carpet the load bay even if, as in this case, it is already rubberised. This gives the gear a little more cushioning against vibration and helps stop any items sliding around. Somehow it always feels better to load gear onto carpeting rather than a cold, hard steel base.
While we were busy with this we thought we would shoot a time lapse and a few clips of video of the activity.