GLENDHU BAY, New Zealand - Eco-Challenge, the world’s toughest expediton race, set Mother Nature against world-class athletes who mountaineered, horseback rode, mountain biked, kayaked, scuba dived, and rope climbed their way over 300 miles of treacherous New Zealand terrain. But the 8th annual competition also put seven photographers, their Nikon cameras, and Macs to the test.

Led by Blue Pixel President and Managing Partner Kevin T. Gilbert, seven photographers raced to cover the 12-day event, relying on helicopters and four-wheel drive vehicles to speed them from chill, snow-capped mountains to subtropical valleys - and sometimes back again the same day. Working without benefit of power or telephone lines, photographers shot and processed more than 28,000 images for their clients - Columbia TriStar International, USA Networks, and Discovery Channel Canada - and news media outlets throughout the world.

“There were plenty of great stories from this race,” Gilbert says, “but perhaps the best is how well the Macs performed.”

Digital Hub on Location
It’s Gilbert’s sixth year photographing Eco-Challenge, his second shooting all digital. “Our clients,” he says, “want to do billboards, very high-end press kits, classroom projects, merchandising for the television show [scheduled for broadcast April 2002]. Working digitally lets us produce the kind and quality of images they need.”

“Each photographer has a PowerBook G4 or iBook,” Gilbert explains, “which serves as a digital hub. At the end of each day, we’d download images into the laptops from our compact flash cards through a Lexar FireWire card reader. Then we’d use Photo Mechanic, which automatically pulls information from the camera, dates and time-stamps each image. As the images come in, we apply captions, the photographer’s name, date, and copyright information. It takes us about a half hour to download 1,000 images each day and another hour to assign captions. At the end of the race, we had 28,000 images keyworded and captioned; we use iView Media Pro to search by date, photographer, topic, scenic, closeup, anything.”

Each morning, photographers sent their previous day’s shoot via portable Think Fire-n-Ice FireWire drives - and helicopter - to editor Jeff Lawrence. Working in a mini van converted into a mobile digital office, Lawrence used Adobe Photoshop and two PowerBooks to edit and copy images to a RAID array, and burn DVD masters for clients.

Each night Lawrence packed up the office and drove two or three hours to the nearest phone line to transmit content. He also posted low-resolution images to a website so clients could track the progress of the race and provide feedback.

Long-Lasting Battery
“Photographers were 100 miles away from the nearest anything,” says Lawrence. “You can imagine the extreme conditions - we’re talking below-freezing temperatures - for photographers sitting in the middle of the snow on top of a mountain, editing. Photographers carried an additional battery and used a variety of methods to conserve battery power. For example, the photographers dimmed their screen to the lowest setting to conserve power. We really couldn’t have done it without smart planning and the new robust five-hour lithium-ion battery. The battery held a great charge even in the cold temperatures. They gave us the extra power to be able to send somebody out for two or three days at a time.”

Key to the Digital Workflow
“Digital photography only works if you’ve got a camera, a computer, a printer, and the pieces in between,” Gilbert says. “It’s all about workflow. I compare it to buying a stereo system. You don’t just buy the receiver, you buy a CD player, speakers, subwoofers and amplifiers so you can get the most out of that experience. If you just go buy a digital camera and you don’t have a computer that’s fast enough to process those files, doesn’t have enough RAM, a card reader, colorSync, FireWire or USB - the things Macs always have - and the software to process, save, and archive the images so you can find them again, you’re not going to have a very satisfying experience with digital photography.

“The computer really is the hub of the workflow,” Gilbert adds. “That’s why, besides the beauty and the graphics and the ease that Macs provide, they have every piece of the puzzle that we need.”