In October, I had the opportunity to cover the Pinot noir harvest at several wineries in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Due to a nice stretch of warm, sunny weather, I ended up being there during the peak of harvest activities in the valley. As a result, everyone from the picking crews to the winery staff was extremely busy – a perfect opportunity to capture all of the hard work that goes into each year’s harvest.

In terms of the shoot, I spent a lot of time in different vineyards, chasing the picking crews as they worked through each row clipping clusters and filling bins. When I wasn’t running up and down vineyard rows, I was planted at the top of a step ladder or hoisting a monopod above me to gain a different perspective on the harvest. My flash came in handy when using the monopod, as it was challenging trying to hold my camera steady on top of a five foot long pole. I soon found that shooting from the ladder, with the monopod stabilized against the top step, provided a more steady shot. Here are a couple of shots captured while using this method:

From the vineyard I then followed the action into the winery, where the grape clusters were hand-sorted and then moved into holding tanks. Once the pick starts, the fresh-picked fruit seems to have no end, as bin after bin is hoisted onto the sorting platform from morning to midnight. Along the way, there is constant cleaning, measurements, unloading/loading and other activities going on outside and inside the winery. The constant movement of people and machinery required all kinds of approaches from using natural light to flash, wide-angles to close ups, and hand-held shots to tripod mounted ones.

Overall, it was a terrific experience covering this event. I learned a lot by experimenting with different approaches, making a variety of mistakes, but coming away with some images that I am pleased with in terms of their ability to convey the hard work that goes into each year’s harvest.

For more photos and commentary, please visit BeyondtheBottle.com, a site that offers my perspective on Oregon and Washington wine.