Diyah Pera Photography

Gotta a love a large orange humanoid-looking creature amongst all kinds of urban rubble.  This is “Thing” in the movie “Fantastic Four 2, The Rise of the Silver Surfer”.  I had a lot of fun shooting stills on this film because super heroes and stunts and explosions make for a very interesting day at the office.  We took over a couple square blocks in downtown Vancouver and made quite a mess to film the climactic ending.  It looked amazing with all of the neon lights!  There was so much light coming off our set! Everything was so lit up from sunset to sunrise that I doubt any neighbouring condo dwellers got much sleep.   Because there was more light than usual when filming at night, I was able to shoot at an ISO as low as 800.  The light that was hitting “Thing”, was at a high enough level that it balanced out nicely with the neon signs, I did not have to worry about them blowing out.  Light bounced of of the smoke particles blown in by the spe...

Antelope Canyon is a slot canyon located in Navajo territory in Arizona.  I am one of many people to be drawn there to shoot the shapes carved out of sandstone by rushing water.  Flash flooding and erosion created these narrow passageways to the delight of many photographers including myself.  From the ground level looking down, it looks like a wide crack in the the landscape;  however when you shimmy through the causeway, the beauty of light and shadow playing over the textures and contours is awe inspiring.  I was fortunate to have arrived at this geological phenomenon on the perfect overcast day.  The medium cloud cover was perfect for diffusing the light coming from above.  If it was a sunny day, there would have been and overly extreme contrast between the shadows and the illuminated sandstone.  Instead, soft light bounced around the canyon walls leaving some detail in the shadows.  I wanted to have a lot of depth of field so as to ke...

One of my favourite villains of all time is Ian McShane.  He was the super villain on “Agent Cody Banks” that I photographed the stills on back in 2002.  I would later become an even bigger fan of his watching him play the town bad guy in ‘Deadwood”.  He has has that wonderful British charm that translates well into his nasty characters.  His charisma and sense of humour on set always made the crew smile despite the abnormally long hours we worked on this particular feature.   He has a very characteristic expression with the raised right eyebrow and slight snarl on his lips.  I wanted to capture this exact expression nice and close with him looking right at the lens.  When filming on set you are photographing while the actors are performing so you must set it up later if you want to get a shot of them looking at you.  We were filming in this very futuristic bad guy lair which was an ideal spot to get the perfect portrait.  Ian was happy...

I have the fortune of living in the Pacific Northwest which has an abundance of wilderness whether it be mountainous, coastal or forested.   This photo was taken near Ucluelet BC which is on the West side of Vancouver Island.  My partner and I took advantage of this past May long weekend to load our motorcycles up with camping gear and of course camera gear and headed out to the windswept coast.  This beachy area is not exactly like the blue skied sandy and tropical spot that most people think about when they vacation, but it is our home and we love it.  I feel like this image encompasses all that is the west coast.   It is rocky, dreary and wild.  We went for a coastal hike so I could “hunt” landscape photos.  The day was overcast and a little misty so details in the rock surfaces were a little subdued.  The cloudy sky was quite bright in contrast to the trees and crags on land.  I knew it would take a few different layered exposures an...

Here is something you do not see everyday.  Angelina Jolie as a blonde.  Strangely enough it suits her.  Well let’s face it.  Everything looks good on Angelina Jolie.  This photo was taken in Seattle Washington on the set of “Life or Something Like It” in 2001.   It was an interesting experience working on this film because having Angelina on set turned a normal production day into a “Hollywood” adventure.  There were paparazzi hanging around every corner.  Tons of fans had to be held back by barricades so the crew could go about our jobs of making a movie.   I was still relatively new to the film industry as I had only worked on a handful of movies before this one so I was quite overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of activity that surrounds such a high profile actress.  On most of the sets I had worked on, I was free to shoot whatever I thought would make an excellent still image.  On this film, Angelina was in control of her pub...

I admit I absolutely love, love, love shooting the desert or anything dry.  It could be the minimalist aspect of it; or it could be because a barren landscape is very exotic compared to my home in the pacific northwest which is very wet with very big trees.  I find that a photo of a landscape lacking in plants or objects becomes a study of light, shadow and color which appeals more to the emotional side of the brain than the figurative or logical.   I took this photo in  Death Valley Nevada.  I was on a climbing and hiking trip with my brother in May of 2011 when we drove from his home in LA to spots all over California, Utah and Nevada.  At the end of our trip we treated ourselves to a night of the not so civilized world of Las Vegas and then he went home to LA to work.  I stuck around another week because I felt like I had not taken enough photos of dry rocks so I rented a car and went to Death Valley. I had a wonderful time wandering arou...

Have you ever wondered how those cars in action movies get launched in the air and explode?  They actually get shot out of a gigantic car cannon.  Yes it is true and extremely cool.  I wish I could give you more details but alas I am not part of the special effects department.  I am the person with a camera sent to capture this awesome event.  There is a scene in XMen 3 where the character, Magneto uses his metal controlling superpowers to toss cars off of the Golden Gate Bridge.  One may think that this would normally be a  C omputer G enerated I mage,  however, why miss such an opportunity to actually toss cars through the air!!!! Now shooting cars out of a cannon is not a very precise science however they do the best they can.   We spent many hours setting up for this iconic shot and there were many different motion camera teams there to catch as many camera angles as possible.  I was the only still camera so I needed to do a l...