Location Sportraits

This week I am teaching sports and action photography in my lighting class…..right up my alley and it’s gonna be a fun week!!!

We started monday’s class on location at the Mt. Hood softball field to demo a lighting setup for location sports portraits, or “sportraits” as I call them. I arranged to have 2 players, Amanda and Kendra, to meet me and the class for a quick portrait session in the dugouts. The assignment for the students is to create a portrait of a sports player, someone they do not know, in their respective environment, using a 3 light setup. Can’t wait to see what they come up with!

Here’s a few I took for the softball lighting demo:

Mt. Hood Softball, Location sportrait shoot

Mt. Hood Softball, Location sportrait shoot

Mt. Hood Softball, Location sportrait shoot

Mt. Hood Softball, Location sportrait shoot

Mt. Hood Softball, Location sportrait shoot

Mt. Hood Softball, Location sportrait shoot

Mt. Hood Softball, Location sportrait shoot

Mt. Hood Softball, Location sportrait shoot

Blazers: Fan Fest

This past friday, October 1st, was the 2010-2011 season kickoff event for the Trail Blazers at the Rose Garden. The Wells Fargo Fan Fest is an in-arena scrimmage/practise between the Blazer players, open to fans to give them a preview of the season. Rookies and veterans put on a great show, sign autographs, and meet and greet with the fans.

This will be my 10th season shooting sponsorship and promotion photography for the team and the job just keeps getting better and more exciting as the years go by. Here’s a recap of photos I took during the 2010 Fan Fest!

Blazers Fan Fest 1

Blazers Fan Fest 2

Blazers Fan Fest 3

Blazers Fan Fest 4

Blazers Fan Fest 5

Blazers Fan Fest 6

Blazers Fan Fest 7

Blazers Fan Fest 8

 

Blazers Fan Fest 9

Blazers Fan Fest 10

Blazers Fan Fest 11

Blazers Fan Fest 12

Blazers Fan Fest 13

Blazers Fan Fest 14

Blazers Fan Fest 15

Blazers Fan Fest 16

Blazers Fan Fest 17

Blazers Fan Fest 18

Blazers Fan Fest 19

Blazers Fan Fest 20

Blazers Fan Fest 21

Blazers Fan Fest 22

Blazers Fan Fest 23

Blazers Fan Fest 24

Inspiration: quads.

When I need to clear my head for a weekend, i ride…..well, now before i sold my quad i did. Anywho, check out my “killer quad clips” of 07-08. LOL, I couldn’t resist. This will waste a couple minutes of your time. hehehehehehe

…and if that wasn’t enough drama…..click HERE for part 2 over on Vimeo….

Inspired by Rally!

Now some of you know that I have been following rally and rallycross for almost 2 years now. It all started with an invite to shoot the Oregon Trail events at PIR in March of 2009 when I was fortunate to get to ride around the track with Rally driver, Pat Moro:

After my pre-stage ride with Pat, I returned the next day and went out on the course to shoot the first stages of the day. Here’s a video from my first shooting location:

The weekend ended and I shot some awesome images, including this one which hangs in my office as a 20×30:

Travis Pastrana, Oregon Trail Rally, 2009

 

That Christmas I was surprised, by Brenda, with a certificate to attend Paul Eklund’s Primitive Performance Rally School in Hillsboro, OR in March 2010. I attended the weekend school with my friend Kevin and of course shot pix and videos when I wasn’t in the car. Needless to say I was hooked!

Here’s a video of one of my practice runs during the school:

…and a couple photos of me driving and with the car:

So, after rally school in March 2010 I attended most of the local rally events and the Oregon Trail Rally. I’ve met a ton of awesome people and there are future plans for me to rally for many years to come (stay tuned for exciting news on that).

For now, here’s something that I shared a while back with a link on facebook. This video will surely get your blood pumping, and it’s a true taste of what stage rally is all about! Enjoy my rally Inspiration!

Inspiration

This week’s blog assignment/keyword for the MHCCIM Students is: Inspiration. For me, I had to think a lot about this one and how I could relate it to a photograph. I’m inspired by quite a few things. Music always keeps me going no matter what I am doing. Other photographers images can be an inspiration….seeing how they view an image and how they choose to light it. Just the challenge itself of creating and lighting a portrait can inspire me. I think one of the very first things that inspired me to pursue photography in the first place was sports, action, and being up close at events to try an capture the moment of impact or winning goal.

Lately, I think what’s been keeping me going is in fact, lighting. Controlling light can be inspirational. Seeing how modifiers work, and using them to create an image is an undescribable feeling, especially when it’s an emotional wedding image or picture of the winning team.

I’m still thinking about what else inspires me but for now here are a few images I’ve taken that have inspired me to keep shooting.

Sunset Sailboat In Jamaica

Light Painting

Swimming Action

Jenny & TJ's first dance

Hawthorne Bridge

Subaru Rally Cars!

Firewood Circles

Today was mainly a chill day and work-around-the-house day. With that, I cut some firewood for the fire pit and…viola….found some circles for the class assignment! Both images taken with my Blackberry…

Firewood Circles 1

Firewood Circles 2

Oregon Air Photo

In July 2008 I was asked to go on an aerial photography mission to assist a fellow photographer friend, Bryan Heim, to get images from the air of some car dealerships. We had the plane and pilot booked for a 2 hour flight, had maps of all the dealerships in and around the Portland area, and in between locations we took as many aerial photos as possible. The flight was a total success!

Over the next year we developed the idea to offer aerial photography to clients and Oregon Air Photo was created. Still in the early stages of the business, we are working to expand our client base and designing a marketing campaign for the future. For now, we have a WEB SITE and most of the social networking sites up and running:

Follow OAP on TWITTER, @oregonairphoto.

Become a fan on our FACEBOOK page.

Check out our YouTube channel.

Here are a few of my favorite images taken from the air and a pic of the OAP crew:

OAP Photo Crew

 

Twin Oaks Airfield

 

Mt. Scott

 

Mud puddle in the grass

 

The Reserve Golf Course, Infrared

 

Hillsboro Stadium, Infrared

 

Kelso/Longview area, Infrared

 

Air Museum

 

Helvetia area

 

Over Portland looking south

NWAACC Volleyball Action

I photographed some volleyball action at Mt Hood Community College this evening. Brenda’s cousin, Janelle, plays for Chemeketa Community College and they happened to be the visiting team at Mt. Hood.

For this setup I used my pair of dynalite sports lights and bounced the light off the gym ceiling, just as I do with basketball (see previous blog post: Basketball Season & Arena Lighting!). Now this was the first time for me using the lights specifically for volleyball so a little testing was in order but I got them dialed in just fine and took some great shots of Janelle!

Bell Blazers Classic

Today I photographed the annual Bell-Blazers Golf Classic! The event takes place at The Reserve Vineyards & Golf Course in Aloha, Oregon, and is a benefit for the Oregon Partnership . Oregon Partnership, from their web site, is: “a statewide non-profit promoting healthy kids and communities through drug and alcohol awareness, drug prevention programs, and 24 hour crisis lines for treatment referrals and suicide intervention. We work with schools and community coalitions statewide, and our resource library is open to all to educate on the dangers of substance abuse.”

The event included Blazers Alumni as well as many of the Blazers corporate sponsors. Some of the Alumni included: Terry Porter, Buck Williams, Jerome Kersey, Michael Harper, Antonio Harvey, as well as our hall-of-fame announcer Bill Schonely. Some celebrity names included former KGW channel 8 anchor, Pete Schulberg, KGW channel 8 sports anchor, Adam Bjaranson, and Isaac & Big Suke from 1080 the Fan.

I arrived at the course at 930am to get set up and photograph candids of the registration and pre-golf events. The players all started golfing on what they call a “shotgun start” in which all groups of players tee off simultaneously from different holes. After the start at 11am, Carrie & I took a cart and searched out each group for team photos. Once all teams were photographed it was my job to print one 5×7 for each player. This year, there were 190 golfers playing in the same tournament which was a record number of tournament players for the course!

The day ended with a meet & greet with Blazer player Greg Oden, buffet dinner, and an awards program to announce the winning teams and raffle prizes. Here are a few images from today!

The Reserve

Bell Blazers Classic Banner

BlazerDancers Stephanie & Michelle with the Taco Bell SRT Challenger

A lot of golf carts!!!

BlazerDancers Caitlin & Camicha

Announcer Bill Schonely

 

Table of on-site prints

Mike Rice with BlazerDancers Vanessa & Lindsey

Class is in Session

Today was the first day of my “official” teaching career. Just 3 weeks ago I was invited to teach the advanced lighting class to the 2nd year professional photography students at MHCC. I graduated from the same program back in 2002 so this means I have come full circle. Alongside Justin Myers, we plan to give the students a ton of info to get them a huge head start in their photography careers. The program will be a challenge for me and I will do my best to offer 110% to them. 

So, as I have mentioned in a previous blog post, Justin & I have challenged ourselves to create one blog post per day until classes end on December 6th. For the students, they are required just 2 posts per week. The idea behind this is to keep them thinking 100% photography at all times. We also gave them a “theme” for the photos they post to their blogs. This week’s theme: circles. I can’t wait to see the different interpretations each student comes up with! I too plan to take the “circle” theme challenge myself and I’ll be posting a few of my favs here on the blog, and on my facebook photography page! 

Here are a few images from my archives with the circle theme in mind: 

Images for week 1: circle theme

Images for week 1: circle theme

Images for week 1: circle theme

Images for week 1: circle theme