Shot this portrait for a feature that will run in the paper next week. I put a full CTO and a 1/4 CTO gel on the main light to warm the photo up a bit (and semi match the available light) and then left the backlight bare with a strip box for the blue highlight. There is also a blacklight coming from the arcade area of the roller rink (you can see the reflections in the top of the photo) so leaving the backlight blue matches that a bit too. I like how it turned out.

Jordyn and I took a little trip down to San Diego today to go the Mariners/Padres game at Petco Park with my little brother Kevin. She had a blast. I never thought I would have to come to SoCal to beat the heat, but while it was 97 and muggy in Portland, it was a nice 78 with a light breeze here in San Diego. Perfect baseball weather. Here is baby J enjoying the centerfield sandbox.

Here is another photo from yesterday. We shot the Timbers team photo for a promo poster that they will give away at a game later this summer. We shot quite a few different angles/setups for the team shot and I have no idea which they will use, but I liked this version the best. The setup on this shot was pretty complex, I used a total of 6 lights, a mix of alien bee’s, white lightning’s and a speedlight, oh yeah and a silver reflector on one guy. I ran out of pocket wizards, and needed to have another setup ready to go inside the stadium after this shot, so I hard wired 3 of the lights together to free up some radios. I like it a lot more than the normal boring on the field using benches team photo we usually do. Oh and yes I know the board says Beavers, I believe the final version will have a little photoshop work on that part :).

Shot a bunch of stuff down at the park today for upcoming posters and programs, here is one I like. He is the “iron man” of the team, playing every minute of every game for the last 50 games or something like that. Pick up a program when it comes out and read all about it.

The people over at PocketWizard liked my Beavers ring light photos and mentioned me on their blog yesterday (here). I thought that was pretty cool.

Clackamas pitcher Nick Struck (center #2) is mobbed after striking out the final batter and defeating Lake Oswego 3-0 in the 6A baseball semi finals at Clackamas High School on May 27, 2008. Struck struck out 13 batters and pitched a complete game.

I shot Nick’s senior photo’s so I was rooting for him and he put on a clinic, easily the best game I have ever seen a high school pitcher throw. Nice job Nick. I shot this for the Portland Tribune/Clackamas Review, I will post a story link when it gets online (in the next few hours).

My favorite event, bar far, to shoot every year is the state track meet in Eugene. I wasn’t sure if I was going to shoot it this year, but I got a bunch of calls from various newspapers around the state and decided to go down. I was a little tired after shooting a wedding until midnight last night, but the great light, great emotion and great action of this event woke me right up. Here are a couple images I like and there are a bunch more on my Sports Shooter page.

I was shooting for 4 daily’s and 1 weekly newspaper. I hitched a ride with LE Baskow and a couple of reporters from the Tribune and spent the entire ride back home editing and transmitting from the car. Worked out perfectly, I buried my face in my computer and by the time I was done sending to everyone I needed to send to, we were home. Fastest trip from Eugene to Portland ever, or so it seemed.

Jordyn has been wanting to go to a baseball game for a while, so today the Beavers had a day game and 7,000 kids came to the ballpark on a field trip for “Science of Baseball Day” presented by OMSI and I figured that would be a good one. She also loves to ride the MAX, so we made a little trip out of it, I parked in Old Town and we rode the train to PGE Park. One of the things I have to do for the Beavs when shooting for them is to give them a photo in the second or third inning that shows what has happened thus far for a website update. Well, they wanted a kid photo so I gave them a crowd shot and this shot of Jordyn enjoying her hot dog. They ran this one on the site from the 4th inning until after the game was over. So cute. She loves her baseball and loves hot dogs too. How many three year olds do you know that will stay the whole game and be totally into it the whole time? Afterwards, she ran the bases and then we got back on the train. By the time we got home it was time for me to go play a softball game, which we won 24-3, making us 3-0 on the season. Big baseball day for little baby J.

I was shooting the Beaver game last night and the beer garden was full and there was a pretty good crowd (9,000+) so i decided to shoot some stuff with the tilt/shift to play around a little….while I was doing that, the Beavs hit three homers, back to back to back. You don’t see that very often. This is the third one, by Will Veneble. I’ve been into shooting sports a lot more loose lately, trying to show environment more than just tight action, I like this one. It’s on the front page of the Beavers website right now too.

Here is the view from our (free thanks to the Portland Beavers connections) seats at Petco Park Sunday. That is a very cool stadium. One of the best I have been to. I love the outfield sandbox in centerfield for the kids, Jordyn would love that. The Padres had called up a few of the Beavers players the day before and two of them were in the starting lineup, so it was almost like watching Beavers game…..except much better. It was cool to see Luke Carlin, who has been a Beaver since 2006 - one of the nicest guys on the team - get his first big league hit, a double in the 8th inning. I was very excited for him. Here is a photo of Luke from last year (he’s on the left). Click on the image to see a bigger version. It is a stitch of 7 photos I shot with my brother’s point and shoot.

While shooting the Beavers game this afternoon, I couldn’t help but notice that there were still plenty of good seats still available, so I played around a little with the 45 tilt shift.

Yesterday was an crazy long day which began at 3am for a commercial shoot and ended around 10pm after the Timbers game. In between a shot a job for Intel and had just enough time to grab a bight to eat with my wife and kids at a mexican restaurant by the studio. I hate to admit it, but soccer is growing on me. I’m not a huge soccer guy, but good soccer is actually good. Imagine that. I still hate bad soccer though. Maybe I’m liking the Timbers more this year because they are a pretty good looking team. One of the things that ALWAYS keep me entertained during a match is the Timbers Army, the crazy fans in the north end of the stadium that have the best chants and cheers and music, they are awesome. How can you not love 3000 people all chanting in sync things like “We are green, we are white, we are f***ing dynamite”. Above is new forward Takayuki Suzuki. He is from Japan and even though I know nothing about futbol, this guy is the real deal he plays hard and has great feet and really is amazing to watch. (Oh crap I sound like I know about soccer, don’t tell anyone). Anyway, so the Army busts out a chant last night that I thought was funny, caught me off-guard and really made me laugh: “He came here from Japan…..he is the f***ing man, Suzuki oh oh, Suzuki oh oh.” I can’t get it out of my head. I wish he spoke english so he would know how cool that chant is. Maybe the Army can learn some Japanese and start a chant in Japanese for him.

Tonight was Timber Jim’s last game. He has been the mascot for the Timbers since the 70’s. An amazing person and an icon in the city as far as soccer fans are concerned. I decided to try my hand at a little multimedia, gathering audio and shooting stills and then piecing it all together before leaving the park. Let me know what you think. I’m new to making audio slideshow’s and I have a lot to work on. This took about an hour or hour and half to mix the audio (which I am horrible at) and make the show.

Shot the first Beavers game of the year last night. My goal this year, my 4th or 5th shooting for the team, is to make pictures from places I have not made pictures from before. Las t night, i found a spot that will yield something good some game. Up in the football press box, you have a nice high angle almost directly over the field. I didn’t get anything great last night, but I’m thinking its a great spot for a remote.

Today was “Media Day” for the Portland Beavers, the AAA team for the San Diego Padres. Every year I shoot mugs and some portraits for the team for the program covers, etc. Every year I’m running around like a freak trying to grab different people for different photos, so this year I decided to setup a remote camera and a ring light and setup a station for the guys to shoot their own photos while I was doing other things. I hooked up a pocket wizard to a foot switch, so they just sat down, made whatever face and hit the foot switch. Here are a couple of my favs.

LEFT: Chase Headley and Matt Antonelli, rated the #1 and #2 prospects in the Padres system. RIGHT: New Beavers manager Randy Ready. There are a few more on my Sports Shooter page too. Also, there is a gallery on the Beavers site, here. Opening day in two days!

Final game of the day, Gill Coliseum is such a piece of junk compared to Mac Court. The light is not too good and drops off quite a but under the basket, so I shot the downcourt side with my 300 quite a bit. Long day, fun day, hopefully I will do it all again Friday.

The second game of the day was between Mt. View and Sherwood. I only shot the first half of this one, but I got a nice frame, sent it along with a couple of others as fast as I could and headed up I-5 to Corvallis for the final game of the evening….made it with 6 minutes to spare.

March madness continues with the kick off the the 4A and 5A boys tournaments. Today I am shooting 3 games for 3 different papers, 2 in Eugene and one in Corvallis. Here is a frame from game one. The team I was shooting got shelled. 72-47. Not very fun shooting a team getting worked. Stay tuned for more.

Got up early this morning to shoot a photo of the Milwaukie High School baseball team. I played baseball for Milwaukie back in the day and head coach Brian Duhrkoop was a teammate of mine. I wanted to shoot something cool for a schedule poster they wanted to do, so I dragged myself out of bed before sun to go down to the field and setup a ton of lights. There are 8 total in this photo, 4 regular studio lights (which I had to hard wire a few together because I only have so many pocket wizards) and 4 speedlights strategically placed behind players to light the players behind them. When I set the shot up, it was still pretty cloudy and a lot darker, but by the time these guys got dressed and ready to roll, the clouds broke and the sun came out, I just got lucky there was a big group of trees blocking the sun from the infield. It also rained the night before, so the infield dirt was just a muddy mess for me to run cords through and kneel down on when shooting. Fun. When it’s all said and done, the schedule will be placed in the empty spot in the dirt and the team logo will be in the sky on the right. Oh and my logo will be in the lower right. Should look cool. They are giving them to their sponsors to display and I’m sure they will have some around for themselves and at the school as well.

Here is how the Register-Guard used one of my remote photos from Wednesday night. Gotta love a paper that runs the photos HUGE.