Backcountry Magazine Cover

I just got this from my photo editor over at Backcountry Magazine, the cover of the January 2011 issue. A huge thanks to Simon and the guys over at Backcountry for running my image on the cover. And another big thanks to skier Todd Ligare for the hard work he put in on this day of shooting in Utah. Thanks everyone!

Behind the Scenes: Ski Shoot at Stevens Pass

Something short and simple, but I thought it was kind of funny. I was shooting at Stevens Pass last week with skier KC Deane. We'd found a zone that was littered with downed stumps, logs and root balls that had created a fun pillow field for shooting. After scouting the area, we landed on this location and began shooting. My friend Josh Malczyk was riding with us and shot this little video.

Unfortunately, not everything goes as you had hoped, and on this take, KC came up a little short on his flip. Fortunately he was ok. But, it does showcase one thing about still photos... you don't always have to land everything perfectly in order to get a great still image.

Sorry KC for sharing this little spill and letting people know that you don't stomp every single air :)

Tim Lincecum Shoot for Red Bull

Just a short post to share some new work. This falls into the category of work that normally doesn't come my way, but I thought it still worth sharing.

At last Sunday's Seattle Seahawks game, Tim Lincecum (star pitcher for the San Francisco Giants) raised the 12th Man flag before the game. Red Bull, one of Tim's sponsors, brought me in to snap a few pics of him raising the flag.

As I said, not my normal gig, but still a lot of fun. A totally different experience than what I'm used to though. Having to coordinate with the NFL and the Seahawks game day coordinators was a bit daunting at first. However, everything went on without a hitch. It was a very editorial, photojournalistic style shoot. Not a lot of room to plan, style or coordinate with Tim. From start to finish, the whole thing went down in less than 5 minutes and I was jockying with 5 other photogs to get the best angle. All in all though, I'm happy with how everything went.

Thanks to Red Bull for bringing me in to shoot this. It's always fun to get outside of your normal routine and shoot something new.

New Work in Print

Just wanted to post some of my my most recent and favorite tearsheets in print right now. Really happy with how these turned out. Thanks to all my clients for working with me on these campaigns. Enjoy!

Salomon Ad: Quest Boot Campaign

Contour: Point of Purchase Displays

Patagonia: Dealer Catalog Cover

Crystal Mountain: Brochure Cover

Dakine: 1.5 Page Ad

Atlas Snowshoes: Cabelas In Store Displays

Stevens Pass: Ad

This is just a small sampling of some of our favorite published works. If you'd like to see more or get more regular updates about news and events, check out our fan page on FACEBOOK.

Moustache + November = Movember

This past month was the month of "Movember". What is Movember you may ask? Movember is an organization that encourages men to grow a moustache for the month of November to increase awareness about Prostate cancer. The rules are simple, start November 1st clean shaven and grow a moustache (beards are cheating) for the entire month.

I just heard about Movember about a month ago via a local Seattle Radio show (the men's room on 99.9 KISW) and loved the idea. My interest in Movember went deeper than just the simple humor in growing a moustache. My father had a bout with Prostate Cancer about 5 years ago. Fortunately, after surgery, he's been Cancer free ever since. However, seeing that Prostate Cancer runs in my family and knowing how many men will face it during the course of their lifetime, I wanted to do something to help raise awareness. "Movember" seemed like a perfect way.

And to be honest, I got a lot of questions during the month. Most centering around why in the hell would I grow such a hideous things voluntarily? "Had I lost a bet?" But, each of those questions was met with my response of "to increase awareness for Prostate Cancer". Most everyone liked the idea and was on board with it... all except for my wife Karlee, who despite liking the concept, couldn't wait for December 1st when I could shave again.

This year was just a trial to see how it was received. I plan on making a bigger deal of Movember next year and would like to encourage anyone reading this to sign up. I'd like to get a collection of fellow moustache wearers together for a portrait series to help spread the word. If you're interested, please make a post below.

And if you're interested in learning more about Movember or donating to the cause, click HERE to visit their website. Thanks!

Mountain Bike Shoot in San Francisco & Santa Cruz

Just got back from a great weekend of shooting in the bay area. I packed up my camera gear last Friday and headed to San Francisco to shoot dirt jumping for the folks over at Contour POV Cameras. I've been working with Contour for a while now and it's always awesome shooting for them because I never know what I'll be shooting next. One day it's skiing, the next it's kayaking or mountain biking or... well, you name it. It's fun getting to shoot so many different sports with the best athletes from every discipline.

So, when I got the call to head to SF, I was stoked!!! Two days of shooting with two of the best mountain bikers on the planet, Cameron Zink and Cameron McCaul.

The first day found us at the AT Showdown dirt jumping demo at the San Francisco Bike Expo. Massively large jumps situated all over the place. What ensued was a four hour huck fest. I was absolutely blown away by the tricks and amplitude of all the athletes... insane.

With day one a wrap, we headed down to Santa Cruz, away from the competition venues, to a secluded, private track. It had rained the night before causing some puddling and mud holes in the transitions of the jumps. But after a couple hours of raking and shoveling, the jumps shaped up and we were good to go.

The day went great. We were able to shoot some really creative/ unique angles that I've been dying to try. After some of the experimental stuff, we moved back to the dirt jumps and sessioned those until the sun dipped below the horizon.

All in all, it was a great weekend. Really happy with how things turned out. Can't wait to get out and shoot with the Contour guys again. I'm already formulating some new ideas for some more unique/ outside the box camera angles.

PDN Self Promo Awards

Every year, Photo District News has it's "Self Promotion Awards" to highlight the extraordinary efforts people go to promote their photography. And today they just released their list of winners for 2010. No, I didn't win anything in this contest... in fact I didn't enter this year. However, it's worth taking a quick look at if you're at all interested in the art of self promotion.

If you'd like to see a gallery of all the winners, check out the LINK and click on "View the Winners". There's some really impressive work in there. Enjoy!

Snowshoeing... in October !?!?!?

This was a fun shoot I got to do a couple weeks ago... and am just now getting a chance to post about it. I got a phone call a little while back from one of my favorite clients, Atlas Snowshoes. They needed to get some new shots to round out their upcoming catalog. I'm always stoked to work with Atlas and was excited to get out and shoot some more for them. Only one small problem... it was October and there really wasn't any snow to speak of... anywhere.

So, where can you find snow year-round, glaciers.

With that, myself, two athletes and the marketing director from Atlas headed up to the mountains and the glacial fields to get the shots we needed. In order to get the look we were going for, we met up at midnight in the parking lot and started hiking in under the moonlight of a clear night. After 4 hours of trekking, we finally got to the snowline. A quick scout of the area and we found where we wanted to shoot. From there, it was a 2 hour waiting game for the sun to rise.

After a couple of cold hours spent shivering in the wind, the sun finally broke the horizon and we were able to start shooting. The weather was perfect and the light of the rising sun played well against the sun cupped glacial fields.

The shoot ended up being an incredibly long 21 straight hours by the time I returned home. Covered in sweat and dirt and absolutely exhausted, I think I passed out as soon as I set foot at home. But that said, the shoot was incredible. I love how the images turned out, and it was one of the more memorable shoots I've had in recent years. There's something fun about pouring so much physical energy into a shoot. It can take you to some incredible locations when you're willing to put the effort in. And it's definitely a shoot I won't soon forget. A huge thanks to the folks at Atlas for turning to me for this shoot. What an awesome experience!

Hawaii

So, after a little bit of time spent catching up on work, I thought I'd post a handful of my favorite images from my recent trip in Kauai. Bear in mind, this was not a work trip... by any stretch of the imagination. This trip was all about the wedding to my beautiful bride, Karlee (pictured below).

With that said, these images are more of a quick look into some of the fun shots I felt like taking while on vacation. Even though I may not have been at work, I still love taking photos for the sheer joy of creating art and documenting the beauty around us.

That's all the disclaimer I have here. Enjoy!

My wife Karlee on the on the Kalalau trail on the Nepali Coast

A view of the North Island, just outside of Hanalei.

Snorkeling shot taken with a Canon G9 with an underwater housing.

Sunset in Poipu the day of our wedding. A huge thanks to the folks at the Beach House restaurant for catering our reception and for providing such an awesome place to watch the sunset.

Red Bull Music Academy: Decibel Festival

I know this didn't just happen yesterday, but I still wanted to make a post about it... even if it is a couple weeks late. I just got done shooting the Seattle Decibel Festival at Neumos for Red Bull Seattle and thought I'd post a few of my favorite shots from the night.

Yeah, I know music isn't my "normal thing", but who cares?!?! Photography is photography after all. And on top of that, when we step outside of our comfort zone, we sometimes can experience the greatest growth.

That said, not being used to lighting a nightclub for a photoshoot, I was running around Neumos for the first half of the evening like a chicken with my head cut off. Mis-firing poketwizards and an ever changing assortment of strobes and LED lights screwing with my exposure made this a huge challenge. But the challenge made this fun for me. If you walked into every shoot and knew exactly how EVERYTHING was going to go, it'd get boring really quick.

A huge thanks to the folks at Red Bull for giving me the chance to shoot this event. And also, a big shout out to the artists: Schlomo, Teebs, Headhunter, Mount Kimbie, and Modeselektor... what an awesome show... my ears are still ringing.

While I Was Away

I'm usually the biggest advocate for maintaining a blog with constant updates. However, I just looked at my blog the other day and realized that I've been doing a MISERABLE job of maintaining mine. But, in my defense, hopefully you'll all agree that I had a good reason.

That's right, for those of you who didn't get your invite, I just got married to my beautiful bride Karlee at the beginning of the month in Kauai. With all of the logistics of planning a wedding, unfortunately the timely exercise of blogging had to fall by the wayside. But fear not, I'm back in the saddle again. New blog posts are already slated out as I try and catch up with about a months worth of back-logged ideas. Thanks for sticking in there with me. More to come soon.

Thanks!

Behind the Scenes: Matchstick Productions shoot

Quick blog post for ya. This coming Friday marks the world premiere of Matchstick Production's new ski movie, The Way I See It. I was fortunate enough to work with the MSP crew on a couple of their shoots this past winter during the filming of the movie.

With the premiere right around the corner, I've been busy working to help them promote the release. Along those lines, we've put up two "behind the scenes" looks at the production of Mark Abma and Eric Hjorleifson's Meadow Lodge trip.

The first behind the scenes look comes from an article I worked on with ESPN. To check out the full article and photo gallery, click on the link HERE.

The second behind the scenes look comes straight from the Matchstick Productions crew. This first episode of "The Making of: The Way I See It" shows some of what goes into filming and shooting skiing movies.

Enjoy!

Red Bull Kayaking Shoot: In 3D

To see the image in 3D, click HERE.

I just recently finished up a really fun shoot for Red Bull Energy Drink with professional kayaker Tao Berman. What made this shoot so incredible, wasn't just the sheer athleticism in front of the camera, but was the amount of creativity I was afforded. In organizing the shoot, Red Bull had essentially given me free reign to shoot this however I wanted.

For the last few months, I've been dying to try shooting something in 3D. Since I saw the James Cameron movie Avatar, I've wanted to test the 3D technology and see how it translated from video to still. When this shoot with Tao came before me, I knew this was the shoot to make it happen.

In doing my research for this shoot, I'd come across plenty of other 3D photos, but none of them were action or motion based. Everything I was coming across was static... whether a landscape, portrait or still life. Not finding any 3D (also called anaglyph) photos of sports left me really excited. This was going to be something relatively new, and it's always fun to be the guinea pig on new things as you never now what you're going to encounter or how it's going to turn out.

(A brief note: with new versions of Photoshop, it's now possible to create 3D images in post production with a single camera and manipulating the single resulting image. But that's not what I wanted to do here. With this shoot, I wanted to achieve a true 3D image, by shooting two cameras offset from one another. The advantage in using two cameras, is that the resulting 3D image has more depth and texture that it can draw out as it does not require photoshop to extrapolate and create new information.)

Given the inherent danger in running waterfalls, and not wanting to subject Tao to any more danger than necessary, we only had a few cracks at shooing this. With that in mind, we were running 3 cameras at all times, in order to ensure maximum coverage and guarantee differing angles and vantage points.

In the end, the shoot went off great. The resulting 3D image turned out better that I could have hoped. I'm excited to put this technology to use again on some more shoots in the near future... stay tuned.

If you'd like to see some of the other images from the shoot, you can see a small gallery HERE.

Final note: if you're interested in learning more of the details about how to shoot a true anaglyph/3D image, post a comment below. If enough people are interested, I'll follow up with a tutorial post later.

International Photography Awards- Honorable Mention

I just got notified that one of my photos received an honorable mention in the 2010 International Photography Awards. The above shot of parkour athlete, Daetan Huck was honored in the Professional, Advertising, "Other" division.

The International Photography Awards is an annual competition for professional, non-professional and student photographers on a global scale, which has created one of the most ambitious and comprehensive competitions in the photo world today. www.photoawards.com

I'm honored to have received this mention and it's got me charged with new vigor and ambition to keep pushing my work in new directions.

To see my photo and some of the other honorable mentions, check out the gallery HERE.

On the Road

I usually try to post at least once a week on this blog. As I look back at the month of June, I realize that my goal was far from reached last month. The result of being on the road and not getting to spend a lot of time behind the camera has left me with the more difficult task of finding things to write about. Not wanting to be "that guy" that just throws up a bunch of random garbage on the blog, I've remained silent for the last 2 weeks.

Well, two weeks of silence is enough for me... actually, I think that's the longest I've ever been quiet for. And while I might not have the most interesting "behind the scenes of a bad-ass photo shoot" blog post for this week, I thought I'd at least post something. Below are a handful of shots from my iPhone from the last couple of weeks of traveling. Hopefully something fun and unique.

Cheers!

Amazing Work... Thanks Red Bull

I just got an email from Red Bull announcing the finalists for their second Illume Photo Contest. The work that was submitted is absolutely stunning. I spent a good hour flipping through some of the photos featured on their website. I could have spent the rest of my day captivated by these images, but instead, I thought I'd share some of my favorites here. (A quick note: These are NOT my photos, just some of the photos that I feel are truly inspiring! Nice work to the photogs that created them.)

If you'd like to see the entire sampling, scroll down to the bottom of this post for the slideshow in its entirety. Enjoy!

New Work: Road Running

I usually try to make at least one blog post every week. Recently though, I've been failing at that... miserably! For one excuse or another (traveling, shooting, and a mother board crashing) I've just been too busy to sit down for an hour to post my new work or other random industry musings. But that stops today.

Two weekends ago, I went out to do a road running shoot. Not for any particular client, but because it was something I just wanted to shoot. I firmly believe that every once in a while you need to go out and shoot, just for the sake of shooting. Not every time you pick up a camera has to be for a client. Sometimes it's nice to take a day or two and produce a shoot that you want to shoot, the way you want to shoot it. It's a great way to add to your portfolio while at the time, showing off your true, unconstrained style. All too often, when shooting for a client, you aren't able to shoot things exactly as you'd like. Whether that be because of branding visibility, layout issues, art direction or a slew of other reasons. It's nice to be able to show other creatives what your true style can be.

So with that in mind, I headed up into the Cascades of Washington with my fiance Karlee helping out with modeling responsibilities for the day. Here are a few of the resulting images. And for all you Strobist followers, the shot above will show you my lighting setup for the image that follows. Enjoy!