Don't Jump

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While I was waiting for my assignment to start a competitive dive team was warming up. I just took one quick snap and here it is.

Statue Man

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In all my years of gathering caption information, I've never had to ask a mime for his name. There was an awkward silence.

Boomer

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This is Rick Bowmer, aka "Boomer" a staff photographer for the Associated Press. We were standing around waiting on the OSU Cal game to start. Rick has had an amazing career including living in Israel. He get's called out on to cover assignments all over the world. He's a cool cat and and a notorious prankster. It's a pleasure working with him.

Craig Mitchelldyer on the PhotoShelter Blog

>My friend Craig was interviewed for the PhotoShelter Blog. He mentioned this blog. It's a good read.

Click on the link above to go there.

Jacquizz Rodgers

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Everybody's talking about true freshman Jacquizz Rodgers, star running back for the Oregon State Beavers. I saw him gain 144-yards against the Cal Bears Saturday. It's too bad a freshman has never won the Heisman?

Click on the link above to see a list of Heisman Trophy winners.

Thank You, Thank You Very Much

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A few months back I saw this dude doing his Elvis impersonation on Broadway. I was on my way to an assignment and passed him up. Last night, I finally saw him again and pulled over, set up a little light and made some frames. I also recorded his voice, but I won't get to the editing for awhile...if ever.

Rose Parade

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I was going through some past assignments and found this image.

This was one of the few assignments this year where I didn't edit the work using my usual Aperture workflow. Since there were multiple photographers shooting the Rose Parade, we had card runners taking our work back to office for editing. Until now I've never looked at the entire shoot. Back in June, I took the dvd of all my images and imported them in the library.

Because of that, they weren't rated and had fallen out of my usual system for sorting my best images. Now that contest time is approaching. I'm in the process of sorting, ranking and organizing my work. At the same time, I'm updating my online portfolio, building books... and blogging. When all that's going on, sometimes images I missed earlier bubble up.

Veterans

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Brookings has the highest concentration of Veterans in the state of Oregon. I took a trip down to the Southern Oregon Coast to shoot some portraits and find out why they like it so much.

Bruce Ely's photo for The Oregonian Makes Top Five Photos That Helped Clinch The Election

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I think this really an interesting idea to pinpoint photos that made the biggest impact on Obama's campaign. Even more interesting, is that a photo in The Oregonian made the list...or more accurately images from Portland rally had the impact. I forget what I was doing during that rally, but I wasn't in town. Click the link above to see the entire list.

Hospital

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This was an assignment to make an interesting exterior photo of Oregon Health Sciences University. I was on a skybridge looking back at the east side of building.

Kevin German's Stolen Images

>Click on the link above to read how a "wannabe" flickr photographer (and con-man stock trader) named Lee Turner stole Kevin German's images and then submitted them to the UNICEF contest as his own. He even posted them on VII Visionaries site.

This guy has some serious issues.

Trout Fishing

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Family Snaps on the Hasselblad

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I've had this film rolling around in my bag for awhile and finally had it processed in scanned. Processing and scanning cost me $34 for three rolls, plus the cost of the film. That's a quite an investment. But, I really enjoy using the camera and I like the look it gives. Besides, I'd like to use it for a portrait assignment eventually and it's important to practice and build a workflow for it.

For the photo geeks out there, I used a Color FX Aperture plugin to create a neutral density graduated filter first, and then applied a the color stylizer filter on the first photo of Cole on his motorcycle.

PhotoShelter.com Gallery Embed Test

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This is a gallery off my photoshelter.com website. It's now possible to embed the gallery. It's pretty cool in that if you click on the photo it goes to photoshelter and you could even license the image if I set it up that way. Update: I found out from Caroline at PhotoShelter that it's possible to change the size parameters in the html embed code. In this case I changed it to 800x694 pixels. This makes me very happy and I'll probably switch from picassa to photoshelter for my blog galleries.

After I posted this PhotoShelter added this functionality to the embed window. Thanks PhotoShelter!

Portland Fashion Week

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Here's a few snaps from the Friday night fashion show during Portland Fashion Week and the after parties. Check me out in the last frame. What a dork!

Santa Monica

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I wandered around Santa Monica Pier before heading to LAX for my return trip. What can I say, I like tourist areas. They're touristy.

Southern California

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I had a good bit of free time in Los Angeles during my trip to cover the Oregon/USC game. I walked along Venice Beach, Melrose, Avenue, and, of course, explored Hollywood at night. Here's few snaps from my wanderings.

Portland Trailblazer Portraits

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This should be an interesting year for the Portland Trailblazers. People who know a lot more about the NBA than I do think they'll go far with the addition of Greg Oden and Rudy Fernandez. I hope they're right. It'll be fun covering a successful team.

My role during media day was to try and make simple portraits of the players in a very short amount of time while Bruce documented the day for publication immediately on Oregonlive.com and for the next day's Oregonian newspaper.

I think Jonathan Ferrey made the best portraits for Getty Images. I was going to provide a link but they don't appear to be live on the Getty Images site yet. Trust me he did a great job with the light and poses.

Anyway, it was pleasure to shoot these guys...especially Luke Jackson who I've been shooting since his high school days in Creswell, Ore. He's already been in the NBA four years. That made me feel old.

Natchway's TED Project

>This is a letter I received from Natasha at the TED Conference.

Dear Thomas,

This is Natasha Dantzig for the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference.

I'm writing to ask for your for your help in breaking a major global news story on Friday, October 3rd.

This is an important story that has been documented over the last two years by renowned photojournalist James Nachtwey. In 2007, Nachtwey won the TED Prize, an initiative of the TED Conference, which grants three extraordinary individuals one wish to change the world. Winners are given one hundred thousand dollars in seed money, and individuals within the TED community and the world at large participate in making the wish come true.

Nachtwey wished for help in breaking a news story in a way that demonstrates the power of news photography in the digital age. On October 3, Nachtwey's work will be simultaneously revealed online, disseminated through numerous media channels, and projected on monuments and public buildings throughout the world.

How to get involved:
The following link contains embeddable badges, Nachtwey's TEDTalk, and other information related to Nachtwey's wish.
http://www.tedprize.org/nachtwey/bloggers.html
The site will redirect on October 3 to unveil the story.

We're reaching out to individual bloggers around the world with the hope that you'll help us get the word out by posting these items on your site in advance of October 3, and blogging about Nachtwey's upcoming reveal.

Thanks in advance for your consideration, and please don't hesitate to get in touch with me directly with any questions.

Best,
Natasha Dantzig

Oregon v. Washington State

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Bruce and I shot University of Oregon play Washington State University in Pullman this Saturday. It was a blowout like I've never seen before. The light was nice though. It was really quite a let down from Thursday when we shot OSU cream USC.