For the last few months, people have been asking me about the post-production involved in the photos on my blog post "70 basketball portraits I did in two days." I always planned on sharing it with everyone but just haven't had time to put anything together until now. Recently, I was asked to do a guest post for Scott Kelby's blog and thought, "What better way to share this Photoshop tip with everyone than on Mr. Photoshop himself's blog, Scott Kelby?" I was pretty giddy, to say the least. It's actually a pretty simple process that has a few steps to get this "look" (and its not LucasArts or HDR:)).

Here are some portraits I did for ESPN Rise magazine on one of the top female basketball players in the country. She was great to work with and was a natural in front of the camera. Plus I felt pretty short next to here (shes 6'2). This was for a cover and inside feature story so I tried to get some photos in her normal clothes as well as her uniform. Here are some of my favorites. Be sure to click on the photos for larger sizes.

I had the privilege to photograph a boxer a few weeks ago and here is one of my favorite shots from the short session. I had to place black stretching mats behind the ropes because there were large mirrors surrounding the ring. I placed them behind the ropes so I wouldn't get a lot of reflection from the light and so you wouldn't see me in the frame. For the shot I used a ABR800 ring flash at a very low power to fill the front (I find it very harsh at higher settings) I also used an Alien bee B800 with a beauty dish above him pointing towards his back for separation from the background. Settings: Model: NIKON D700 Firmware: Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh Lens (mm): 24-70mm at 24mm ISO: 200 Aperture: 18 Shutter: 1/200 Here is Jake and his friend Matt helping out by being a boom arm for me. They are holding the beauty dish above and pointing toward his back.

So, its been a long time since my last entry, I know. I have a few excuses! I swear! First, the magazines I work for have to print the photos before I can post them. Second, I'm lazy. OK, well I'm not lazy, but over the past few months I have been neglecting my blog. That is going to change. I am going to try and blog a lot more often. I have a few blogs I am going to try and post this week starting with this one, so please stay tuned.

I will be speaking at the PDN Photo Plus expo in New York this year for the "Sports Photography Today" session. I had the opportunity to do this last year and am very grateful to be ask back again to act as newcomer on this panel with three of the greatest sports photography minds of all time.

I just got a few tear sheets (PDF's) from ESPN Rise magazine the other day as well as a nice surprise from SI in the mail. These photos where chosen by the magazine but were part of my initial edit when I sent them the raw files. The rise magazine photos booth ran at a page and a quarter (or so).

About a month or so ago I shot a few portraits of Jane Rah, a high school golf rock star who has already played in the LPGA tour. Here are some of my favorites and a few set ups. Sorry, I dont have more. It was a rush to get all the photos we needed in before the sunset. We met around 6:30 so we wouldn’t have to deal with such harsh light. I brought along my awesome assistants Chris and Brian to help trek the gear around the golf course. Luckily when we showed up we had a golf cart waiting for us to load up.

I have been doing a lot of portraits lately (as you can see) and after Jamie (my boss at Icon) sent some of my portraits to a few magazines I got a email from the editor at Rise with three upcoming assignments. Here are a few images from the first assignment. For the shot my two assistants and I hiked up the side of a hill to try and get away from the “school feel.” The girls were nice and once they got the “giggles” out of them they were awesome models for the shoot.

About two weeks after the first set of basketball portraits another tournament came up, this time it was at USC with a lot less players. Some of them I knew from the last time I took pictures of them which was cool. They opened up a lot more specially after I emailed them some of their last shots. This shoot I had three people helping me move stuff around which was nice because we had to move the set up twice. We had everything in place and we were waiting for the first player to show up when my arch nemesis the "event staff" showed up.

Last month I went to Tucson AZ for the Arizona Cactus Classic. It is a tournament for all the top high school basketball players in the country, we are talking next Lebron and kobe here. My job was to get portraits of all the players. I was first set up (by the tournament people) in a room with very little to work with. About three feet of shooting space, seriously. So I scouted around the arena and found a loading dock to take all the photos in.