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.
I know, I know. Its weird. But I do take photos of things that do not have a stick and ball in them.
This was an impromptu photo taken on a tram in Las Vegas at about 4 am when we were coming back from various casinos. The man in the back was pretty darn drunk but was able to hold his match long enough to get his face to glow. The guy in the front is my friend Dan.
The other day I got to witness history at the Los Angeles coliseum a place they haven’t played in 50 years. To top that off there was over 115,300 people there! It was insane. I left 5 hours early just to get into the place. Also, make sure you check out the left field fence. It was only 200 feet long. I felt like i could have hit it out.
I got to go on a road trip recently to the San Francisco bay area and shoot a basketball game and some portraits of Australian basketball players from Saint Mary’s college in Moraga CA.
To top it off, the night before I shot a basketball game at UCLA which ended at 10 then I went straight to san fran after that and didn’t get to my hotel in (scary scary) Oakland until 4am in the morning only to wake up at 9 to get ready for the portrait, FUN!
Seriously, I had a great time. I had the help of a pro and some fun guys to shoot.
Thanks for looking!
This is the one they picked for Sports Illustrated.
So a few weeks ago I shot NASCAR for the first time. I was reallly bored the first two days but the last day I had some fun. Turns out there is much more to this than cars going in a circle. Thanks to Mark for being a pal and showing me the ropes.
Here are some pictures from the last day.
Any questions, please feel free to ask.
During games I try to take a few minutes from shooting the normal stock action and focus on other things. For this shot I was at the USC versus Oklahoma basketball game. I found a hotspot on the court (from the lights) while I was walking around the arena on the top level. So I grabbed my 70-200 and 1.4 extender, exposed for the hotspot to make it silhouette the players and turn their shadows black. (iso 200, shutter speed 1000, and f5.6) The color in the floor is a color shift from the lights.
If you have any questions about the shot, please leave a comment or email me.
Thanks for looking.
The hotspot on the court
Here are some other general shots from the game, mostly OJ Mayo…actually all four.
I had to take a photo of OJ Mayo’s Shoes for work.
OJ Mayo as he is announced in the starting line up. (They lowered the lights and put a spot on him, I layed on the ground underneath 3 giant bball players to get a shot.
If you want one, leave your address! When there printed, Ill send you one.
This year, I wanted to do something fun for our christmas card. We always plan out one but never follow through with it. So this year I had to go all out. What better way to start, than with a crude 1st grader like drawing that took about a minute.
Then we add the models. This was a tough one because peanuts (our dog) schedule is very full and doesnt like to be photographed and Rachel gets tired of me taking pictures of her almost immediatly after I start.
First we started with peanut. To get this amazing poise Rachel held a treat above her head to make her stand up. The viscious craze in her face was just a bonus.
Then we added us. I had to place my camera on a tripod and use remote to trigger the camera. To light it, I used 4 alien bees, a large soft box for the main light , 2 lights behind to give some highlights, and one on the background.
I then took the photos and cut them out using OnOne’s Mask Pro 4.1 (free trial!) This is a really cool program and a huge time saver. I toned the images together and gave our legs shadows under to make the photos blend together better. I then took the head of Peanut and rotated it down. Then I put it on a green background (using a new layer and paint bucket) to clean up the rest of the pic.
Then I needed a background. So I found a sky picture on a free stock photo page on the internet.
We just moved to Los Angeles this year from washington so what better way to show that than the Hollywood sign. (courtesy of my friend and his point and shot camera) I obviously took the liberty of making the hill the sign sits on a little more rounded. I did this by taking the left side and pasting it at an angle on the side, then blended it.
I added some palm trees to make it more california like and birds cause we were flying and needed company.
Finally I changed peanuts paws in the rear to look more like she is not standing on something. I did this by copying her front paws and then transforming them and blending them in. Then I put a motion blur on us and peanut to make it look like we are going fast (and cause its fun)
Thats it! If you have any specific questions leave me a comment.
Thanks for looking! Special thanks to our dog for being a trooper.
