Utah gets squashed by TCU 55-28

Went to Texas last weekend to photograph the University of Utah Utes take on the TCU Horned Frogs. Started the day Saturday morning taking photos of ESPN game day as they visited the TCU campus. Lee Corso tossed the Utah helmut aside and put on the head of TCU mascot "SuperFrog" indicating his pick of TCU over Utah. Turns out the old coach knows what he's talking about. I ended the day by taking a lot of photos as TCU creamed Utah 55-28 in what turned out to be the Ute's worst game in a long time. Also, Utah is not that bad of a team, but TCU is "that" good and very fast.

I have spent a few weeks in Texas covering various events in the last couple of years and like the state and especially the food.

Had a lot of fun covering this game, but it's a lot of work to get images taken, edited and transmitted back to the office before the game, at half-time and after the game. I ended up transmitting right from the sidelines of the game. Fortunately the weather was good so I didn't have to worry about doing it in a downpour or a blizzard.

Anyway here are the photos:

more to come....

Looking Good & Portraits

Often when I am taking portraits of people they worry about how they are going to look. I know it's my job to put them at ease and do the best job I can to make them look good; especially if it is a "formal portrait" or one that I am doing for my personal freelance business.

But for my main job in the newspaper business we are all about reality. We have been trained all of our careers to get the facts right and tell things as they are. But people still worry when we have to take a portrait of them. Everyone has feelings and concerns. So what do we do.

It would be very easy to "fix" things using a computer program so that everyone looked perfect. But that is not what we do. Nor in my opinion should we be doing this as it is deceptive and unethical.

So in my opinion what we can do is set up the lighting the way we want it to be first and foremost, then tone the photo on the computer so that the color balance and lighting are correct. We can dodge or burn parts of the image to help it more accurately represent the original lighting and slightly sharpen the image to correct for the "in camera" softening that occurs with the infrared filter in front of the image sensor on all digital cameras. But there it stops.

But for images that I shoot that are not for the newspaper. The parameters are somewhat different and I am more flexible with what I shoot and how I do things. This is not to say that I toss ethics out the window. It's just a different forum and unfortunately our society is very "youth obsessed" and people, especially women have had unrealistic expectations place upon them.

When they see the covers of magazines and photos at studios and see so much perfection they are worried that they will not measure up.

I for one would love to see a wrinkle here and there, a little grey hair, some character in the person's face. To me this adds more interest to the image. It shows more of a reality and personality of who the person is. But sadly that is not the norm. People worry too much.

I personally have been impressed with the actress Jamie Lee Curtis, who doesn't dye her hair anymore and is not afraid to let a few wrinkles show. Yet she is still a very beautiful and vibrant person.

Here are a couple of recent portraits I took. The man in the portrait was for a story in the newspaper announcing his retirement from a very important post as Chief Economist for Wells Fargo Bank. The other portraits are of him and then some of his wife.

I let the images speak for themselves.

more to come......

Jazz, Utes and a Pinewood Derby

I have had this project in the can for a while, but was not able to post it for a variety of reason. It ran today in the Deseret News so I am posting a small slide show of photos. It is often difficult to take portraits of people who are very much in demand as the time you get with them is very limited. This was no exception. I had about 2-3 minutes with each of the portrait subjects and had to photograph the three players who were on the cover separately and combine their photos into one final photo using photoshop. I knew this going into the photo shoot and planned my lighting accordingly. So that each player would be lit the way I planned to place them in the photo. Also because i needed several different looks and had such a limited window of time. I set up two different lighting set ups. One was a small photo flex softbox with a Canon 580 EXII mounted on a Pocketwizard TT5 which was triggered by a Pocketwizard TT1 and shot with a Canon 5D using a 28-70 lens. It's a very simple but effective set-up. The other set-up consisted of two dynalite heads with a snoot on each head and a 20% grid balanced from each side with an Orbis ring flash used as an on-axis fill. The players were all great to work with so this is the how things turned out. The last frame is what the cover mock up looked like. The final was a little different on the page, but you can see what I was aiming for.

Also major props to Jonathan Rinehart of the Jazz for helping make the arraignments, the Jazz players involved, Utah Jazz Vice President of Communications Linda Luchetti and Ravell Call for the last minute use of his dynalite's.

Next up is a recent photo shoot of the Utah's 23-16 overtime win over the Air Force Academy last weekend.

And last but not least, I've spent the last 3-4 weeks building a pinewood derby car with my youngest daughter Mariah to compete in the "daddy, daughter" event at our church. We had a blast, and did not come in dead last even without adding weights and shaving our wheels and all the other things people do. But I can honestly say, I better not give up my day job!!!!

The best thing about the car is the paint job and my daughter completed that and much of the sanding of the car, all by herself. Her car is the orange one she named the "pumpkin eater".

Thanks to Jason for trading shifts with me so I could be there.

Here are the photos.

more to come....

Updated my photo web site

Just updated my personal website with more and new wedding images. Added a new page to showcase these images. Here are a few samples of the updated pages. If you get a chance check it out.

more to come...

KSL-TV Channel Five

Nadine Wimmer and Bruce Lindsay broadcasting the 5 o'clock news.

Here is a slideshow of a few photos from KSL-TV Channel Five which I took tonight during their 5 o'clock news broadcast for a story to go in our newspaper about today's announcement by Mark Willes CEO of Deseret Management Corporation that DMC will create two new operating divisions.

(If you click on the small icon just above the credits you can see the photos in full screen mode).

KSL-TV and KSL Radio will split from current parent Bonneville International to comprise the new KSL Broadcasting.

The other company Deseret Digital Media will combine the web operations of the Deseret News, Deseret Book and new KSL Broadcasting subsidiaries.

As I work for the Deseret News this was a big announcement for us, but one that is very positive as it equates to "growth" within our company and will help to make our brand more well known and drive more people to our website and even to our printed products. It makes sense to combine all our media companies, especially the web/new media divisions into one company.

So I got to spend a little time behind the scenes at KSL-TV chatting with a lot of friends and taking photos of them as they went through their paces of putting together a news program and getting it on the air.

So check out the slide show to get a little feel for what it is like behind the scenes at the local top rated television newscast.

Senior Photos of Stormie Miller

Here are some portraits I took of my daughter Stormie for her senior photos. Can't believe she will be a senior in high school this year. If you click on the small icon just above the credits you can see the photos in full screen mode. Thanks to the good folks at "soundslides" and their great software.

NaSCAR 125 and Bear Lake boating vacation

I've been really busy and then took a week of much needed vacation time so I'm a little behind on my posts, but here's a few photos to show you what I have been up to lately....enjoy!

The week before I went on vacation I got a chance to shoot some photos out at Miller Motorsports Park of Hershel McGriff, an 81 year old race car driver we were doing a feature on for the newspaper.

Hershel McGriff

I got a nice portrait of him and then some nice photos of him racing at the track last saturday. A spot of bad news with a flat tire on the last lap of the race dropped him down to a 19th place finish. But hey at 81 years of age and driving 175 mph around a race track is pretty darn spectacular in my book.

Hershel talks to his crew chief prior to the race.

Hershel racing at Miller Motorsports Park

But the winner Patrick Long had the best car all day and blew everyone away after every caution restart.

Patrick Long racing at Miller Motorsports Park.

I also got a chance to shoot a quick and dirty portrait of him a couple of days prior to the race. I used a combination of natural light coming into the garage from a door and a little fill light with the Orbis ring flash. Here's the portrait below.

Patrick Long

Here are a few more photos from the NASCAR 650 horsepower circuit race.

Patrick Long celebrates his victory with his crew.

Patrick Long has a champagne fight with his crew to celebrate his win.

Paulie Harraka catches a little "air" driving the NAPA AutoCare/Adaptive One Brakes Toyota to a second place finish at Miller Motorsports Park.

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My next adventure was to go to beautiful Bear Lake, a large fresh water lake which spans the boarders of Idaho and Utah in northeastern Utah. We spent the day kicking back and relaxing with my neighbors and good friends James and Stephanie Andrews and their children Braxton and Lexie on their boat. But me, being me I drug along my Mark III and a 70-200 with a 1.4x and shot some fun photo of them and two of my daughters Mariah and Stormie having fun on a tube being pulled by their boat. We finished the day with pizza and sandwiches at Bear Lake Pizza and ended the meal with chocolate covered raspberries, a Bear Lake specialty. Not a bad day. Anyway here's the photos.

James Andrews catches a little "air" on beautiful Bear Lake in northeastern Utah.

James wife Stephanie wake boards at Bear Lake.

James enjoys wake-boarding on a sun-drenched day at Bear Lake.

(from left) Mariah, Stormie and Braxton have fun on the tube as it is pulled by the boat.

more to come.....