High School State Championship Swim Meet

I got a chance to photograph the State 3A and 4A high school Swimming Championships last Saturday in Provo, Utah. I really enjoy photographing high school sports as there is a pureness to it that doesn’t seem to exist at other levels. I saw a lot of acts of good sportsmanship and came away feeling hopeful and impressed.

Here is a collage of images I made from all the jubilation plus a few more that I liked.

enjoy....

more to come.....

Creative Juices

As photographers we are constantly dropping our pail down the well dipping for all the creative juice we can bring up. For most of us, on occasion the bucket comes back up empty and we can get pretty frustrated.

I find at these times the best way to get our creative water back and running is to do a couple of things and remember a couple of things.

First we need to remember to give ourselves some downtime to replenish the well. Get away from way we are doing, focus on something else, spend some time with family, friends go skiing, go to a movie, do something else.

Second for me I tend to shoot some stuff just for fun, rather than focusing on it being an assignment for something for someone else, I just shoot some fun stuff for me.

Both these things tend to help me get my creative juices flowing and then when I drop the bucket in the well, something else beside empty air comes back up.

Here are a couple of images I took just for fun. Just for me. They won't win any awards, or get any oh's and ah's but I like'em and they are all part of the process of making good images.

And speaking of good images. Please click on this link and go visit the Deseret News website where photos by Jeff Allred and stories by Scott Taylor from the earthquake disaster in Haiti can be seen. Very moving, amazing images and compelling stories.

2009 Photos of the Year "my newspaper work"

Sorry I haven't posted for a few weeks. I have been fighting off a terrible case of bronchitis that really kicked my fanny for awhile. I'm finally starting to feel like a normal human being again!! And as it's that time of year, when we often take a look back at what we did over the previous 12 months. I'm going to do the same.

As you know I am a photographer who does a lot of personal portrait, wedding, editorial and other type work, but in my main work life I am photo editor for a newspaper.

As a photo editor I spend most of my time in the office doing editing, attending meetings, helping teach photographers, doing schedules and many other duties I'm not going to bore you with. But once or twice a week, depending on our other duties, the photo editors get a chance to get out from behind the desk and go out and take photos. So here is a collection of some of my favorite images taken as a newspaper photographer in 2009.

more to come......

Christmas Dance Portraits 2009

Had a chance this last weekend to do portraits of my daughter Stormie and her friends who were going to the Viewmont High School Christmas dance. I set up one of my favorite backdrops and used a three light setup consisting of two SB580 EX II Canon strobes and one dynalite 400 watt head. I used the dynalite as my main light with the canon strobes as fill and rim light. All three were triggered with Pocket Wizards, with the two flex TT5's firing the strobes and a multimax on the main light. All three were triggered with the mini TT1. It is a quick and easy set and shows how you can mix small and larger lights.

I asked my oldest daughter Nastassia and my youngest daughter Mariah to pose for me while I dialed in the lights. The next girl in the beautiful green dress is my middle daughter Stormie. I'm pretty proud of my trio of talented and beautiful girls. And since it's my blog I am going to brag on beautiful daughters!!!

The rest of the group are her friends and their dates. And as this was a Christmas dance I have included a little christmas music in this slide show to celebrate the season. So click on the slide show below and enjoy. If you want to see it in full screen mode click on the little icon in the bottom right of the slide show.

more to come.....

It's That Time of Year "Christmas Lights"

It's that time of year when everyone bundles up warm and cosy and heads out with family and friends to see the wonderful Christmas lights and decorations. One of the biggest destinations in our area is downtown Salt Lake City, the Gallivan Center and more prominently, Temple Square of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I had a chance to take photos on the night that they turned on the lights.

I'm not going to bore anyone with all the details on how to shoot lights at night other than to say, hold really, really still or use a tripod, otherwise you will get motion blur.

Here are the photos, enjoy.

more to come.......

Jazz vs Memphis

Covered the Utah Jazz as they played against the Memphis Grizzlies a couple of nights ago at the EnergySolutions Arena in Salt Lake City, Utah.

I always enjoy taking action photos at an NBA game and as the newspaper I work for is lucky enough to have a set of Speedatron strobes up in the catwalk of the stadium I like to use them whenever I can.

I wanted to set up a remote camera to capture the game from a different angle than where I was sitting on the baseline. So I arrived very early before the start of the game so I could safely mount a camera and lens in the catwalk of the arena long before any spectators would arrive and fill the seats below.

I wanted to keep things simple so I was only setting up one remote and using it with the strobes.

I chose to mount a Canon 500mm f4 lens on a Canon 5D. As I was going to use the strobes with this remote and shoot available on my two other cameras at court side I just used pocketwizard MultiMax radio transmitters to trigger the camera and the flash system.

If you decide to do something like this you need to be aware that it is extremely important to follow a set of specific guidelines to make sure that it is done properly and most importantly, safely. To do this, I used two bogen magic arms to secure the lens to the railing on the catwalk above the court. I also made sure to use three separate stainless steel safety cables attached to the camera, lens and straps of both. I little overkill I suppose, but it beats the heck out of an accidental fall of camera gear. I learned the value of safety cable years ago while watching a White House press conference on live TV when an overhead remote camera came loose and was dangling in front of the TV cameras and only kept from falling on the heads of those in attendance by the safety cables.

After I have everything in place I made sure that I set my camera to single shot, set the exposure. (ISO 200, f6.3 @1/200 shutter) I also set it to RAW file as I wanted the best quality possible. I then make sure of the final and pretty important step. Making sure the lens is focused on the right spot. Whenever I use an overhead remote in basketball I like to focus on the midpoint of the net on the basket, this usually lines up with the face of the players as they jump to make a shot or block one.

With everything done and a few test shots to make sure everything is working it's off to the court to get everything ready there.

I got a couple of overhead shots I liked so I put them at the start and finish of the rest of the game shots. I was lucky as Ronnie Brewer had a big game and my best overhead photo was of him making two of his 25 points.

So here are the photos:

more to come...

Luncheon Moments

Often one of the biggest challenges we face as photographers is capturing the "moment". When I talk about this with young photographers I often ask them what a "moment" is in terms of photography. I have been surprised that many times they don't really know how to articulate it, but they have captured them in their photographs, but missed them when they were editing their images.

So what is a moment. The dictionary defines it this way: an exact point in time, an appropriate time for doing something; an opportunity : a particular stage in something's development or in a course of events : In photography it is the exact second when the subject you are photographing makes an emotional connection with others in the situation they are in, or when they make an emotional connection with the environment or situation they are in. In a portrait situation it is when their inner personality is expressed.

What we try to do as photographers is capture these rare fleeting moments so that those viewing the photographs can have a visceral and emotional connection to the person or persons in the photograph.

But this is not easy to do. What is takes is patience, insight and lots and lots of practice refining your observational skills.

The best tool you have to be successful at this is "knowledge". The photographer needs to be aware of the importance of what they are photographing, the story, why things are important, who is important and the back story on these people. The more information you have going into the situation, the better able you will be to not miss the small nuanced moments that can make your images more powerful.

Of course it goes without saying that composition, lighting and all the other tools at your disposal are important. But what they will get you is a nicely lit, perfectly composed, boring photograph unless you capture the story telling moments while you are there.

Recently I had an assignment to photograph a luncheon for two rather distinguished women who were being honored for their contributions to an organization that fosters high ideals, morals and character in young women. They have been responsible for many innovative programs and leadership that had helped define many of the current initiatives of this organization. I did not have the opportunity to research these women before the time of the luncheon, so I planned some time to arrive early at the event so I could get the back story on them and find out who was going to be there to honor them.

They say "knowledge is power" and in this situation it was indeed helpful to have this information before I began photographing the event. This allowed me to see "moments" of interaction between certain people and those being honored that I might have overlooked had I been less informed.

Here are the photos that I took at the event. Some were part of the normal event assignment requirements such as formal group portraits, speaker shots etc. but it's the small moments that I was lucky enough to get that brought the most satisfaction for me on this particular assignment.

Let me know what you think in the comments:

more to come....