Sunset

View from near my house at sunset. I love monsoon sunsets!

Oregon vacation

Here's a few of my favorite shots of our family camping vacation to Oregon this past June. We drove all the way up the coast of Oregon, starting in the Redwoods of Northern California, to almost the northern tip of Oregon at Seaside. Then we traveled south and made our way to Crater Lake. We had a great time, and I got share a lot of the beauty of my home state.

A windy & cool southern Oregon Beach;

Windswept.

Another beautiful day; at the Umpqua Lighthouse State Park beach.

The view from an opening in the Sea Lion Caves. Notice the sea lion on the rocks in the foreground. Very cool.

Our dancer Alyssa loosening up on the Oregon Dunes at Florence.

Sand Drags up the dune!

Mo's has the best clam chowder on the planet!

Leaving Mo's West at the Devil's Punchbowl State Park.

The Columbia Gorge just east of Portland.

The Silver Falls State Park near Salem is a must see. 10 waterfalls along a 9 mile trail is spectacular. You can walk behind some of the falls, a very unique experience!

One of the falls, with my family just to the right of the fall. They are good sports for 'ol Dad!

The trail back from the falls through the very lush forest at Silver Falls.

We camped at Diamond Lake near Crater Lake. The view at sunset was fantastic.

The view in the morning was even more unbelievable! We had one of the best campsites at the park.

I feel cool and refreshed just posting these photos; it is like an oven here in Phoenix this time of year!

I do a lot of Public Relations work for Ronda Bannard (http://www.inspiredconnections.net/), but when she called to have me cover a private benefit for The Women's Media Center featuring a Salon (reading from her book) given by JANE FONDA I jumped at the chance!

Guests were invited for a catered lunch and a select few were also invited to have their pictures taken with her. After lunch she read an excerpt from her book "My life, so far" which talked about her directing her father and Kathryn Hepburn on the set of "On Golden Pond", and added her personal feelings. Very cool.

She then signed books (Jessica and Alyssa have one, although they aren't allowed to read it yet!).

A very classy lady and still looking good at 70! Yikes.

Signing books:

Jane with Rhonda (my boss on this shoot)

Funny sidenote; when I was photographing the "with celebrity" shots, Jane was stressing out about the ambient light coming in from the open patio door to her left. She asked all flustered "What about this cross-lighting? What about this cross-lighting?" pointing at the lights and the patio door. I told her it wasn't factoring into the exposure because I was overpowering it with the strobes; but after the second time she asked, I showed her the image on the back of my D3. She waved her hand up and down and said "Oh, that looks great" as she walked back to her spot. She was much more relaxed after that.

Washington DC Mall

In September I was lucky enough to hired by Mary Knopp (http://www.randallphotography.net/) to go to Washington DC to photograph 1/2 of the 800(!) portraits for her client. Mark Skalny (http://www.markskalny.com/) was the other photographer. He turned out to be a good tour guide as well, when we had an afternoon off and I wanted to tour the Washington Mall, having never had the chance before.

Was a very appropriate time with the elections coming up.

Had fun taking tourist shots.

The capital at sunset:
Washington Monument with a cool sky:

Base of the Washington Monument taken with my 10.5 fisheye:

Mr. Mark Skalny checking out the view of the Washington Monument thru the lens of my 10.5mm fisheye while answering questions from his assistant in Phoenix.

The Lincoln Memorial
The man:
View from the side of the Lincoln Memorial down the Mall.

I guess I was fascinated by Washington Memorial and the sky!

Part of the Korean War Memorial:

Sunset view from the steps of The Capital down the Mall. Forget who the statue is of.

Thanks for the tour, Mark!

Smithsonian Aerospace Museum

I loved old airplanes and the race to the moon when I was a kid, and have always wanted to go to the Smithsonian Aerospace Museum in Washington DC. Well, thanks to a shoot Mary Knopp (http://www.randallphotography.net/) hired myself and Mark Skalny (http://www.markskalny.com/) to do in DC, I finally got the chance. The client rented the entire museum for the evening, and had colored lights put up everywhere. The effect was very cool, and I got a chance to check to check it all out. I was in heaven!

The U2.

I had a blast looking at the actual airplanes and rockets and spacecraft I had been reading about all these years. If you are a gearhead of any type, I can recommend making the effort.

Wedding jumping

I recently photographed the wedding of a friend's eldest son. TJ and his wife-to-be Kerry wanted some "fun" photos of their wedding, and so I thought they, being young and energetic, would be great at trying some "jumping shots".

They turned out great!

Not your typical wedding party photo:

I love this "Off into the sunset" image.

Good luck TJ & Kerry!

Nevada gold mine shoot

A long time client (AMEC) loved the annual report photos I did for them here in Phoenix so much that they had me fly into Elko Nevada to get a similar photo of them and their client at the open-pit Cortez Gold Mine in Crescent Valley (middle of no-where Nevada).

Nevada just had a record snow-fall the week before and more was forecast as I traveled up, so I was really concerned that the shoot would be snowed out. Not to mention, I would have to drive almost 2 hours to the mine.

It turned out to be a beautiful drive to the mine. Very epic sweeping views of the snowy and stark terrain.

Here's my favorite shot, AMEC's designed and built "tailings pond" for the mine (no boating, please) :

The working conditions. Muddy and frozen at the same time, like working in a gooey slurppy. I stood in the bed of the truck for the tailings pond shot. About froze my rear off.

I used my White Lightnings for lighting,and a Paul C. Buff Vagabond battery and a Tronix battery for power. Worked perfectly.

The second location, at the edge of the open-pit mine, 1,000 feet to the bottom. The mud stuck to your boots so much, I felt like Frankenstien stomping around. The wind really kicked up here.

We were about half-way through the shoot when a major gust of wind come up out of the pit and blew the hardhats off the engineers and knocked over the light stand (in the photo below) into the mud, shorting out my Vagabond battery; a big "ZZZT" and flash of light, and the battery was toast, literally. The White Lightning worked fine after a good cleaning.

Engagement photos

Had a chance to photograph Shoshana & Mike engagement photos at Fountain Hills recently. I will be photographing their wedding in February, so it is always great to work with them before the big day. They get to know me, and I get to know how to get great photos from them before the wedding. Love the tree photos!

The Kiyosaki's

I recently helped out my buddy Chris Barr photograph Robert Kiyosaki (of 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad' fame) and his wife for a magazine article about a new book that Kim had written. It was a big production, and Chris got some great shots.

That's Chris on the roof of Dan Coogan's pickup. I was to photograph the Kiyosakis from the front, while Chris shot down into their Bently convertable. Of course, being the true friend I am, I was ready to photograph Chris if he fell of the roof.

Crusin' Biltmore Estates:

The "Studio"

His & Hers Lamborginis:

Kim and Robert K

Tree

I don't know why, but I really like this photo of a tree. I photographed it at an event at Circle Bar Ranch, a wedding & event venue at an old ranch out towards Payson.

Funky and old, like this tree.

4-Seasons Resort Wedding

A good friend and collegue, Jefferson Todd Pals, asked me to help him as a second-shooter on a wedding he had at the WAY North Scottsdale Four-Seasons Resort. Of course, having never shot there, and enjoying working with JT, I said yes!

Here are a few of the photos I took at the wedding.

Concrete pipe plant

I get to see some unique things, being a photographer. Did a little shoot last week for Hanson, an international concrete pipe manufacturer out by Luke AFB. It was a record 113 degrees that day - the client pointed at what they wanted photographs of from the shade, while I baked my brains in the sun.
Nice shiny new plant, but the most interesting thing to me was this "biblical" sized rebar-wire "weaving" machine that created the reinforcement mesh for the colossal concrete pipes.
The thing was was at least 20 feet tall; check out the rolling platform stand at the lower left for a sense of scale.

A few of the wire cylinders:

The sand & gravel conveyor belt:

New Nikon D3 & D300 announced

Today, Nikon announced two new cameras, the D3 & the D300, as well as several new lenses.

The D3 sounds like Nikon's answer to Canon's MK III; very good news to me! If the D3's high-ISO low noise feature is as good as purported (better than the MK III!), I won't have to make the switch to Canon, which will save me thousands of dollars of investing in new equipment. This would be very good.

Here's a link to Rob Galbraith's site: Nikon D3

It is a very pretty camera, too.

World Record Pool building

As a photographer, you get to witness some unusual things. I like that.

A few days ago I helped Chris Barr cover We Fix Ugly Pools' attempt to break the world-record for the fastest built swimming pool. Bet you didn't know they had a record for that, did you? Me neither.

To cover it, we set up two synchronized cameras on roofs overlooking the pool area and took 4 bracketed shots every 10 minutes. In between climbing a sissor-jack onto the roof to check on a time-lapse camera (wrapped in a ziplock bag and shaded by a gobo), I did the event photography. Got quite a work-out, and sweated like a pig the whole time.
We got to the site at 4am to set up the time-lapse cameras. It was to become a brutally humid & HOT day.

6am:

Shooting the gunite:

A frame from one of the time-lapse cameras:

One of the time-lapse cameras. Plastered...

The Phoenix Fire Dept filled the pool from a hydrant in minutes.

After a beehive of activity and six manic hours later, the pool was full of water and we were spent.

12:30 pm - the homeowner and just SOME of the workers who made it happen.