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.

Canon MKIII vs. Nikon D2x noise

I was lucky enough to get to borrow one of the new Canon MK III's to check out it's purported fantastic low noise at high-ISOs (thanks Bob!). I did some quickie test shots with the MK III and my Nikon D2x, and the difference is shocking. May have to change to Canon! (big dollars tho).

These are 5"x5" crops from 100%:

My D2x at 3200 iso:

Bob's MK III at 3200:

Kinda hard to see on the blog, but the color and noise levels from the MKIII is at least three f/stops better than the D2x. Wow. If you shoot in low light alot, like I do, this is very awesome (I know; photographers are weird).

Rust, Austria

One of the many more amazing things we saw in Austria had to be the city of Rust (literally; "Roost"), located on an inland see. This is where storks nest (roost) on the chimneys of the homes, like in the storybooks!