Racing to shoot...

So last year I was offered an opportunity. I was offered an opportunity to shoot a Nascar event known as the Kroger 200. I only bring this up because I didn't do it as I was already slated to shoot a wedding that weekend. The big thing with me is that I don't like to say no to too many projects that I want, as I know that the more I say no the less people will ask. Not that I'll take on any project that comes my way (as no photographer should), I just don't like turning people away when it's something that I especially want to do. Luckily though, Kroger came back to me this year and asked me to shoot their Race the night before the Brickyard 400: The Kroger 200 at O'Reilley Raceway Park.

(Nikon D3s, 1250ISO, Nikon 18-35mmF3.5-4.5@18mm. 1/250th@F3.5)

The regular star coverage can be found here. I'd never been to a NASCAR Race, much less gotten an opportunity for an ALL ACCESS PASS to shoot one. You may say that I know nothing about Shooting a race, and I'd almost agree with you. Not almost agree because I've shot an Indy 500, or a MotoGP. Not because of the Purdue Grand Prix either. I'd only almost agree because my assignment meant that I was only required to take one shot. That's all. Just one. That meant that the other quite a few hours that I was out at the race? I was there getting paid, just for me.

(Nikon D3s, 1000ISO, Nikon 70-200VR2@82mm, 1/200@F2.8)

My assignment was to take a photo of the winner. Until I knew who that was, I had free reign of the entire racetrack. The guy above was one of the pitt crew for Car #98, Paul Menard. He was watching the race from on top of the travel trailer. Honestly I'd have love to have climbed up there and seen the race from there even, but honestly short of levitating I'm not sure how he got up there. Didn't need the shot, but just like a lot of photographers; you don't just take what you need.

(Nikon D700, 1250ISO, Sigma 15mm Fisheye, 1/800th@F5.6)

There are certain things you will do though while there. As an example, I am sending Kroger the photos that I did take, that I like but didn't use. Everything above is an example of that. There are lots of uninteresting photos of random racecars, strange people with mullets, or weird fisheye angles that didn't quite work out, but I'm only sending them as an extra for having me out. After all, they didn't have to right? Not only that, but from what I understand they were very pleased with the shot I took of the winner. It ran full page on the back of the Racing Special Section last Monday. Full page isn't a good enough description though I suppose. It ran larger than the front page photo by Sam Riche (an awesome photographer/good friend), which was almost full page. There were no extra ads on this photo, it was just the photo. Second largest thing I've ever had run in the newspaper. Just like the largest thing I've ever had run though, this one had no photo credit....More Soon.

Have a Smashing Holiday...

Whether you are waiting as eagerly for 2009 to end as I am or not, I bid you a Happy Holidays. It's been quite a year, and over the next week I have a few neat ideas for the blog so stay tuned. Until then, enjoy time with your families, uncooked cookie dough, pets, snow, or whatever it is you may be doing during this time. Whatever it may be; I wish you well. Have a Smashing Holiday. More Soon.

TV Superdude...

Every now and then as a photographer it seems you are given the task of making something that seems mundane or uninteresting; out to be interesting. Not that I want to say that there are people out there doing jobs that are flat out uninteresting, however if you'd asked me how exciting a job being a TV repairman would be I'd have told you probably not very. Despite that fact, as a Green.Indy.com article I was asked to go and shoot photos at a TV repair company to go along with a story about getting things repaired as opposed to buying new, and really I learned a lot more than I had expected to.

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 400ISO, Canon 16-35mmF2.8L@16, 1/20th@F5.6. Single 580EX set to 1/16th power behind Jim the TV superdude fired by pocketwizard. Single 580EX speedlight set to 1/8th power bounced out of a 12" umbrella to camera left.)

Turns out this place known as ITZ Electronics in East Washington street can repair any kind of television ever created. They have parts for televisions from 1 day old to 20 years old, as well as the components to test them out. Have a broken 60"TV that you want fixed? They will send someone to your house, remove what they think is broken and take it to the shop to get it tested. Why do it like that? hOly cOw that's so much easier than trying to carry the TV. What about the picture of the TV? There are mirrors hanging all over this place so that when they work on the back of the TV, they can see the front to know if what they had done actually fixes it or not. It's Wild!

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 400ISO, Canon 100MMF2.8Macro, 1/60th@F4. Single 580EX Speedlight set to 1/4th power bounced out of a 12" umbrella to camera right, slightly above shoering down on Jim the TV Sueprdude)

Every station had one of the magnifying scopes as shown in the mirror from above. Most of the TV's that they work on are the newer Plasma and LCD tv's according to what they said. Apparently the older Tube TV's are much more reliable which I suppose made sense in my mind, but I had never considered. With Today's TV's the components are super expensive individually, where as older Tube TV's are like tanks. Break a memory controller out of a New TV and it's a few hundred bucks to replace because the manufacturers buy them in bulk. Ordering just one means you might as well just get a new TV....

(Canon EOS5D Mark II, 250ISO, Canon 16-35mmF2.8L@23mm. 1/40th@F6.3. Single 580EX Speedlight set to 1/64th power zoomed to 105mm shot bare blub onto the circuit board fired by Pocket Wizard. Single 580EX Speedlight set to 1/16th power bare bulb to camera right to illuminate Jim's Face)

I never realized how interesting something as simple as TV repair could be quite frankly. This guy might as well be superman in his world, and he deserves it as well. In today's day in age people have trouble living without television. Frankly I get all of 5 channels, and use my television to watch movies or for background noise while I'm photoshopping things to look pretty much like they look in real life before my feeble attempt to photograph them. Either way, this dude does perform an important task in this world that we live in. I'm not only glad I was there to check it out, but to show it to everybody else. More Soon.

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, ISO 250 Cano 16-35mmF2.8L@16mm, 1/30th@F5.6. Single 580EX speedlight zoomed to 24mm set to half power behind Jim fired by pocket wizard. Single 580EX Speedlight set to 1/4th power bounced in a 12" silver umbrella to Jim's right in a gap between the TV's.)

What a job...

I've always been young when it comes to rolling through life. When I graduated high school I was only 17, didn't turn 21 until my senior year of college, things like that. I always had to make friends with the older kids, or drop down to the even younger ones meaning that I really was always kind of in this strange spot. Being the youngin, I have always been apt to try to fit in no matter what my situation while trying not to grow up too quickly. A lot of the people that I hang out with are older than me; some a little, and some significantly. I have had clients that I'm positive I would have lost if they knew my age. I've never successfully dated anybody younger than me, and have always been apt to asking out/dating older women. Not all of them seem keen to the idea of dating a younger guy, but as long as they aren't mortified by the original suggestion and don't run and hide building a fort out of sofa cushions afterwards; I've got a shot. (Ideally I want to find a girl who wants to build a fort of sofa cushions with me, but one step at a time.)Being young also means that I take a certain entertainment in my job. I'm a photographer for a living. How cool is that?! Seriously. Some things I've done just to do them for myself, but otherwise I take photos and videos of stuff.....for money. Not only that but I've met some cool people, and done some cool things along the way. This week was no different than that by any stretch of the imagination.


(Canon 5D Mark II, 160ISO, 100mmF2.8. 1/60th@F8. Single Dynalight 400JR to camera right fired by Pocket Wizard at half power through a 6'x4' translucent panel. Single Dynalight 400JR to camera left inside of a 36"x36" softbox set to 1/8th power)

I shot that on Tuesday afternoon as advertisement for Metromix's Ugly Christmas Sweater party on December 4th at Britton Tavern. It's almost straight out of camera as you can notice the dirt on the floor under the girls. I just wanted to show you how pretty the two girls were before all the work we put into them, as this post is just about enjoying my job. Both of these lovely ladies are planning on being in attendance, and both of them were super cool. It was a fun shoot, and by far not one of the worst parts of my job. Elaine is on the left and she is an artist/GoGo girl here locally and Sarah on the right is a designer/website entrepreneur. Both obviously model on the side, and required very little instruction during the shoot which for the record; is freakin awesome.



Several weeks ago now, I shot a cover for an album which is going to be released at a party at Birdy's tonight. Cool bunch of guy's all School teachers who decided to combine their free time activity of music in order to create the band "Youthguard". My buddy Adam Yale did the artwork and I think it looks real good. Nice guys and I'm definitely going to check them out. The image above isn't the Exact final CD art, but it's pretty close. Should be carried in major stores supposedly too, which is what I'm going to wait for I think. Not sure if they will have CD's at the party tonight or not. Even though I've been at this for a few years now, and shot lots of various different activities; I never get tired of seeing things in public. The world doesn't know I shot them but I do. It's freakin cool. Also this shoot turned out well enough that one of the people present has hooked me up to shoot one of the bands from the Warpred tour a few years ago. That'll be neat, and I'm sure there will be more on that here soon. Here's another shot of Youthguard, from early in the production process.


(Nikon D3, 400ISO, Nikon 18-35mm F3.5-4.5@18mm. 1/30th@F6.3. Single Dynalight 400JR above camera right 18' off the floor hard light on the band set to 1/4th power fired by Pocket Wizard. Single Dynalight 400JR about 100' behind the band about 8' off the ground on some stairs set to 1/8th power fired by Pocket Wizard, SB-900 Speedlight suction cupped to the Glass wall camera left using the Delkin Fat Gecko camera mount about 7' up fired by Magic EYE in SU-4 mode set to 1/2 power zoomed out to 17mm. Post Processing by Adam Yale)

I also this week shot another Rollin with Gunner video. This week we went two places: To the Jiffy Lube to determine if the people who change your oil really are cousins of the Travelocity Gnome.....AND we went to the Bob Rohrman Dealership to dispose of one of Don Stuck's 450lb pumpkins.....



Don Stuck and Gunner are hilarious, they are quite the team and I look forward to when this video launches this upcoming Thursday. I of course will have watched it 46 thousand times by then, but I always watch them once they go live just that one more time. The video was shot with several cameras. There was a guy in the back seat with a Canon GL2, I had a Sony HDD HD Cam mounted to the dashboard, this screengrab was from a 5D Mark II with a 200mm Lens, and the little grey box on the pumpkin playing Kamikazi is an old Nikon Coolpix 3100. This video; will be cool.

Where else would I do things like this? I'm doing a video at the Red Room in Broad Ripple tomorrow, and I'm shooting the last and final month of the 2010 Roller Derby Calendar Sunday before the Colts game. All of the tough things about this profession definitely are tough, and thi can be like any other job with the suck from time to time but as my grandmother likes to point out; I do have a job. It's been brought up that maybe I have grown up a little too fast, but maybe I see it a little differently. My mind works the same as it should except maybe now I'm young enough to really get a kick out of some of the things that I do in this profession. Being stuck in the gutter of a Go-Kart track waiting for colts players to come around the turn, standing knee deep in pig poop wearing a hazard suit for the Pork Producers Guide, learning how to build log cabins, carrying Roller Derby girls around a junkyard to not get their skates full of grease...... Weeks like this are the weeks I live for with this job. The weeks where you close your eyes and chuckle while sporting a little smile muttering to myself; how did I get here? More Soon.

Artistic Blog

It was brought to my attention recently that I don't post a lot of my more artistic works; either on my website or anywhere for that matter. This blog entry is dedicated to remedying that I suppose as the most recent to tell me this was my friend Dr. X.



Primarily a debate was launched about the difference between photographic styles. Dr. X Fancy's himself as a much much more artistic style photographer, experimenting with Depth of Field abstract forms and ect ect. Dr. X makes me realize that having a release is very necessary in order to survive having a profession that is 95% of the rest of the worlds Hobby. In honor of Dr. X's and my conversation I give you a few of: My Trees.




As shooting info, the first image of the blog was shot with a Canon 1D Mark II ISO 200, 1/50th at F14 @16mm. THe second image in the blog was the Nikon D3 320ISO 1/40th sec, 28-70mmF2.8@58mm F2.8. The last frame was the Nikon D3 ISO 100, 28-70mm@70mm F16, 17minute and 4 second exposure.

Why do I shoot trees? I have no idea. It just started one day on a shoot for the newspaper when I saw one, that I simply had to photograph. It was a strange thing, but that's how it happened. I don't go looking for my trees, but if I see one I definitely take a minute to snap a few frames. It's not that Tree's are my only outlet for creativity it's just the one thing that I do for no purpose. I shoot the Trees just to shoot them. Not for anyone but myself. I have this one hanging as a 24"x36" hanging above my computer at home:

(Nikon D3, 500ISO 60mm AF-S Macro @F10 1/60th)

I want to thank Dr. X for showing me that just because you shoot something just to shoot it doesn't mean someone may not want to see it. I'd never really thought about selling prints of my trees, or setting up a gallery out there for people to see. Maybe someday if I have quite a few of them I can make a coffeetable book out of them or some jazz. I don't know. I've got about 15 of them now, so slowly but surely I suppose. We'll see if I even find any more to shoot after this. That would be my luck anyway now wouldn't it?

Anyway, this week is more Bartenders. I'd post one, but I've got about 30 left to shoot this week, and that sounds like a nice surprise for next week. Next week also I've got another Roller Derby calendar shoot. Speaking of the Roller Derby, last night was the end of season Banquet. I was awarded the "Quentin Tarantino" award. 'd say it was coveted, except I don't think it existed until about 8pm last night. I also am not positive as to what it means, but all I have to say is: COOL! THANKS LADIES! Exciting week ahead indeed. Until then though, I leave you with one of Dr. X's shots. Instead of Trees, he shoots doors. More soon.


(Photo by Dr. X)