Nike Cross Nationals 2008

At the urging of a local art buyer, and to seek out some portfolio material, I grabbed my gear and headed over to Portland Meadows last Saturday to make some images of the 2008 Nike Cross National. Teams and individuals from across the USA, plus a team from Kenya, competed in this cross country running event. My goal was to come up with a few portraits and some action shots, from not your normal angles. Hope you like what you see. I think this was the first time they have had decent weather for this event. I actually was hoping for more mud and less sun. But I am sure the competitors loved the fact that there was sun in Oregon in December. That is a rare occurrence.

Cheech & Chong , and my brother Jim

Growing up as the youngest brother had both its disadvantages, and advantages. My older brother Jim never beat me up. I think the fact that we are so far apart in age had an influence on that, or perhaps my dad had an influence on that one. One of the coolest things about my older brother Jim when I was growing up was that he was in the rock and roll business right of of high school. He took a job years ago that made me one of the more cooler kids in school. He was Cheech & Chong's road manager. Everyone wanted a free copy of "Big Bambu" from me just for the over sized rolling paper that came with the album. So roll the clock forward to 2008. Cheech & Chong decided to start touring together again this year so they tapped my big brother Jim to be their road manager again. So off down to Eugene on Thursday night with my wife Susan in tow to see the show at the Hult Center. We had a blast being backstage and getting third row seats. So here are some pics of my big brother Jim, and some shots from the show.

There's No Business Like Shoe Business

A few moths ago I had the opportunity to work on a stop-motion video featuring the history Nike's legendary Cortez Shoe with Nike designer Eric Duvauchelle. The thirty-seven second clip was posted to the Nike.com web site. We were working in a building where the Nike archive is located. It was very amazing to be in a room full of Nike history. We shot almost 1,000 images to put this thing together. The best momnet of the shoot was when Eric discovered the large Cortez shoe costume and decided to put himself in it for the video. And of course I had to take a stab at walking in his shoes.

Here is the link
http://www.nike.com/nikeos/p/sportswear/en_US/view_post?country=US&lang_locale=en_US&blog=en_US&post=en_US/2008/08/07/nike-cortez-archive

Here are some pictures from behind the scenes:

Eric pondering his next move.

The stars of the video. A few vintage Nike Cortez shoes.
















Eric in the Nike Cortez shoe costume.
















What I will be wearing next Halloween.

She Walks

Not that I want to make my blog a visual record of my daughter's milestones, but heck, she is one great subject to photograph. So at the ripe young age of seventeen months, my daughter Leah is now officially bipedal. She had a great time strutting her stuff at the Portland airport while waiting for our flight last week to California to visit relatives. We now must maintain a vigilant watch over Leah as she can move very fast in any direction. It is incredible how fast little kids can move. Or, is it that I am so dang slow as I age, or mellow as I like to say.

Behind the Scenes

So I bought this funky Polaroid camera at my neighbors garage sale last spring along with ten packs of outdated film. I decided that it would be fun to take it to a three-day shoot this week to capture some shots of the crew and whatever I thought was cool. So here you have the results. Makeup, lights, and one really tough traffic flagger.

Meeting The Neighbors

Most of you all remember what it is like to move to a new home. You hope the neighbors will come over and introduce themselves, and perhaps bring you something to help ease the transition to your new digs. You know, beer, wine, pizza, or a Welcome Wagon basket. This is how I have felt about being a freelancer here in Portland my first few years. A few years back I knew I was one the new kids on this block. At first I only knew of, but never met, only a few of my neighbors, but now since working for two of the more prominent magazines here in Portland (see a previous post), I have witnessed the great works from my own backyard of this great and talented photographic community here in Portland. Not only that, but I have finally met a few of them. Not only are these people extremely talented, they are also awesome people. I don't know why, but I had this picture in my mind that the competition would be secretive, and reclusive. Jokes on me. Willing to share information, tricks of the trade, and even buy you a beer, the community is just plain awesome. I love this community. So I want to call out a few people and thank them for making me feel so welcomed to the freelance photography community here in Portland. Here are links to their web sites so you can see their wonderful and inspiring work. Take a walk in the hood.

Lincoln Barbour
Stuart Mullenberg
Steve Scardina
Rafael Astorga
Bruce Wolf
Mark Gamba
Jim Lommasson
Brian Lee
Sol Neelman

Chalking Up the Vote

If we could all vote like this, I think we would all live in a better world. I would have loved to have seen the results in Florida in 2000, and Ohio in 2004, if they all had to vote with chalk. Blue chalk for the Democrats, and red chalk for the Republicans.

Grateful for the Work

As I look back on the last nine months of 2008, I feel extremely grateful to the folks at Portland Monthly and Portland Spaces magazines. Not only have they entrusted me with some of their bigger assignments for this year, but they are just great people to work with and work for. I have read about the dreaded struggles between art directors and photographers. So when I did my first assignment last year and the art director said he wanted to be there during the shoot, I had my trepidations. I learned just how important these people can be to a successful shoot. And by successful, I mean delivering them the goods. As photographers, we are in a service business. And as much as I want the picture to be all mine, I realized the importance of having a good "push and pull" relationship with art directors. I have come to the conclusion that I really like working as a team as much as I like to be out on my own shooting. This viewpoint runs throughout my life now. I use to love to go fly fishing alone, but now I love being out with my close friends as much as I love to have a stretch of water all to myself. So thanks to Jason, Pete, Jen, Mike, Thomas, and Tim for being such great people to collaborate with. You all rock, and I enjoy working with you all. Every time my phone rings and I know it is one of you that are on the other side of the call contacting me for an assignment, I must admit, a feeling of excitement and gratitude comes over me.

Reflecting

Sometimes I get questions from people about lighting, or sometimes I am the one asking. When doing editorial work the budgets don't really allow for me to hire a lighting assistant, so I carry a few portable Canon 580 EX II strobes, and some light modifiers. However the one thing that I find myself using a lot these days are reflectors. I was shooting a rock climbing gym for The Best of Portland issue for Portland Monthly Magazine. It was for the kids activity story. This girl was near a huge window, so I had the advantage of the soft light coming in and filling her face. The problem I noticed was that the background was too dark, so I pulled out a 36 inch X 36 inch reflector to fill in the background. Simple, and yet very effective. If anyone ever has any questions about lighting or other stuff that I have shot, please feel free to contact me. I am happy to share.

Daddy Day Care

Today my wife Susan went to meet up with a long lost friend that she has been trying to track down ever since she moved back to the states after living in Australia for fifteen years. So I gladly volunteered to watch Leah, our almost 15-month-old daughter. She is it that stage of her life that the world is new an exciting. Every turn down a street in the stroller yields a visual treat for her. She is in the habit now of pointing at things and wanting us to name it. Usually it is easy. Tree. Car. Dog. Person. But when when are at loss for worlds, we both just say "world." I know, we are taking the easy way out, for now. Anyway, I took her to a local coffee shop. I got to have coffee and a cinnamon roll. She still has no clue about sweets. She had some wonderful healthy bread, but I had to eat a small piece of it to prove to her that is was not either poison or broccoli. Evil trick by dad. "What is this you ask? It is sweet bread. You know, a thymus gland. Okay, you are not buying that one? I call world!"

Say Yes!

I close friend of mine and fellow photographer Dale Derry once gave me a piece of photographic advice. Actually he has given me many, but I will focus on this one here. He said to me that if you you see something that motivates you to pick up your camera, take the dang picture. In other words, just say yes to that image. I don't know how many times I have brought my camera to my eye to capture something and then said no and put the camera down because perhaps I thought it was silly, boring, or even cliche. But since having been on the receiving end Dale's "Just say yes" advice, I do my best to say yes. Pictured here is one of those shots. I was on my way last Sunday morning to shoot an assignment for the Wall Street Journal and I came upon this building on NE Alberta Street here in Portland. I don't know why exactly I found this so interesting, but I just did, and here is the picture. I know it is no great work of art or seeing as we photographers like to say, but it does invoke some sort of good feeling inside me when I look at it.

Just Jube It!

Every year since 1997 I get the nod from the folks running the Manchester United Premier Cup World Finals to show up and shoot this phenomenal U-15 youth soccer tournament. I shoot 64 games in four days, plus three days of team training and activities. I shoot about 12,000 frames. It is hard work, but I love it. I always look forward to the final because I am addicted to the jubilation shot, or the "JUBE shot," as my friend and photographer Sol Neelman calls it (Sol is in Beijing right now and you should check out his blog for a good laugh and some great work of stuff you won't see on TV or in printed media). So this is my favorite shot of the tournament. A team member from the Brazilian team Fluminense "jubes" his team's 2-0 victory over FC Atlas of Mexico. The final game was played at Old Trafford, and for those of you that are not soccer fans, this is a very big deal for these kids to play on such a famous soccer pitch.

If you want to see more photos from the MUPC 2008, here is the link. Be prepared, there are a lot of images.

Life off the Soccer Pitch

Made it back to Portland in one piece, even though when I boarded my flight to Portland from Chicago, the third leg of my itinerary which started in Manchester, England, there were no pilots on board, which resulted in almost a two hour delay. Since my last post, I photographed sixty-four soccer games in four days, plus three days of teams doing training, and touring Old Trafford, where Manchester United plays. The tournament featured twenty teams from around the world. All the players where age fifteen and under. But heck, I am way ahead of myself. What I show you now is how I worked through the first day of jet lag, which comprised of myself walking around the area outside of Manchester city where I was staying, just taking random shots.

This is the soccer pitch outside the Armitage center where all the teams went for meals. The cool thing about this pitch was that is always was occupied in the evening with folks playing either soccer or field hockey. A great place to see locals having a good time.

The soccer pitch lights during a break in the rather deary Manchester summer weather. Yes it rained a lot while I was there. And I thought Portland was rainy.

And they say Americans have big butts. This was a butt disposal bin outside a local bar. Like in California, you can't smoke in bars.

After conquering jet lag, I got to work. Here are a few moments during the job. Above is an Asian tourist posing in front of the Manchester United team picture at the team's Mega Store at Old Trafford. I was following a group of the tournament players touring the famous soccer stadium.

My last day of shooting found me covering the final game of the Manchester United Premier Cup tournament at Old Trafford. After the game I had to go edit pictures in the room where the real photographers hang out prior to and after games. They were all working the game on the picth between Manchester United and Juventas FC. Pictured here are the room's two security guards watching the game between the two teams. Really nice people they were.

Flight Delays

Made it to Heathrow yesterday morning only to have my flight to Manchester canceled. So I had some time to kill. As I was walking around near my departure gate, I noticed a big span of windows looking out to one of the runways and a few kids with their parents hanging out and looking at the passing planes. This was the sort of thing I loved to do as a child when we use to go to the airport in Los Angeles and wait for my grandma from Omaha to arrive. It made for some nice pictures. I even struck up a conversation with the kid's parents and sent thme a few pictures via email. A lovely way to pass the time indeed.

Excuses and Bad Flight Manners_No Pictures

It has been a long time since I last blogged. In fact I have been wondering if I should take this site down due to a very hectic work schedule the last two months and helping out my wife Susan with our fourteen–month-old daughter Leah. So that is my excuse as to why I have had very little time to make any significant additions here. I wonder if anyone reads this anyway. I know one guy who does, and he has been living in Tokyo for the past five years for work, and I ran into to him this morning at the airport in Portland. He was on his way to New York, and I am on my way to Manchester, England, to cover the Manchester United Premier Cup World Finals. Something I do every year. Anyways, we were talking and he said, “You have not posted on your blog for a long time. What's up with that?” So Howard, this is for you, okay it is for me, but I needed an excuse to get me out of my prior excuse. Thanks for getting me back on here. So my goal is now to blog at least once a week. Perhaps on Sundays, after I put my daughter to sleep, and before my wife and I watch 30 Rock on pay-per-view. We both love good comedy. I would do it during the week, but we are always watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report from 8-9pm, which is our little nightly ritual that we started when Susan first got pregnant in 2007. We also watch these shows to help us self-medicate ourselves because of how inept our politicians are, and how downright ineffective the media are these days in reporting meaningful news stories. Don’t get me started. In cases like this, where I am traveling for an event or commercial photo shoot, I will try to blog more during the shoot. I promise. And if you do read this blog, please drop in a comment of two, just to let me know that Howard is not alone. So right now I am on my first leg of my trip to the UK. Portland to Chicago. Chicago to London. London to Manchester. Okay a note about airline travel. To all those people in the economy section that move their set backs, please do slow slowly. Pay attention to those of us behind you. The poor guy in the middle seat next to me, seat 7B, a rather stocky guy who looks like he could play linebacker for the Chicago Bears, just had his knees relocated in one second flat by rude passenger 6B. After doing this, 6B then moves his seat back to its upright position, turns around and gives the middle linebacker the evil eye, turns back to the movie screen, which is about the size of my iPhone screen, and proceeds again to make sure seat 7B leaves permanently with his knees embedded into his upper torso. This all done in about two seconds flat. So fellow cattle class fliers, be kind people when flying in economy. Check your review mirrors before moving your seat back. In fact, don’t do it without perhaps asking the person behind you. Remember that objects in your mirror appear father from you than they really are. Thanks for reading. I promise pictures as soon as I can get to my cameras in the overhead compartment, unless of course the contents have shifted, or seat 6C decides to recline my laptop into my sternum. Holy crap! Sear 6C just nailed my laptop and me. Happy flying all!

Start Your Torches

Here is an outtake from a recent editorial assignment. After the art director left, and I packed the lights up, I wanted to shoot a shot with the available light for myself. I just loved this guy's welding glasses.

Milling Around

I was in Bend a few weekends ago to visit one of my oldest friends whose daughter is only seven weeks older than mine. My daughter Leah is now eleven months old. This shot is of the stacks at the Old Mill District in Bend and was taken early in the morning from our hotel balcony. Leah does not sleep well in her portable crib especially in hotels, and I was up most of the night with her sleeping on my chest while I parked myself on the couch. Not a bad way to spend a sleepless night in my book. It is a wonder that I had the energy to pull out the camera and make a snapshot.

Fishing for Godot

Many who know me, know that I am an avid fly fisherman. Perhaps even obsessed about it. Particularly fishing for steelhead. Well, it has been a busy year, so busy that I missed most of the Winter steelheading opportunities that are so close to Portland. For those that don't know much about our area, we have two rivers very close to Portland, the Clackamas and the Sandy Rivers. So I finally made it out on Monday with my good friend and guide extraordinaire, Matt McCrary and his friend Tom. I have been helping Matt with photography for his new web site. By the way, if you want the best fly fishing experience, call Matt. He is the best. You can find him on the web at Action Anglers, or email me and I will get you in touch with him. By the way, we all use spey rods instead of the typical single handed fly fishing techniques. Matt hooked two fish and lost them both. A usual happening when I bring the cameras with me. Tom, hooked and landed one downriver summer steelhead. It was rather wet on Monday, but a fun day on the river. Oh, yes, I did not touch a fish. They say that steelhead are the fish if a thousand casts when you are trying to get them with a fly rod. Hence the "Fishing for Godot" title. Well, I have about 799 casts to go.

Matt McCrary waiting for a grab from Mr. Steelie.

Tom fights the lone fish landed of the day.

Coffee is a must on a cold and wet day. I hope I never see a Starbucks on the banks of the Sandy River.

Matt wading for Godot.

Matt shows off his newly found ornaments for his Christmas tree this year, courtesy of some negligent gear chuckers (okay, us fly fishermen can be a little elitist about our sport, and that is why we sometimes make fun of gear and bait fishermen. Hey when they leave this kind of crap on the river, they make easy targets).