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.