Crew Jump

One of the most satisfying parts of my job is that I get to work with some extremely talented and fun people. During a shoot a week ago for Nike, we were shooting in an old abandoned school in Portland. We were using this funky old stage that was inside the school's gym. I noticed this paper movie clapper in the corner of the stage in a potpourri of discarded stuff, and I thought it would be fun to have some of the crew members and clients jump with it while we were waiting for the talent to be ready for the next shot. Just in case you want to know, that is me in the lower left hand corner image.

Urban Swingers

First of all I have to thank my good friend and fellow photographer Sol Neelman for turning me onto this little activity in the city of where "weird stuff happens" all the time. He has photographed this group before, so I make no claims to being original on this one, but I loved what he produced so much, that when we where having coffee one day, I asked him to let me know when these folks would be holding their next tournament. So during the weekend when the pros where seeking out a jacket of green in Augusta, Georgia, a bunch of Portlanders opened their 2009 Urban Golf Club season in the inner east side of the city. Using tennis balls in lieu of actual golf balls, which was good for car owners, apartment dwellers and this photographer as well, the group flogged their way through the streets. Some of the funnier moments where the water hazards that were left behind from the rain the day before. I tired golf once, but I suck at it. Perhaps I need to break out my old clubs and get a few tennis balls and have some fun. Heck, there are no green fees, and it seems that the worst shot you make, the more fun you have. I like that. (FYI, lots of pictures here)

Water hazard.

Required golf attire.

The gallery looks on.

More golf attire.

Four!

Chipping to a snake infested hole.

There was no TV coverage at this hole. Heck there was no TV.

Onto the next hole.

Monkey and iPhone, Part II

Back in the beginning of this year, or at the end of last year, depending on the time stamp of my iPhone photos from a NYE concert in San Francisco that I attended, I decided to challenge myself to prove that it is not the camera, but the monkey behind it, that makes a picture good. So welcome to Part II, the sequel. I call this Good House Hunting, or in the case or our recent successes, or lack thereof, Bad House Finding, or Great House Found But Can't Afford It. So today my wife Susan, our daughter Leah, and our awesome realtor Ronda Joseph with Hasson (too bad I can't get a product placement fee here), we all piled into the car and went looking for houses. We saw some good ones, and some bad ones. The bad ones were the ones were nobody lived in and someone decided to stage the house to make it look like someone lived there. I really was taken by the vast expanse of empty spaces even though these homes were staged. It really did not look like anyone lived there, but I know it looks better than if nothing was there. So I decided to go artsy with my iPhone, and then convert to black and white, to help convey that sense of expanse. So if you like the images, you can call me the monkey in the middle of the badly staged room. If you don't like the images, well, don't call me, unless of course you have a nice house to sell us at a good price (four bedrooms, two baths, in a nice NE or SE neighborhood please).