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So I bought this funky Polaroid camera at my neighbors garage sale last spring along with ten packs of outdated film.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.