Shuttle is a go!

Wow,

Where has the time gone? I know, I know,....I have been VERY busy trying to run 3 businesses, shoot, travel, edit and play with my 2 youngsters.....all while trying to sell more business. If you are in the media/ad business then you know exactly what I am talking about. Anyhoo, here comes the first of what should be a slew of updates coming your way soon, I promise. Lets start with a few very quick posts on the Shuttle-129 mission that I shot about a month ago. I am doing a story on Astronaut Leland Melvin, a former NFL football player and his training methods... Look for the article in the January issue of OrlandoSportsMag.

Here are a few quick snaps that I edited for your viewing pleasure. I will get caught up over the Holidays....enjoy!

Portrait Time

Well, what can I say, I am finally posting on my blog. It has been months since I have had time to update but here we go.

What have I been doing you ask, well I shot a little NASCAR, a little Orlando Magic playoffs, some professional soccer, a few portraits with director David Bermejo and a ton of video with the new Canon 5DMKII. Awesome camera for those who want to get into HD.

I plan on updating with more info here soon, I promise.

For now, here are a few portraits I messed around with model Sharon from Orlando.

Philips Medical North America

I have had the pleasure of shooting for Philips Medical for the past 10 years whenever they come to Florida. Normally the jobs would be filming video interviews of doctors, patients, nurses and executives. They also specialize in making really cool medical exam devices such as MRI imaging machines and such and the rooms are really high-tech, kind of like the crime labs on the TV show C.S.I. and I shoot these rooms for publicity.

Florida Hospital Orlando has just doubled the size of their main hospital just a few miles from my house and Philips teamed up with Walt Disney World to create what they have dubbed the "Ambient Experience" for children. In short, there is a pediatric emergency room dedicated to kids and the idea is to use mood lighting and video programming to calm them down while they are in their room.

The whole concept is to have a virtual light show and video interactivity controlled by the patient with a remote control.  Philips wanted me to shoot this for publicity and internal use across the world to show employees how the final product turned out.

I arrived with my video crew  and started shooting at 5 a.m.. We were told that we had approximately 2 hours to get in and get out. The goal was to film 6 locations with models before the ER room officially came to life -they had 38 kids run through these 8 rooms the day before!

Luckily, I brought my Canon5DMKII with me with about 8 lenses for the still shots. The video camera that I had was not really wide enough to get all of the effects of the lighting  even with a wide angle adapter screwed on, so I showed the client the room using the 5D with a 20mm and a plugged in HD monitor. She loved it and from that point on the rest of the shoot was filmed with the camera. I must admit, I was thoroughly impressed when I exported the footage into my Final Cut Pro edit suite. The colors popped and everyone was thrilled with the quality. The roughs were sent up to Boston where they were edited into a 2 minute final movie and aired 2 days later in Amsterdam.

Unfortunately I can't show you the video footage or many stills so this is all you get but I will post the final product as soon as Philips gives me the go ahead. It is really cool to see the rooms change color and how the nurse interacts with the patient.

ARCA race 2009

Speedweek in Daytona Beach has officially begun and the action has been very hot at the track in Daytona. The ARCA boys and girls took to the track on Saturday and only 21 of the 43 starting cars stuck around to finish the race. I shot a ton of wrecks but none as scary as the above sequence. The green car spun, slid around the upper turn 4 curve and was then T-boned by another driver who could not see ahead of him due to the large amount of smoke covering the track. This is every racecar drivers worst nightmare and it happened. Both drivers were transported to the hospital after taking 24 minutes to extricate them from their cars. Broken vertebrae, bruised lungs and plenty of aches and pains are in store on their road to recovery. I will post more action after the Daytona 500 race this upcoming weekend.

Pepsi Smash Concert

A few days before the Superbowl, VH1 aired a live concert featuring performances by Lifehouse, Fall Out Boy and Rhianna. The Ford Ampitheater in Tampa was the venue and it was pretty cool. It was raining out really hard and the venue is nothing but a few huge tents covering the stage, it worked out rather well however. The concert was decent with Fall Out Boy performing the most of any of the groups and Rhianna doing her skit live for the VH1 cameras. I love shooting concerts and this one was fun and something to do a few days before the Superbowl.

Superbowl XLIII

Well I finally did it! I had the opportunity to shoot a SUPER BOWL and I did it, I really did it...

I have shot many NFL football games in the past few years, (14 teams to be exact-but who's counting?), but this game was by far the biggest in my sporting career. 

I shot media day, the Pepsi Smash concert series and then of course the game.

Let me explain how the process worked once I got there. I checked in all of my gear through security, lying all of my gear on the ground for the Police dogs to sniff, and then through a metal detector to check me out, very similar to an airport screening. I was then given a yellow vest with the words Upper Level Photographer on the back. I was originally told to leave ALL monopods and tripods at home, we would not be allowed to use them. Imagine if you will holding a 400mm lens with a teleconverter attached trying to shoot from above with the camera set to ISO2000, f2.8 at 600th of a second, following a man in red running the ball with no monopod... if you are not a photographer let me explain it like this:   Hold 2 gallons of milk directly out in front of your body for 1o seconds, squint, bend your upper body forward about 9 inches so you can see the tops of your shoes, push your trigger finger in and out, rotate your body to the right 66 degrees while still holding the 2 gallons of milk directly in front of your body with your arms still straight out in front of you! RELAX for 20 seconds-now do it again and this time get it in focus.

I snuck the monopod in just like 40 other photographers and used it religiously on every play.

The game was very exciting and I would love to shoot next year in Miami, hopefully the Dolphins would join me.

I shot over 1200 images of the game, packed 6 lenses with 2 camera bodies and drove home after the game like an over excited 10 year old boy.  I love the NFL!

Super Bowl Media Day

I made the trek to Raymond James Stadium today to shoot the NFL Super Bowl XLIII media day with players from the Arizona Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

We had one hour to ask whatever questions we wanted and shoot whatever photos we could manage while trying not to get smushed in the crowd. The sun was out and lit all of the interview tables from directly behind, a flash was recommended for the players wearing hats.......all of them!

The biggest throngs of reporters and cameramen were obviously around the quarterbacks and head coaches.

All in all it was a pretty easy day and we were hustled off of the field before the team photos were taken. The Cardinals seemed very professional, focused and uptight, while the Steelers were overly relaxed and joking, even shooting their own video memories with handheld camcorders. Lets see how Sunday goes, I'll try to post game photos on Monday.

Rolex 24

I went out Saturday afternoon carrying 2 bodies, a tripod and plenty of CF Cards in the hopes of shooting some great images and more test footage in High Definition 1080p video. The race was pretty boring with no major crashes so my buddy Donald and I just kept walking the inside of the track before the light disappeared behind the grandstands. We knew that we had about 1 hour of good light before the sun sank away. I shot more video than I did stills on this job and the camera (5DMKII) held its own. 

Images were captured with a 400 f2.8, a 70-200 f2.8, a 15mm and a 24 TS lens.

Keep me in mind if you need any images of the Daytona 500, Sprint races, motorcycles or NASCAR Truck series.

Check out the video below:

Rolex 24 Hours Race from Alex Menendez on Vimeo.

Castel Lager

Here are a few images that I shot earlier this year for Castel Lager. This beer is produced and distributed throughout South Africa and England and for some strange reason, they chose to shoot the television commercials and print ads in Orlando. The clients were very fun to work with, the main lady was from South Africa and was as kind as humanly possible, the two art directors were from France and had to purchase more luggage to bring home all of the pairs of shoes they purchased, literally dozens. The American dollar was not worth anything and they were loving the deals at the outlet malls.

Anyhow, the lighting guys did a fantastic job of gaffing this job and the results show. The skies were sunny but the air temp was somewhere around 40 degrees, cold for Central Florida.

The shot of the beers in the ice was fun to light. We placed 2 small lighting fixtures in to the ice in a bathtub behind a fish tank filled with ice, the bottles were highlighted from the bottom of the tub through the ice and fishtank. A small bounceboard was placed in the tub with a silver metal reflective side facing the beers. We then had two light on stands forming an "x" pattern from beside the bottles. We then used a chimera directly above the beers and that light bounced off of the card onto the labels of the beer bottles. 

A slight adjustment of the RAW files in photoshop yielded the results you see.

Photoshelter

I had great news at the beginning of last year. Photoshelter was starting a new stock agency named "The Collection" and it would turn the stock industry upside down, and they wanted to feature a photo of mine along with 8 others as a promotional mailout to buyers all across the world, right on!!! 

 Well, to be honest it got a lot of press and I actually sold something on their site, but then the inevitable happened, "The Collection" closed its doors and the industry began its rapid demise. Today the stock model continues to be a joke as prices keep dropping like a rock and every person with a camera thinks that they are a pro photographer.  Whats a guy/girl to do???, just stick with it if that is what you truly want to do, only try to do it a little bit different. 

Change up the angle, experiment a little, don't run with the crowd, stand out above it and challenge yourself, get a different perspective. If you don't adapt then you will grow stale, from what I hear its very lonely.... 

Brian Laye'

I received a call from Doni at the agency Keene-Ideas about  shooting a few images for a CD cover in Clermont, Florida. The artist is a young man named Brain Laye and he is releasing an album entitled "2 Koi". He plays guitar and sings and needed the album art done for a demo that he is handing out at the Cannes Film Festival this week, talk about quick turnaround. The shoot was completed in just under 2 hours and Tim from Chameleon Mobile Video shot behind the scenes for bonus coverage.

I really enjoy this type of work and the chance to break out the big lights while shooting outdoors. The talent and crew were wonderful to work with and I hope Brian hits it big time!