NASCAR Ending

It just hit me that are only two races left in the NASCAR Sprint Cup series and this is the closest the drivers have been in points in over 5 years. However I am just excited to shoot back at Daytona in a few months because they have been repaving the entire speedway for the past few months. This means everyone of the drivers has a chance to win because A: nobody will have experience on the new surface and B: nobody will know which line to run in February. This will actually make the first race of the season a very fun and exciting on to watch!

Effenheimer Beer

Here's a quick website that was put together using photos I shot in Minneola, Florida.

The brewery is called Effenheimer and these guys are producing some pretty good beer onsite. If you happen to make it down to Central Florida, feel free to stop by and enjoy a "tasting". They are very down to earth fella's who will treat you right.

Eyes of Faith Optical

It suddenly came to me as I was at the eye doctor this week that I had photographed a new line of eyewear called "Eyes of Faith" last year during the Disney Night of Joy weekend. Tim Baker and I were hired to shoot the bands that were performing on the Eyes of Faith sponsored stage that weekend. We shot 8 bands in all and the concerts were amazing!

A few days later we filmed about 40 pair of eyeglasses with pretty cool frames at my small studio in Orlando. I have to tell you, it was harder than you would think...

Eyes of Faith is a Christian company that also has a foundation that pledges to donate a minimum of 10 percent of their gross to children's charities worldwide. Pretty cool eh?

Fantasy Surf

The next time you visit Orlando and want to go surfing but are afraid of sharks or whatever lurks below the surface of the water, relax and know that there is a new attraction that you can ride, and its indoors. Fantasy Surf opened its doors, literally, this past weekend and the attraction allows you to ride a board on a man-made wave, all inside a building. My buddy over at Keene-Ideas hired me to shoot promo stills for the billboards, print and website. I have to admit, I lost 5 pounds shooting this because the room itself was warm and humid, but I didn't get bit by anything....

Discovery pushed

The Space Shuttle Discovery was scheduled to launch this week but there were a few setbacks including the rainy weather and a hydrogen gas leak.

Liftoff has been set for November 30 and I will be back there setting up remote cameras the day before. Check back for the images that should feature the shuttle launching at night!

DHFundQuick

Orlando Titans done!

The Orlando Titans, a professional lacrosse team, pretty much folded after making it to the final 4 in the league this year. They were here for a total of 1 season and recently announced that they were going on hiatus for next year in hopes of returning again the following year.....good luck with that. The game itself was somewhat amusing to watch, especially when the teams didn't like each other, but the line changes and rules took some getting use to. Lets see what happens in a year with the old Amway Arena and if anyone we be back to play there.....

Google yourself!

Have you ever tried to google yourself? I did a search yesterday to see who was using my photos and to see if I had any images out there that I was unaware of. I found a few interesting sites using my photos...like this one from FanNation of a NBA game I shot 2 years ago.

Keep everyone in check by patrolling the web, nobody else will do it for you.

Good luck and send those invoices as soon as you see a problem.

ESPN Rise magazine

ESPN has a magazine called "Rise" that features high school athletes who are highly sought after by NCAA colleges across the U.S..

Recently, the network featured a nationally televised football game between South Lake, Florida and Apopka, Florida. I was contracted to provide photos for the website as well as the magazine. The job itself was fun to shoot and I am glad that they brought in extra lights to illuminate the stadium, when you are use to shooting in NCAA and NFL stadiums, we photographers get spoiled I guess.

The game was fun and I can't wait to shoot more for the magazine.

Super Bowl XLIV

Last year I was in Miami to shoot my second NFL Super Bowl. This matchup featured the New Orleans Saints against the Indianapolis Colts, with the Colts being the odds on favorites to win another Super Bowl. Drew Brees however decided the State of Louisiana had been through enough heartache and was not going to let his people down.. The Saints 31-17 victory over the Colts was watched by over 106 million people and surpassed the 1983 finale of M.A.S.H. to become the most watched program in U.S. television history. I forgot about these images as they were only used for my magazine and have not seen the light of day until now. Shot with Canon MarkIII, 400 f2.8 with 1.4 extender, or the shift-tilt 24mm.

UCF Media Day/Basketball

Had the unique pleasure of shooting the University of Central Florida Knight mens and womens basketball teams this afternoon for their yearly media day event. Everyone from the players to the directors and media reps were really cool and the event went off without a hitch. I used the same lighting scheme that I used for the Orlando Magic media day but had more time with each of the players which was very nice. All in all I am pretty pleased with the images and will have a week or so before I need to finish them.

The two players featured in this shot are Marcus Jordan (5) and his brother Jeff (13). Yes, they are the sons of NBA legend Michael Jordan. Marcus will play this season while Jeff has to wait until next year due to NCAA rules on player transfers. I can't wait for this season to begin!

Dwight Howard Fund

I recently traveled with NBA Superstars Dwight Howard and Adonal Foyle to Haiti to document their time meeting with school children and charitable organizations in the area. The website GlobalGrind.com picked up on the story and featured a bunch of the images I took while on the trip. Keep checking back here for an update with the latest photos and info on the upcoming video for the website www.DwightHowardFund.com.

A-Rod misses 600

Shot for the European Pressphoto Agency when the Yankees and Alex Rodriguez came to Tampa for a MLB baseball game. A-Rod was chasing his 600th home run and I was hired to document it if he so happened to hit it. Unfortunately, Alex did not start the game and the sold out crowd was pretty upset. Before the 7th inning began I sauntered over to the first base dugout and was the only shooter in position when Manager Joe Girardi announced A-Rod was entering the game.

After being called out on a close pitch, Alex argued briefly with the home plate umpire and I captured this image. It ran both on-line and in print the next day in the New York Times.

Orlando Magic media day

Okay, so I finally remembered my password to this blog account. Lets see how often I make it back to this page. Anywho....here is a quick pic I shot at the Orlando Magic media day event last week. Dwight Howard and my first day with the new Orbis ringflash. More coming up on this shoot in the near future, as well as some shots from my time in Haiti with the Dwight Howard Fund....

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!