Walk Through The Fire

June 29, 2009 | Category: News | Leave a Comment

One of the things that has kept me so busy the last few month is the new album from Mark Karan called WALK THROUGH THE FIRE. I worked with Mark on the album layout and artwork using two of my images and one from Photographer Herbie Greene. There was also a lot of photoshop used to get the look just right and I wouldn’t have been able to do the work on the back cover without OnOne PhotoFrame plugin and NIK software Color Efex Pro.

This morning I was sent an email with the link to the album on iTunes. It officially will be released on June 30th but can be pre ordered now. I already have the album, thats one of the perks of working on it, that website and the magazine and web ads. But to see my artwork on iTunes is really cool.

If you would rather buy thr actual album, which I recommend so that you can see the great artwork on the back and inside, you can do that at all the regular places and at www.markkaran.com

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Friday updates.

June 12, 2009 | Category: News | 1 Comment

It has been a very busy week. Lots of writing, not much photography.

If you are based in San Diego, I am leading a photo walk as part of The Scott Kelby 2nd Annual Worldwide Photo walk. The walk is going to be in my neighborhood of Ocean Beach. Great place to photograph. To sign up for my walk, just go HERE.

Not only am I behind on my writing, I am also behind on my reading. I picked up Within The Frame by David duChemin two weeks ago and it sits on my desk mocking me. David is a great photographer and I am very eager to dive into this book. Problem is that I haven’t had the time and didn’t want to just rush right through it. Of course i have paged through it and the images are stunning. Hopefully I will get to read it in the next week or so. You can read more David on his blog HERE.

Huge review of the Nikon D5000 over at Digital Photography review. Read all about it HERE.

Joe McNally has a had his website redesigned. I looks great. http://www.joemcnally.com

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Shooting at the zoo.

June 5, 2009 | Category: Photography | Leave a Comment

I needed a few fresh wildlife and animal images, so I spent the the morning at the zoo with a 70-200mm f/2.8 and the 80-400 f/4.5 – f/5.6 in my bag.

I am still behind on my deadlines but thought I would post my 3 favorite shots from today.

more soon

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Kung Fu Action

June 3, 2009 | Category: Photography | Leave a Comment

James Faasse shot with a Nikon D700 at 1/3 of a second and lit with 2 Sb800 flash units. One to camera right through an umbrella and one to camera left using a Honl grid

A little ass kicking at night.

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Still swamped

June 3, 2009 | Category: News | Leave a Comment

This week it feels like I am swimming through molasses.

I have been writing my ass off but still can’t seem to catch up to my overdue deadlines. It’s not so much the writing part, but the images that need to go along with it. New book, new images.

I have also been approved to lead a photowalk here in San Diego as part of the Scott Kelby 2nd annual Word Wide photowalk. For more info on that, got to the photowalk site HERE or straight over to my sign up page HERE. It will be fun. We will be shooting in my neighbor hood of Ocean Beach. Lots of fun.

I know that I haven’t made any real announcement about it yet, but i will be teaching at the Photoshop World in Vegas this year and got a pretty nice write up on their blog. It is over HERE.

Have a reat rest of the week and look for more regular posts soon.

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Ilovephotos rights grab

May 26, 2009 | Category: News | Leave a Comment

there is a new service avaialible to share photos online but I got as far as this section of the Terms of Service and decided that the service was not for me.

Content

You agree to abide by the User Content Policy which is incorporated into and considered part of these Terms of Service.

You are solely responsible for any and all Content that you upload or otherwise make available using the Service. You warrant that you have the legal right to copy, display, distribute, and make derivative works from the Content that you upload or otherwise make available using the Service, that you have secured all appropriate permissions or releases from individuals appearing in the Content prior to uploading or otherwise making the Content available using the Service, and that you have the legal right to grant Blue Lava the right and license set forth in the paragraph below.

Blue Lava does not claim ownership in the Content you upload, submit or make available using the Service. In order for Blue Lava to make the Service available to you, you hereby grant Blue Lava a royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide right and license which may be sublicensed or transferred, to use, display, distribute, reproduce, copy, make derivative works from, modify, adapt, transmit, translate, perform, publish and sell your Content in mediums or formats now known or later developed.

Blue Lava may work with third parties to provide users with the option to purchase DVDs, CDs, photo albums or photo books containing such users’ content or other users’ submitted Content. Blue Lava does not monitor such purchases or control the ultimate distribution or sharing of such Content by others.

Anytime a company wants royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide right and license which may be sublicensed or transferred, to use, display, distribute, reproduce, copy, make derivative works from, modify, adapt, transmit, translate, perform, publish and sell your Content in mediums or formats now known or later developed I have a problem.

The company/service in question is:

http://www.ilovephotos.com/

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Quick update

May 24, 2009 | Category: News | Leave a Comment

It has been a crazy crazy week.

I am deep into writing a new book for Wiley press. This is the Exposure Digital Field Guide and is going to cover everything to do with exposure, from shutter speeds, apertures and ISO to shooting events, portraits, sports, weddings and even wildlife. Needless to say the deadlines are looming for the first half of the book, which doesn’t leave much time for the blog.

I am getting a ton more information on my PhotoshopWorld West pre conference and will have that soon.

I also have concert images to share including The Doobie Brothers, The Allman Brothers and The Dead.

So check back next week for some images, stories and more.

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Tags: new

Sun God Festival 2009 concert shoot: part 1

May 19, 2009 | Category: Concert, Photography | 2 Comments

On Friday, May 15, I spent the day crisscrossing the football fields at UCSD photographing the 2009 Sun God Festival. The festival is the biggest event of the year thown by the student body and this was going to be no different. A main stage and a dance hall tent would be going from 1pm till 11:30pm.
The lineup this year for the main stage was

The Theory of Funkativity
The Cool Kids
Augustana
Iron and Wine
Grand Ole Party
Sara Bareilles
Motion City Soundtrack
N*E*R*D.

I did not shoot NERD since I needed to be at the airport at 5:30 am on the 16th to fly to Seattle to shoot at the Gorge. That post coming soon. The Dance Tent featured Rootbeer and Girl Talk, both acts I was asked to photograph.

Let me talk a little bit about Girl Talk first, then I will get on to the photos. Girl Talk is Gregg Michael Gillis, a 27 year old ex-engineer who is known for very wild live performances. Thats were the problem came up. Security decided at the last minute (literally about 1 minute before show time) that there were going to be no photographers in the pit for the Girl Talk part of the show.
They were worried that the show would get out of hand and either we would be in the way or get hurt.

As you can see from the 11 security people, they were going to take no chances with the crowd getting to the stage and no place for us photographers.

Now that I have out of the way, lets go back to the start of the day and the young band The Theory of Funkativity. I really like shooting young bands that bounce around the stage and have a ton of energy. It keeps me on my toes and thats a good thing. These four young kids played a very tight set and offered some great rock star type photographs, especially Michael Perl on guitar, who bounced all over the place.

Next up on the main stage were The Cool Kids. A hip hop duo who presented the first real photographic challenge of the day. How to expose correctly for a very bright sky, a very white shirt and dark skin? I went with manual exposure and overexposed the cameras recommended exposure by a stop to a stop and a half.

It was much easier to shoot wider and have both performers and crowd in the shot, because I could set the exposure mode to shutter priority and the metering to center weighted and meter off the performers. Worked like a charm.

Next up was Augustana, a band with a lot of San Diego ties and it showed. The crowd in front of the main stage had been growing steadily but when these guys took the stage people started to stream towards the stage from every corner. These guys have the look and the sound and I figure that it won’t long till I’ll be shooting them on a headline tour.

There is more, but i am going to save that for a later post.

for a gallery of all the images go here.

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Tags: Augustana, Concert photography, Cool Kids, Sun God Festival, The Theory of Funkativity

Twitter and me

May 18, 2009 | Category: News | Leave a Comment

I have been on twitter for a couple of weeks now. I wanted to get the lay of the land before going public with my user name.
I wanted to see if all the hype was worth it and if I was actually going to use the service.

Well, my user name is shotlivephoto and you can follow me here: http://twitter.com/ShotLivePhoto

I think I will be using twitter more for quick updates and maybe a give away or two.

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Tags: twitter

The Dead at the Gorge

May 18, 2009 | Category: Concert, Photography | Leave a Comment

On May 16 I shot the Dead on the last night of their Spring Tour 09. The show was at the beautiful Gorge Amphitheater a couple of hours outside of Seattle, WA.