Decided to leave the still camera behind during a Christmas trip to see the folks and bring along the Polaroid.
Urban Outfitters had some of the last production runs of the film for sale and I grabbed one. Turns out that a few people have worked their tails off to get the instant film back out there on a large-scale basis sometime this year. Including buying an old factory in the Netherlands after Polaroid went bankrupt.
Since most of my time now is shooting sports at the paper, and the last three months have been football, football, football week after week, I figure why not put up some football pics. More football pics, that is.
Most of the games are at night, and you get anywhere from the first quarter to the first half to produce something before deadline. Needless to say, hard to get anything interesting when you have so little time.
Nice thing this year was one of the local teams ended up playing in the post-season all the way to the championship game for their section. Sadly, they lost, but a couple of the playoff games were played in daylight, and it felt like that part in the Wizard of Oz where it changes from black and white to color.
UPDATE: How ’bout them Ducks!
The U of O fighting ducks are going to the Rose Bowl. Since the loss to Stanford, they won out and crowned themselves Pac-10 conference champs. In celebration, a video that went viral despite the protests of the school.
But I’m not going to let it get to me. Keep thinking positive. They win the last three games and they go to the Rose Bowl.
I know I’m supposed to stay neutral, but it was hard for this game. Got my undergrad degree at Oregon. Toiled for many crappy games at Autzen before it became what it is now. Bottom line; I’m a fan.
Plus, a kid named John Boyett who is from Napa plays for them now and plays well, I might add. So the sports department asked if I could go down to Palo Alto last weekend against Stanford and get some shots of him for future stories.
Umm…yeah, no problem with that.
Kinda cool to think that here I am, a photographer who got the bug through a love of sports photography, taking pics from the sideline of my favorite football team. Quite a change from the skinny kid who didn’t know what he was going to do with his life post graduation in 1992.
If it’s visual and cool, count me in. I’m not up on all the blogs and websites that are out there, but two of my favorites originate from an unlikely place; the New York Times.
He’s an illustrator who’s done a bunch of stuff and every couple of months comes up with a little slice of life story told in words and images. Only the images are photos of illustrations made with different mediums. Napkins, legos, woven stuff; the dude has skills.
He’s a painter and experimental filmmaker who creates animated shorts set to music out of his paintings. I don’t know how long it would take to make one of these, but I’m betting it’s more than one day. (Sorry, the nytimes site will not let me inbed this. Totally worth the click though.)
A forum on national health care reform started quietly last week with two speakers making their points and only one interruption. Unfortunately, that changed as it became a shoutfest during the Q&A.
Funny how we admonish our kids for yelling and interrupting while others talk, but have no problems doing the same thing ourselves.
I’ve read that when you have kids, an hour can be an eternity, but the years turn into seconds. Sounds about right to me; three years and (finger snap), here we are.
Not to mention the huge physical change. The pumpkin patch shot was just after his first birthday. The beach shots are from this summer. Ugggghhhhh…..what happened?
Last year, I found the website Slideluck Potshow and quickly became obsessed. At its essence, the website serves as a gallery of slideshows that photographers and artists created and set to music. Two or three times a year, depending on where it is held, people submit their slideshows to judges who then pick the finalists and have a big potluck while sharing their work.
I loved discovering not only new work by really good photographers, but hearing new music as well. I put together a slideshow of Kai’s first two years with the music to one of my favorite bands and sent it off for an upcoming event in NYC.
And got rejected.
I’m not going to lie; this one stung a little. Probably because the photos are so personal. I’m not naive enough to think the work is anything that special compared to what a lot of other photographers are doing, but I think the fact that it was my son made it hurt more.
The paper was looking for some kind of multi-media piece for a story on the one year anniversary of the death of a two year-old girl to a hit and run driver. I had a feeling I could get a decent audio interview, but what would go with it? It’s not like it was a story that we covered for weeks and had tons of photos and/or video in the archive.
Luckily, the family randomly mentioned that they had a slideshow they put together on their computer of the girl. The light bulb went off and with some help from them, I was able to get a bunch of old pics to go with the some audio of the mom. Ended up working out in the end.
Makes me wonder where we would be without photos to go with our memories?
Life in the digital age has made many things easier for photographers. One of the best inventions that have come to light, to me, are the embeddable slideshows.
With the click of a button, I can create the code for a mini-viewer from my Photoshelter account that can be pasted into just about any website or blog. Everything is linked so if somebody sees a shot they like, they can click on the image and it begins leading them down the path to purchasing the print.
So much easier than flipping through page after page of proofs — from both a customer’s side and a photographer’s side.
These two slideshows are from a couple of side-gigs I did. One a wine tasting event with some of the major winemakers in the Napa Valley at ACME Fine Wines. The other from my sister-in-law Debbie’s wedding.
WARNING: Both of these have, literally, hundreds of images. If you’re looking for samples of my very, very best work, go to my website. If you’re looking to kill time with some coffee to people watch, then you’re golden.
