“Michelle Obama and a group of Disney stars lead a dance at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Disney in Orlando on Saturday, February 11, 2012. Obama was there to promote physical fitness to hundreds of local children and their families.” Continue reading »
DISCLAIMER: I’m about to geek out, so if you’re not interested in the technical details of how I shot this event then just go ahead and scroll down to the pictures. You’ve been warned. lol Silver Spurs Arena is one of the few rodeo hosting venues that offer a catwalk. Shooting from atop this position isn’t perfect, because the platform that circles the entire arena is recessed about 20 ft into the stands. Once all the hard work of hauling my lighting gear up was done, my job became a lot of fun. It’s funny that all the hard work of setting up strobes was only good for producing one image. Everything else I walked away happy with was shot with natural light. The problem was I only had two bi-tude 1,200 watt power packs, and arena is larger than four basketball courts. I basically lit one particular area well, and let everything else go to hell. With strobe I got f/4 at ISO 400 and a recycling speed of about 1.5 seconds, and since I was using Pocket Wizard’s TT5 system, I was syncing at 1/1000 with no black bar and little light loss. Besides the overhead position, I was also excited about shooting from the dirt level across from where the bulls come out. However, shooting natural light from there yields busy backgrounds. I was hoping to position the strobes so that the exposure fell off four stops sharply outside the ring. This couldn’t be executed, because the catwalk, where the strobes had to be fasened was too far into the stands and the catwalks on the sides were too far away to side light where the bulls come out. After getting one image with lights that I was happy with, I shot the rest of the action using no strobe at 10 frames per second f/2.8, 1/1000, and ISO 5000. After a little noise ninja filtering, the images looked good. The biggest tradeoff was white balance consistency. With strobe I could get a pretty consistent white balance from one shot to the next, but once I switched to shooting natural light, my WB varied greatly and there was nothing I could do about it despite setting a custom white balance in camera and using an Expo Disk. Here, the problem was the fact that each frame my camera took captured a different point of the ambient light’s frequency cycle hence recording a different light hue and temperature.
“Clayton Wooten of Arcadia, Fla. rides Buck Fever during the Silver Spurs Monster Bull event held at Osceola Heritage Park in Kissimmee on February 11, 2012. Bull riders from across the country compete for a chance to win $2,000. REUTERS/Octavian Cantilli (UNITED STATES)” Continue reading »
The photo below was picked up by Time magazine, The Washington Post, MSNBC and a slew of other national and international newspapers. This was my third assignment for Thomson Reuters.
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A little over a week ago, I covered the launch party for Canvas Interiors. It was a night filled with good food, good music, laughter and a lot of amazing people. One recurring theme I noticed in the images – people touching all of the textures in the store. Tone and texture are a big part of this new brand. Check out this new furniture store HERE.
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“The Senator”, a 3,500-year-old Cypress tree, lies burnt and broken at Big Tree Park in Longwood, Florida January 16, 2012. The tree, considered to be one of the oldest Cypress trees, caught fire early in the morning and continued to burn from the inside out through the day. Investigators with the Florida Division of Forestry ruled out arson as the cause of the blaze that started inside the hollow base of the tree. They said the fire burned hottest at the top, leading them to suspect a lightning strike as a possible cause.”
I wrote a story about my SE Asia travels this past summer for Robert Hanashiro’s newsletter, and it’s on the front page of Sportsshooter this morning. Bert is a USA Today staffer and co-founder of one of my favorite photo websites. I met him in 2008 when I had the privilege of attending two of his wonderful Sports Shooter Academy Workshops. Link to my STORY 
This year was my most memorable year behind the camera as of yet. I met so many great people, saw amazing places and rejuvenated my passion for visual storytelling. Here are some of my favorite images I made this year, and since no one is a good editor of their own work, there are 101 of them. Here’s to a healthy, fun, and successful 2012 packed full of adventures!
Boxing is becoming one of my fav. sports to photograph. Hopefully, there will be many more bouts in the Kissimmee Civic Center next year. Please visit my Photoshelter gallery to see a larger take of images from this night, purchase prints or purchase usage rights to republish any of these images. 12/09/2011 Boxeo TELEMUNDO Ford in Kissimmee Gallery 
“Luis Torres of Winter Park, Fla., wearing white and black trunks, faces Juan Aguirre, of Jacksonville, Fla., wearing black and white trunks, in a bout scheduled for 4 rounds during the last night of the 2011 “Boxeo TELEMUNDO Ford” series held at the Kissimmee Civic Center on Friday, December 9, 2011. Torres won by TKO.” Continue reading »
Anybody who knows me knows that the LAST genre my work fits in is fashion! But on Thursday, Nov. 17th I shoot two fashion models while tethered to a big screen in front of a peanut gallery of opinionated people. Also, I wasn’t able to touch the lights. All I had was 5 minutes, and I HAD to use the provided APS-C Canon camera! So why in the world would I volunteer for this? Because the room was filled with buddies I rarely get to see. There was free beer and food, and I was just curious how I’d do in this ridiculous situation… I did Ok. As expected when working with any Canon camera, there were some technical issues, which took some of my time. HA! But the models were a pleasure to photograph and were happy to do what I asked. Basically, I had them take off their high heals, so they could move around without worrying about rolling their ankles. I positioned myself so that the crowd became the background, and I shot backlit. The white seamless behind me acted like a fill. I had a lot of fun that night. Maybe I’ll start shooting “fashion” more often…
Canon 7D with a 70-200 at 70 mm, f/8, 1/125, ISO 100 ( I couldn’t touch these settings and AGAIN, I had to use this camera.) The make up was done by Sunha Julie Fajardo, and the wardrobe was styled by Fused Fashion.
Snap! Orlando 2012 Live Fashion Shootout from Snapwell Films on Vimeo.
This was for the local paper, The Osceola News Gazette,” which I still happily shoot for when they need me, and I’m free.
“A young patron waves his flags as the mounted posse ride by during the annual Veteran’s Day Parade through downtown Kissimmee on Saturday, November 12, 2011.”
