editorial & advertising photography from beautiful austin, texas.

Expedition Central America

January 10, 2013 by Leave a Comment

I have a friend that runs a company called Enzoology Education. You might have heard of the company’s innovative elementary and middle school instruction program Exploration Nation on Ellen, Today, NBC News, Scientific American or Time Magazine. I’ve done some shoots for them in the past, and always look forward to the next project with them.

Enzoology is a social enterprise that creates inspiring science instruction featuring real kids doing real science research. The program’s hosts do some pretty big things but now, in partnership with humani.tv, EARTH University, Rio Indio Lodge, Bushmaster Survival School and others, they are doing something global in scale that will have real impact on kids everywhere. Check out this video:

In April of 2013, a team of kids, Special Forces veterans and surgeons will travel from around the world to San Jose, Costa Rica to begin a 14 day scientific expedition through the jungle that will culminate in setting up a surgical clinic for the Rama indians in Nicaragua.

During this 14 day expedition, Enzoology will produce a series of lesson programs that illustrate the message to our future innovators that:

Science and innovation is the tide that lifts all boats

 Here’s how you can help: 

1. Go to www.ExplorationNation.com/contribute to contribute to this cause. You’ll get great rewards ranging from a lifetime subscription to Exploration Nation for you and a school of your choosing to actually going on the expedition with the team. Or how about seven days of Spec Ops survival training in the jungle?

2. Next, please send this message to your friends. 

3. Finally, get the message out on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, etc. Hash tag include: #TeamXN #STEM

I’ve been following the progress of Pete and his team since they started on this project last year. If you can contribute in some way, please consider it!

Filed Under: Photography Tagged With: , ,

A Pirate Birthday

September 10, 2012 by 1 Comment

Earlier I posted some pictures of the incredible Black Pearl/Queen Anne’s Revenge from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Coincidentally enough, my 4-year-old is about to turn 5, and he wants a pirate theme for his party. So I took the opportunity to use the images for a ‘party poster’ (I have a habit of doing this. Check out my other kid’s Star Wars poster).

Here’s a cropped version of the image. To see the full uncropped version in all of its pixel glory (1MB), click here.

The pirate thing has been with Trevor for a while. Here’s his 1-year-old birthday image I designed back in 2007:

Filed Under: Family & Friends, Photography Tagged With: , , , , ,

There Be The Black Pearl

August 16, 2012 by 9 Comments

While on a trip to Oahu, I came across this beauty. It’s the actual ship from all of those Pirates of the Caribbean movies. While it was the Black Pearl for the first three films, it became Blackbeard’s ship (known as Queen Anne’s Revenge) for the fourth film.

The ship is quite impressive. It’s sitting inside a fenced-area dry dock along the coast of Oahu (map and directions below). The detail level is amazing! I was able to get about 30 feet or so away from it, and you could easily make out all of the skeletons, design, and more that went into this incredible ship.

Talking to the locals, it sounds like this ship is waiting for Disney to decide what to do with it. My vote would be to either make another movie or move the vessel to a theme park or the nearby Disney Aulani resort. It’s so visually striking that people would enjoy taking a look at it.

All of these shots were taken with a Fuji X-Pro 1.

 

If you ever find yourself on Oahu, getting to the ship is quite easy. Here’s a Google map of its location:


View The Black Pearl in a larger map

What you need to do is to park where I’ve marked the pin, and then walk towards the boat landing to the beach area. Then, walk along the beach to check out the ship. Since beaches in Oahu are all public, you are free to walk along them. The parking area is a public-ish boat landing, and there were kids playing there when I visited. The entire walk takes about 5 minutes.

Filed Under: Photography Tagged With: , ,

Gateway to the West

July 22, 2012 by 1 Comment

The Gateway Arch in St. Louis is an incredible structure to say the least. At 630 feet high, it’s the tallest man-made monument in our country. And it also holds the record for the largest stainless-steel monument in the world.

To get to the top, you sit in a somewhat-cramped ‘pod’ (which looks like something straight out of 2001). It’s about a 4 minute ride up to the top. You can stay up there as long as you want (although the crowds made it easy for us to bail after about 10 minutes).

The way it was constructed was incredible (and here’s the matching wiki article that you’ll want to check out). As each pre-fab piece was assembled, construction platforms and cranes moved up the spire to the next level. So, each completed section was used as the work area for the next section.

In that wiki article, check out the ‘Stunts and Accidents’ section. Especially the 1992 stunt where a dude climbed the exterior with suction cups. Crazy. I want to do that.

Here are some shots from my visit. They were all taken with a Fuji X-Pro 1. Next time I’d like to bring my own lighting ;)

Having a little cinemagraph fun here.

Filed Under: Photography Tagged With: ,

A Live Studio Audience

May 23, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I had the honor last night of taking part in something special. If you are on Google Plus, you probably know that the first-ever Google Plus Photography Conference is going on right now. This conference is being run by the Scott Kelby’s crew (the same one that runs Photoshop World), along with Google.

I wasn’t able to make it to San Francisco, but I was asked and excited to be a part of it (albeit remotely). For a lot of the presentations, the conference team ran live hangouts and displayed the video on a large screen. This brought a unique element to the presentation (which already was in front of a large crowd). For the first time, a presenter could give a talk and also field questions/input from the hangout members.

I was happy to be one of those hangout members for Jeremy Cowart’s presentation last night. During the event I kept thinking “Cheers is filmed before a live, studio audience.” That’s what it felt like. I was an observer, and also a participant. I was far away, but close, because I could ask a question at any point. If I did speak, my face was immediately shown on the huge screen in the conference hall. I’m glad I brushed my hair.

If you’d like to watch Jeremy’s presentation (which is awesome btw), I’ve included it below. It will leave you, like me, feeling both inspired and unproductive! Dang you, Jeremy. I’ve also included some stills that my friend Frederick Van Johnson sent me from ‘behind the curtain’. Literally, behind the giant projection screen.

Congrats to Google and Scott Kelby and his team for pulling off this new conference, and congrats to Jeremy Cowart for a great presentation!

 

Filed Under: Photography Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Blogs In The Sky Keep On Changin’

February 24, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I decided recently that it was time to shake things up a little bit in blog land. I now have a snazzy new design thanks to the folks at StudioPress. I’ve also added some additional content at the top. There’s a page for Photog.TV, as well as my luminosity mask set. At the bottom, you’ll see some of my recent Instagram images (yes, I know, I need to use it more often).

And since a post can always benefit with a picture, here are a few shots of the boys taken while we were visiting some family in Oklahoma. They look so happy to be standing in a field.

Filed Under: Family & Friends, Photography Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Book Mention

August 21, 2011 by 3 Comments

I am excited to see that my friend Matt Kloskowski’s new book, Photoshop Compositing Secrets, is out! Matt was kind enough to mention me and this blog post regarding a composite I did for a band last year.

If you are into compositing at all (or want to be), I highly recommend it. I am sure it will become one of the definitive compositing books for photographers. I am looking forward to seeing him and the rest of the NAPP crew at Photoshop World in Vegas.

 

Filed Under: Family & Friends, Photography Tagged With: , , ,
«Older Posts