After their dismal performance at the Super Bowl on Sunday, I figured I’d dig into the photo files for some slides of the original band. This one was my favorite from a roll of 36 slides shot at the Phoenix Coliseum in 1978. I scanned ‘em all and posted them here. Enjoy!

After spending the better part of two months using Canon Speedlites to shoot lots of images for my new Digital Field Guide about the Speedlite system, I felt like I needed a break from flash photography and the computers. My photographer friend Dave Lutz suggested a trip out to the Gorge to shoot some trains, bridges and tunnels and I thought it was just the ticket to get the ‘ole creative juices flowing again. Sometimes all we need to break the routine is to step outside and flex the creative muscle.

While Dave chimps his images on his camera’s LCD monitor, I photographed him in Continuous shutter mode as a freight train whizzed by. This one was by far the best of the burst as the camera isolated him in the negative space between the railcars and an added bonus was getting the fall leaves behind him on the other side of the train.

Here’s an image I created a few years ago for a Strobist contest “Shoot Your Jack-O-Lantern” that won the top prize. Click here for the original post. Happy Halloween!

I am continually amazed at the good things that happen in life and today was one of those times.

Without going into all the details, 29 years ago (1980), I paid a fine for a friend who was, let’s say, unable to do so. I was living in Arizona at the time, planning to move back to NJ in a month and that was a fairly big hit to my travel budget, but it was the right thing to do at the time. Back in NJ I kept sporadically in touch with them and every time we’d speak they said they’d make good on the debt. Well, after a while the calls stopped coming and my letters were returned as “undeliverable”.

I was more than frustrated and pissed that I had been blown off like that, knowing that money would definitely help my gear budget for my brand new photography business. As more time went by, I got over it, chalked it up to my own naivete, and figured it was one expensive life lesson I just paid for and made a note to self, to never do that again.

This past Saturday I was back at the studio after a small portrait shoot, on the computer downloading images and an email pops into my inbox and it’s from that same old friend. I sat back in my chair, not believing my eyes, stunned. Could it be real? Or some mutual friend just jacking me around for a laugh? A short cryptic note with a website link in the tagline. I clicked it and a flood of emotions took over as I saw this successful person’s passion displayed on their business website. Hands shaking, I dialed the number on the website.

Long story short, we talked for an hour and again the long standing debt was discussed and a check was promised.

It arrived today.

Never say never. That’s why I believe in Karma…and people.

My book is finally out in the bookstores! As many of you know,  this spring I wrote a digital field guide for an exciting new Canon camera, the 5D Mark II, for Wiley Publishing. I hadn’t wanted to blog too much about the process while I was writing it because part of me wasn’t sure I could complete the book within the required timeframe but now that it’s published, I thought I’d share some details about the process.

Around October of last year, my friend Mark Fitzgerald of the Digital Darkroom called me to see if I would be interested in writing a book about the new camera (not yet out) for the company that publishes his Lightroom and Photoshop Bibles. “Absolutely” I said, having never written a book before! Mark hooked me up with his Acquisitions Editor who was overseeing the project and long series of emails and phone calls commenced. 265 emails all totaled. Wild.

It was an extrodinary learning experience. Where I had hardly ever, in all my years, looked in the camera manuals that come with new cameras more than a handful of times, my 5D Mark II manual is now, literally falling apart from over use, checking and rechecking procedures and language for accuracy.

I’ll be highlighting different aspects of the book in future blog posts but wanted to get this up today. You can find more info about the book from Amazon here, Barnes & Noble here or Borders here(Borders has the previous 5D DFG author listed :-P .) I’m now hard at work on my second DFG for the series, this one on the Canon Speedlite System due out in February 2010 and a third one (top-secret!) is in the works. Wow, it’s like a whole new career!

NASCAR West came back to Portland this weekend, coming to PIR after many, many  years. I had gotten up early to finish staining the decks and hoped it would work out that I might be able to get to the track to do some shooting. Had a lot to do that day and finished up the staining about 9:30. The gals and I walked one block over to the Velodrome and caught some bike racing at the Alpenrose Challenge, had lunch, then I headed over to the track to cruise the pits and do some shooting. I’m working on a project about Speedlites so I needed to get some outdoor before & afters. As the race was about to begin, I headed over to my favorite spot to shoot (so far), three quick turns at the end of the main straight called the Festival Curves. You can get fairly close and the cars come in at top speed then go all the way down to first gear under hard braking through that first left-hander. Some guys come in a little deep and they lose a ton of grip. Conditions like that often make for good action photos. It’ll happen, you just have to wait. And wouldn’t you know it , along the way, ran into a few old buds.

Eventual winner, Jim Inglebright, is on the right.

John Waller of Uncage The Soul Productions and I put together a project to test out the new Canon 5D Mark II, and awesome new camera that shoots 21.10 MP still images and up to 24 minutes of continuous 1080p high-definition video. I’m writing a field guide on this new camera and needed some “seat-time” with it and John was excited about the new camera’s capabilities and came up with a location to try it out on, an ice cave near Trout Lake, Washington.

It was quite the experience. Quite the caver  himself (do not, ever, use the word “spelunker”), John reminded Liam Nagy (our model) and I to keep close track of time because in a cave with no light and nothing to create the flow of time, hours seem like minutes. Surprisingly, this was absolutely true and an interesting phenomenon to experience.

We had several lights, even more Speedlites and Pocket Wizards to light everything up and headlamps to see what the hell we were doing! The camera was great, there’s lots of reviews online so I won’t bore you with statisitics, but we used almost all of the new shooting modes and were very impressed with the quality it produced. Check out the video here and a lower-res version here. Can’t wait to use this awesome tool for my upcoming assignments! Enjoy!

…and a cold one now as I post this Friday evening!