Jake just sent me his graduation announcement from Beaverton High School and it reminded me that I hadn’t posted these from his senior portrait session! His parents chose a nice vertical portrait of him in a white button-down shirt for the announcement photo but I like these two, one outdoors and one in the studio that show two completely different sides of him. Jake played basketball for the varsity team this season and we wanted to work something of that in and I chose to light the brown background with an orange gel to tie in the schools colors. What do you think?

Had a cool assignment to shoot portraits for an equestrian club last Sunday. Even though we were in a covered arena, it rained like crazy and the fiberglass roof made the rain loud!

One Speedlite, camera right, gelled CTO, then color balanced for that, shot through a small white umbrella.

Recent shoot for AND1 Shoes and Sportswear at the Memorial Coliseum , here in Portland. Andre Poole (aka “Silk”) easily grabs his own rebound while the announcer calls the game from midcourt.

“The Professor” (aka Grayson Boucher) leaves the ground on his way to the basket while the ref sleepruns behind him.

“Baby Shack” (aka Hugh Jones) eyes the basket.

To me, the coolest thing about staying in the infield is waking up and you’re AT THE TRACK! No traffic, no hassels, no “I’ve Never Seen ‘Em Backed Up This Far Before!” We had to wear these sparkly wristbands to get access to our section and it was like living in a gated community. Kinda nice, actually. They even delivered the local paper right to your front bumper every morning!

Watching the races from the infield does pose it’s problems: you can’t see a whole lot but we had this little Nextel Fan Monitor with about fifty buttons on it for switching to all the cameras around the speedway and in the cars, very cool. You also get to meet and talk and hang out with some other really cool race fans from all over, even if they do root for the wrong drivers. Right, E?!

Sweet spot to film/watch the race from…maybe next year! 

Jeff Gordon’s Dupont Chevy going through final tech-inspection.

Being the Fifty Year Anniversary of the race, most of the old winning cars were present and cruising around the track at various times. Here’s a few of my favorites:

Sterling Marlin’s Kodak Chevy

Two of Richard Petty’s winning cars, a Plymouth and the STP Dodge.

 Got back on Tuesday to find a ton of new work – yeah!