Last week I attended a workshop, “Intense Moments: Photographing Sports”, hosted by veteran Sports Illustrated staff photographer Peter Read Miller. The event was coordinated by Working With Artists (WWA) and was an action-packed week photographing various sporting events in the Denver, CO area. In addition to Peter and his many years of experience (>90 SI covers), we were fortunate to have SI Director of Photography, Steve Fine, and SI’s expert assistants in attendance.

IT WAS AN INCREDIBLE WEEK. We shot mountain biking, fencing, basketball, boxing, collegiate track & field, and professional arena football at the Pepsi Center. Between shoots we attended various sessions (on lighting, remotes, SI, etc.) and then spent the balance of time editing thousands of digital images in search of our best work to submit for review at the post-shoot critiques… a unique learning experience. Besides the crits, I also enjoyed the informal networking and sharing of best practices with other photographers from around the world.

WWA did a fantastic job hosting and it was an honor to learn from the industry’s best. Special thanks to Peter Read Miller, Steve Fine, Grant Leighton, Max Morse, Andrew Loehman, Josh Sanseri, and Greg Cradick for giving me a fresh new perspective on photography — this was the best workshop I’ve attended in a long time!

Click here for some of my pics from the workshop.

I love the start of the “New Year”. It’s like a clean slate… well, at least for a day or two until reality sets in… yup, everything you were involved with at the end of the previous year is still there (good and bad). If you’re one for resolutions, maybe that’ll keep you energized a little longer than most.

I have high hopes for 2008. At the beginning of 2007 I explored a concept/book called Asset-Based Thinking. In a nutshell, it teaches you to look at every situation differently, but to focus on the positive (asset-based) elements versus the negative (deficit-based) side. Sort of “the glass is half full” mindset. I still practice this frequently and it has helped me in many challenging situations.

In 2008 I’ve decided to start capitalizing on a few opportunities that have been dangling in front of me for some time… I will finally formalize my own part-time business. My new company, Exit172 LLC, will represent several ventures:

• Exit172 Travel — a 24×7 online travel agency powered by Travelocity and YTB Travel Network
• Exit172 Photography — my freelance photography endeavors
• Exit172 Technology Services — IT consulting & services for homes and small business

I’m excited to finally gather all of this under one umbrella. As Anthony Robbins and all the other motivational/self-help folks have taught me over the years, sometimes you need to go out and make things happen, instead of waiting for things to happen… life’s too short…

I posted a bunch of pics from this year’s parade up on Exit172.  Got a few good shots… especially one of Bindi and Terri Irwin (daughter and wife of the late Steve Irwin, a.k.a The Crocodile Hunter).

Technorati Tags: macy’s,thanksgiving,parade,holiday

My pics from the 2007 New York City Marathon are now up on Exit172… Hoboken, a 6th Ave Street Fair, Mile 25, and travels throughout Central Park. Enjoy.

Technorati Tags: nyc,marathon,running,new york city,lance armstrong,photography,sports

I recently posted that the “Mobile Upload” functionality in Facebook (to post pics from my iPhone to my Facebook account via Gmail) was broken.  Well, it must have been something on Facebook’s side… I didn’t change anything and now it’s working again.  Either way it’s a good thing.  My workaround to moblog to Flickr was okay, but it was a disconnect in getting pics integrated into Facebook, e.g. tagging people in the pics.  Hopefully this lasts a while. 

Just messing with some macro photography… a handheld shot of a 2005 Michael Schumacher Ferrari Formula 1 Hot Wheels model. Taken with a Nikon D100 and Nikkor 35-70mm f/2.8 macro lens. I forget the scale of this model, but it’s actually only 4 inches long. Click on the pic (and then “All Sizes”) to see the full-size image.

Here’s a link to some of my pics of the 1:1 scale model.

[2005 Formula 1 - US Grand Prix]

For the past several weeks I’ve been moblogging pics directly from my iPhone to my Facebook photo albums by simply Gmailing the pic to Facebook. Worked great… I’d snap a pic and in minutes it would be up on my Facebook. Well, it looks like Facebook has discontinued support of this method and is now only allowing mobile uploads via Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) transfers. No biggie right? Well, unfortunately the iPhone does not include MMS support… Yup, there is currently no mechanism in the iPhone to MMS a picture to another cell phone (or to Facebook for this matter). Someone please tell me I’m missing something here, but I’m pretty sure I’m not. Ironically, this coincided with me updating my iPhone to firmware v1.1.1. I don’t see how the firmware update could be to blame, but you never know.

So, now what to do about moblogging? I tried pxPipe as an alternative way to upload pics to Facebook, but it looks like they’re affected too… just didn’t work. I think for now I’ll just be moblogging pics to my Flickr or SmugMug. As for posting to Facebook, I’ll have to manually transfer pics to my albums for now. Ugh, so much for “real time”. Hopefully MMS support is slated for a future iPhone firmware update. We’ll see…

I had the pleasure of attending a corporate event with National Geographic in New York City. The theme of the event (which was sponsored by Lenovo and AMD) was “Experience Parks & Conservation“. It was a fun time with co-workers, customers, partners, and even an old friend from my hometown. I also had an opportunity to meet world renowned photographer (and Editor-in-Chief), Chris Johns.

I love National Geographic Magazine — great photography and intriguing articles. How could I pass up being on the cover of their latest issue?

I decided to start a photo gallery in my Smugmug of some of my cycling rides (at least the scenic ones). I figured I’d start with my longest ride to date — 52 miles. For some of the trips with a lot of photos, I’ll probably continue creating separate galleries. Here are the links:

Cycling Photo Journal
Cycling Photo Journal RSS Feed
Ithaca Gallery
New York City Gallery

The pic above is actually an image from Google Earth. I exported my route from MotionBased (as captured via my Garmin Edge 305 GPS). Gotta love Google Earth!

Fun with my Nikon D100…

I was browsing through my 19,000+ photos in Apple iPhoto and on a whim decided to update the main graphic on Exit 171. I noticed this picture I took in Vermont in 1999 and started messing with Photoshop. Long story short, I ended up with the new header graphic above… a combination of photos I’ve taken and some neat Photoshop effects.

My old graphic now lives on my “About” page. Special thanks to Chris Huller for some creative inspiration (he’s created some cool graphics on his blogs)!

In case you’re wondering, “KW2DIO” is my amateur radio (a.k.a. Ham) call sign.

An interesting project by Art Director and Designer Ji Lee. Some funny stuff!

I printed 50,000 of these speech bubble stickers. I place them on top of movie posters, ads and signs all over New York City. Passers are invited to fill them in. I go back and photograph the results.

I haven’t seen any of these in person yet. Let me know if you come across one of these in NYC.

[The Bubble Project]

My entry for this week’s Photo Friday Challenge is now posted on Exit 172. The theme this week is “Violet”. Voting opens up on Friday, August 19th. Check out all the entries!

Described by founders as a “citizen journalists’ photographic agency,” a new startup called Scoopt.com plans to resell cellphone snapshots to news organizations, sharing proceeds with shooters. Company owners originally planned to launch the site on 7/7 — the day of the first round of London attacks. The site is now live.

Via Boing Boing

My entry for this week’s Photo Friday Challenge is now posted on Exit 172. The theme this week is “Complexity”. Voting opens up on Friday, August 12th. Check out all the entries!