I can’t say that I even have a personal Everest, but from everything I read,  shooting a Mixed Martial Arts fight was as close to that as it gets for sports photographers. Having not shot much sports (but being a huge sports fan), it appealed to my nature to dive into the deepest end of the photographic pool and see if I would sink or swim.

But just like everything I seem to do, I had to find a personal twist, an angle if you will.  My imagination kept straying from the brutality to the courage and commitment these fighters not only demonstrated for the paying crowds, but lived. This decision to climb into a cage and fight another human being is not made lightly.  The training, conditioning and dieting that goes into 3 three minute rounds cannot be glossed over. I know if I had to diet to take pictures, well – we’d be talking about something else right now.

And because I’m just wired differently from normal people, I saw these fights as intimate.

Yes, intimate.

A man stands alone with his thoughts as the door to the cage is closed.  A fighter listens to his trainer in the corner between rounds. These are intimate and telling moments in an event perceived as brutal by fans and critics alike. These are moments of focus and commitment that very few of us will ever achieve. What’s your passion? Are you willing to literally withstand a beating to achieve it? These guys fight to be proven worthy of being included in a select group from all the people in attendance – ‘victor’.

For those who cannot see past the ink on the fighter’s bodies, I suggest that you recall the old adage ‘talk is cheap’.  Whether or not you respect what these fighters do and endure, you must agree that if your company was filled with employees this committed it would be hard to find yourself with any competition left. I would also suggest that our military is filled with those who train to this level and fight away from the lenses of photographers and paying fans.  While it is doubtful that one of these MMA fighters will save the free world, it is a brother-in-arms, a like spirit who will.

And if you’re still reading, keep in mind that it’s naive to think that this democracy survived hundreds of years without calling upon the services of men like these. Men with a willingness to  sacrifice their bodies for a concept, a dream. Whether that concept be ‘winner’ or ‘free’, it’s the same human spirit that powers it.

And we’re all the better because of it.

Bad News! All the blog pix got wiped out in the move! I’m working on it.

In the meantime, go check out the new site and leave some feedback!

Thanks.
Bob

The uranic charachter of Diana is well reflected in her connexion to light, inaccessibility, virginity, dwelling on high mountains and in sacred woods. Diana is thus the representation of the heavenly world (dium) in its character of sovereignity, supremacy, impassibility, indifference towards secular matters as the fate of men and states, while at the same time ensuring the succession of kings and the preservation of mankind through the protection of childbirth.

Diana was the goddess of the hunt in Roman mythology.  She is often depicted in statue with a deer which is a reference to another myth, that of Actaeon.  He saw Diana bathing naked in the forest and she turned him into a stag and set his own hunting dogs upon him. Yeah, Diana had a bit of a temper.

How does this relate to photography?

After a short break, I pick up the camera and start shooting regularly again (I hope).  Throughout all the assignments from the Bee ( I love those guys!) and opportunities to shoot for new and existing customers, I will still be hunting for that singular thing that I am still seeking in my photography – art.

Yes, you can shoot that hot dog stand, and it can be very factual and informative, but can you make it ‘pop’? Can you make it the most compelling shot of a hot dog stand that the reader can remember?  Can you deliver a ‘gourmet’ shot of a ‘fast food’ situation?

So frame after frame in 2010, I hope to ask myself the same question.  No, not ‘Is that lady over there in the woods naked?’ but ‘Is there something that I am missing that will turn this shot into something worthy of a second, or even a third look?’.

Editors can be tough, comments on the blog can be tougher, but getting the elusive and reclusive Diana to raise her head and take notice of my work is the prize for 2010.

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions but I do hope to take that extra second, that extra breath at every shot to ask myself if I am doing everything I can to make this frame THE frame of 2010.

If I get the shot, I will post it faster than Mercury can run but I will be relying on my family and friends to pull the doggie teeth out of my backside.

And since we’re talking ancient history…

A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man

Here’s to Chasing Diana in 2010!

The closest thing to bars you will see in St. Mary’s are the pipes of the organ.

As you enter St. Mary’s you really don’t know what to expect.  The outside is huge and startling and sterile and draws your eyes heavenward. The inside also draws your eyes up but it also combines warm wood with concrete to produce a surprisingly welcoming space. Yes, you feel dwarfed by the building (that’s intentional) but you’d don’t feel out of place. If anything, you feel an appropriate sense of proportion between God and man.

Many grottoes around the inside wall of the building contain large and daring sculptures highlighting events in the life of Mary.  These grottoes are surprisingly private in the grand scheme of the whole Cathedral and invite individual worship.

Your eyes can’t help but follow the stained glass up to the peak of the ceiling.  The metal canopy over the altar is called baldachin, which historically was a cloth canopy which covered an altar or throne for a dignitary, typically a head of state.  This metal baldachin stays true to the modern design but also follows tradition and allows an Archbishop or even the Pope to say mass in the Cathedral.

It would seem that the island of pipes would be the center of attention as you enter but that is not the case. With the proper lighting, the sanctuary and altar would draw your eye and the pipes would fade into shadow. The early morning I was there offered few lights and I had to rely on ambient light from the spotlights and the windows. I relied heavily on my 5D MK2 and its low light abilities. That and some fast prime lenses.

Speaking of pipes, here is how they were illuminated by that same ambient light. You can see the same shadows above the pipes in the previous picture. I promise you that there were no Photoshop tricks employed to get this effect.

The Tabernacle was HUGE, perhaps weighing more than a small church made of wood. In my opinion, the Cathedral was intentionally designed to distinguish the temporary from the eternal by its use of wood, metal and stone.

Speaking of intentional, even the smallest details were well blended into the cohesive sense of the Cathedral.  Notice here how the vertical lines of the wood (which echo the dramatic lines of the ceiling) are broken up by the horizontal arms of the cross. And again the elements of the detail juxtapose the permanence of metal with the temporal quality of wood.  These pieces are two of the  Stations of the Cross which ring the inside of the building.

Believe me, this a beautiful place to see (unlike Alcatraz) and a challenging one to shoot (like Alcatraz). Both St. Mary’s and Alcatraz were designed from the ground up to be made from tons of concrete but for two polar opposite purposes. St. Mary’s is dedicated to the hope of redemption while Alcatraz was designed to hold those deemed beyond hope. It was fascinating to me to see the lengths each would go to insure that its charter was honored, that its purpose was embodied in visible, tangible structures.

Now that I’ve confessed my flower ignorance, you might think that its strange that I visited the Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco.  On the contrary, I jumped at the opportunity to see one of the most important places in the country, according to people in the flower community. I wanted to see what the excitement was about and hopefully shoot it, but I have yet another confession. I have a Canon 100 mm f/ 2.8 macro lens that I wanted to put through its paces.  What I ended up with really (pleasantly) surprised me!

And some of the shots downright amazed me…

This shot makes me think of birds, perhaps birds on an alien planet.  Should I title this shot ‘A Flock of Flowers’?

Are these flowers or insects?

Colors and shapes were everywhere. You could literally raise your camera and shot in any direction. The 100mm Macro really made this as simple as point and shoot.

There were so many shots in such a small space that the challenge became isolating what you wanted to shoot from the very colorful, yet distracting, background. This one is one of my favorites since the sun was just parting the San Francisco clouds and starting to reflect on the leaf.

With the macro, you really could separate a branch from the background…

…or a single flower from a bunch.

These flower people could be on to something! If you get the chance, you really owe it to yourself to shoot the Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco.

And one last confession, my wife took this shot! Way to go Carole! Now put my camera down!

Speaking of joy, my wife and I have just arrived home after 4 days in San Francisco. The getaway was well deserved for both of us, but after 20+ shoots in December (plus a day job and an additional part-time job), I needed a creative re-charge.  San Francisco never fails to give me that.  It’s a world class city with an exceptional sense of its own identity. It combines history with future and makes it all seamless and somehow connected.  I don’t know if I could live in SF (there are LOTS of people) but I certainly visit there as often as the opportunity presents itself.

OK, you beat it out of me – my wife is a foodie.  We shopped for the perfect cheese, the perfect wine, the perfect entre and enjoyed it all. But in between the culinary adventures I did have time to shoot two SF landmarks that, at least to my very convoluted mind, are deeply connected.

First is the Cathedral of St. Mary on Geary street.  It’s a massive and inspiring structure. The outside is defined by courageous architecture just as its inside is defined by creative use of space, light and art.  Believe me, regardless of what you believe in,  your eyes will lift heavenward when you see the inside or outside of this building.

But first, I have to start with another famous SF landmark.  A landmark that exemplifies the complete opposite of St. Mary’s.  Whereas the Cathedral is all about hope and redemption, Alcatraz is all about suffocating hope for a population deemed un-savable.

Both are very large concrete structures built for opposite purposes but that brings me to another point.  Before I even left for this trip I promised myself I would not blow off frame after frame and hope to get some good shots.  Nope, this time I decided to slow down and ’see’ through the lens. Each frame (more or less) was taken with ‘concrete’ intent and I am happy to report that I like what I’ve seen.

Hopefully, you’ll agree.

We visited Alcatraz on a dark and stormy night (literally).  The rains continued from the time our ferry departed Pier 33 until our return. It only added to the sense of desolation in what I consider to be a concentration camp on American soil. The walk from the pier is about a half mile long, and is the equivalent of climbing 13 stories, but this was the least of a new prisoner’s concerns. Alcatraz was designed in every way break down very violent men into docile, hopeless men. At the end of this long walk a prisoner would be given his ‘number’ and never be referred to by name for the duration of his stay.  In some cases, that lasted over 30 years. In some cases, it was the last time he heard his name in his lifetime.

Unlike other Federal prisons of its time, the word ‘rehabilitation’ was nowhere in the charter for Alcatraz.  No, the prisoners held here were the worst of the worst of the Federal system and deemed dangerous and unmanageable. ‘Cell’ is an optimistic word for the cages these men were housed in 23 hours a day. In fact, a new prisoner was put in a cell for his first 30 days.  If he misbehaved, the clock started over.

There seemed to be no shortage of cells. They were organized into ‘blocks’, and each cell had a line of sight maximized for the unarmed guards patrolling the first two levels, and the armed guards patrolling the third. By the first time you were escorted to your cell, you had been stripped of your name and your privacy. Act out you could lose your life.

Prisoners did not leave the island. There was even a hospital on the second floor that included an operating room. Its impressive to see what lengths the government would go to make sure you finished your sentence. You got off the island in only one of two ways, death or time served.  Until one of those conditions was met, you received excellent health care.

One infamous prisoner, Al Capone,  spent the last year of his sentence in the hospital ward. By the time he arrived at Alcatraz, the syphilis he contracted as a youth had deteriorated his physical and mental health to the point he was a confused and disoriented man. He was eventually released for time served and died in Florida a few years later.

The cells in the hospital were large enough to hold six beds each. It’s not hard to imagine that at times the hospital was a busy section of the prison. Despite the guard’s best efforts, fights, riots and escape attempts still occurred.  Ironically, no one was executed on Alcatraz, you were sent to another prison for that. If you were in the hospital, you were nursed back to health and sent back to your cell.

Just like Capone, Alcatraz is now a crumbling shell of what it once was, yet there were corners and angles that appeared unintentionally beautiful to my eye. There is an enduring desolation that embraces this land and buildings.  It’s not a sense of isolation, you can see the lights of civilization all around you on a clear night.  No, it’s a feeling of utter futility. No matter what your eyes tell you, the ‘concrete’ truth is that those lights are much, much farther away than that, if not unreachable in your lifetime.

As much as the murders, sociopaths, thieves and rapists housed here deserved their fates, it was difficult for me as a citizen to walk through such an intentionally hopeless place and realize that it was constructed by my country.

The next blog post will be about the antithesis of Alcatraz, a building designed to uplift, redeem and reward those within it, St. Mary’s Cathedral.

Sometimes, however, the types of assignments I get are paradoxical. (OK, I finally got to use the word ‘paradoxical’ in a sentence. My life is complete). This week for example I had the assignment to shoot a business called ‘Thimble Towne’. They are absolutely dedicated to the full contact artist expressions of quilting and sewing. Need fabric? TT is the place. Lessons? Everyday of the week! Sewing machines? You betcha!

Here is photographic evidence that I shot my assignment with all the due professionalism I could muster…

My second assignment was not the ‘normal’ run of the mill assignment. In fact, it was paranormal…

The assignment I was given was to shoot the Tulare County Paranormal Society.  They hunt spirits, and not the kind that end up in my glass at the end of the day.

My first question to my lovely and intelligent editor Jill was ‘How serious are these people?’. Her answer was ‘VERY’. She embellished her answer with facts like the shoot would be held at night in a location known for ‘paranormal activity’ and I had to be prepared to crawl through basements and sub-basements to get the shots she wanted. Oh, and by the way, it’s a potential cover shot…but don’t feel pressured in any way.

Armed with that info, I loaded up my car with all the small strobes I had (4) and bought more ‘AA’ batteries than should be legal. I also invested in a small flashlight and a bunch of small bungee cords since I had no idea of what awaited me and if I would have enough room for light stands.

I also dug into my Strobist Lighting Seminar DVDs for a light set up I had previously seen and really liked.

Yup, I was ready.

Just a note, it never matters what MY opinion of my assignment is. All that matters is what my editor is after and how my subjects see themselves. In this case, these folks were serious about the paranormal world. What came to mind was an ‘X-Files’ shot that brought words like ‘professionalism’ to mind not a tougue-in-cheek ‘Ghostbusters’ parody shot.

I arrived early to check out the location and was greeted by this sign on the front of the building. Being just a little superstitious, I took this as a bad omen. Imagine my disappointment when I met the paranormal team and was told we could not get access to the building. In fact, the place was buzzing with activity from the restaurant in the basement and another one across the street.  The front of the building was a mix of street lights, car lights and neon lights.

An unprintable phrase familiar to location shooters world-wide came immediately to mind, but I digress.

Plan ‘B’ was a simple font and back two light setup in the alley. The back light was bare, the front light was above me and had a Honl grid to encourage the light to fall off.

I shot each individual member of the team and the whole team in this light. There were no modeling lights so I had a team member’s husband hold my brand new LED flashlight on the subject’s face so I could focus.

I posed each team member so their new logo was prominent in the shot. I tried to use the neon in the background as a ‘paranormal’ element along with my back light.

Whether or not I shot a cover remains to be seen. I came prepared to shoot a completely different light setup but I think I still pulled off the ’spirit’ of the shoot.

Now all I have to do is wait and see if my lovely and intelligent editor agrees!

Then we got Mischief.

Watching this kitty learn and play is must-see-TV around this house lately.  Even our two dogs sit back and watch her chase shadowy, imaginary prey across the living room floor.

This kitty also gives me a new subject to try out my new 35mm f/2 lens on. It was an anniversary gift from my ever understanding wife.  You see, I react much like a kitty with catnip when I get a new lens.  I prefer to think of it as unlocking vast creative ideas deep inside my soul when I try a new lens. My wife’s opinion is far more succinct and slightly different from mine, she says I get ‘lens stupid’.  OK, enough of our opinion poll…

Mischief is brilliant. We’ve taught her to shake hands in only two days.  Alright, I’m exaggerating a little, she was just trying to get my new lens out of her little face.  She must be famous in the Cat-World if she’s already treating me like paparazzi.  I hope we can afford to send her to rehab.

This is a still shot from Mischief’s new TV show. It’s called Mischief’s Minute (because cats have a short attention span). This episode is about how she taught the silly humans in her house to send emails with her picture attached to everyone they know. Her patience with us is profound (at times).

We also believe Mischief to have certain clairvoyant powers. She seems to hypnotize us and make suggestions to our puny little human brains about us bringing her more toys with bells in them and cleaning her litter box. We’ll keep you posted but I just got this really great idea about going down to Pets-R-Us and opening a very large credit account and renting a U-Haul and filling it with beach sand.

Catch you later!

This is Mischief, a kitten found by my wife. She also took the shot.

I would have to work for days to get as cute a shot for a client but she took one, and only one, shot of this kitty and got this.

I am well past thinking that life is fair but maybe someday the photo gods will drop a gift shot like this into my lap.  Of course, that day I’ll have the wrong lens on, my batteries will be dead and I will have left my compact flash cards at the store.

The photo gods giveth and the photo gods taketh away…

The Wish Upon A Star foundation held a fund raiser in Visalia, CA in cooperation with all sorts of law enforcement agencies.  The Wish Upon A Star group…

‘grants wishes that are like medicine for the spirit, to children afflicted with high risk and life threatening illnesses.’

I was sent by the Fresno Bee to get shots for the {Talk section that appears in the Friday South Valley Edition.  To a photographer, it was like shooting ducks in a barrel. Everywhere I turned there was something worthy to be shot.

Warning: after the jump are photos of adults being being silly, having fun, and trying to help. If this offends you, please move on!

If you’re curious about the warning, I put it there because someone shared an opinion with me that this event was ’stupid’. I tried my best to explain that it was all for a good cause and that the law enforcement community is a tough place to work and that they’ll take their fun whenever they can get it.  Nope, the whole event was ’stupid’ and that was the end of the discussion.

Maybe that person will reconsider should they ever make an ‘intelligent mistake’ and ever need a hero to come by and offer assistance or perhaps save her life.  (Some people don’t make ’stupid’ mistakes so I figured it would have to be an ‘intelligent’ one).

The first crew I ran into were the ‘executioners’, those volunteers that would be shaving our heroes down to their scalps.

I was surprised that there were so many of them until I looked around the corner and saw literally hundreds of men (and women) lined up.

The last time I saw something like this was when I was in Boot Camp and I was one of the sad faced recruits getting their first haircut courtesy of Uncle Sam.

The differences between my experience and this event were that morale was VERY high and…

…the barbers were FAR more attractive!

One went as far as to finish off her ‘victim’ with whipped cream, chocolate sauce and a cherry!

Just to make sure that none of the volunteers got a sunburn, each person shaved got a Wish Upon A Star ballcap – and sunscreen.

Yeah, the day was silly and fun but $100,000 was raised for the kids, along with the morale of hundreds of heroes and their families.

And that’s my kind of stupid.