Where's the beach?

Today I had to shoot a portrait of a high school volleyball player who just started playing beach volleyball as well as her indoor playing. The biggest problem we faced in shooting this portrait was the fact that we shot it at her school, and they don't have any sand courts there. So I ended up trying to keep the background as ambiguous as possible. here are a few choice images from today.

A dirty time.

Today was the first annual Murrieta Mud Run, which was held a block away from my house so I decided to shoot it for the heck of it. The mud was more water than mud, but it was still dirty had fun for the people running through it. Here are a few images from the race and here is a link to the rest of them.

Golden Friday night lights

Here are a few images from tonight's Lake Elsinore versus Riverside King high school football game. The light was amazing before the game started so I made a few images of the players warming up.









Here is a link to all the images

Do I smell smoke?

Today I was working out of my office keeping an eye on the scanners for anything going on. When Reports started to come in of a fire started by a car, I saw the area it was in and didn't really think it was close enough to travel to.



So I kept an eye on it for a couple of hours and then a new fire started, this one within located about a ten minute drive from me. So I loaded up my fire gear, jumped in the car, and followed the smoke to the fire! There weren't a lot of flames that I could see becuase the smoke was being held down near the ground.



Due to that I spent the first 10-30 minutes just trying to find any sign of flames. After a little while I decided to drive further down the road to an equestrian center that had been the main concern for firefighters.



I followed a convoy of horse trailers to the center, they were sent to rescue the horses that were at the
facility.



Once I got to the property I found about seven or eight horses in a pen as flames were burning the opposite end of the pen. After about twenty minutes a group of people got access to the pen and started to rescue the horses. The good thing about this fire was that it burned a lot of brush a few outbuildings, but for the most part caused no real damage. Click here to view a few shots from today

Shooting for the heck of it!

This evening I and a friend who is a fellow photographer, set out to photograph the sunset. We decided to try our luck in Temecula's Wine Country. The grapes are starting to turn and so we got a good mix of green and red ones to photograph. The best find of the night was a patch of dirt covered with clay. The clay had started cracking and made for some great textures. Here are some images from tonight.



Can you see the ant?

Revenge of the nerds 2011!!!!!!

Starting last Wednesday thru Friday I was surrounded by a sea of unwashed masses, literally! It was that time of year again to hang out of people that rarely leave their moms basements, except for these four days a year when they become the epicenter of worlds entertainment radar! I am of-course speaking of Comic Con International.





This year was kinda different for me, I normally cover the preview night for a few local publications, and then hang out for the next few days getting images for a wire service, but this year I got the chance to work with a new wire service that had assignments with Fox, MTV, CBS, and the list goes on.....!





I spent preview night (Wednesday) doing what I normally do, running around on a very tight deadline trying to find that best costumed nerd for tomorrows paper, but Thursday was different. I spent most of the day working for Fox, shooting their Terra Nova Experience, an R.V. setup with an oxygen bar and a full movie studio, all setup for fans, so they could get a look a their new show starting this September.






Later on Thursday I shot for FX, it was a panel for their show Archer, a show I didn't even know existed, but will now be watching every time it comes on! It was one of the funniest panels I have ever covered. After that it was back to the convention room floor to finish up shooting a slide show for an online publication I was working for.






I spent all of Friday covering the infamous hall H, this is the place all of the big movies get previewed, and all of the big name celebs come to. I have tried to stay away from this place for years because the hired security thinks the press is scum and wont give us access to the stage. This year was different I ended up with a Comic Con staff badge, and buddied up with a security guard who was continually bragging about how he was keeping the press ( my friends) at the sides of the stage. It was a surreal experience being that close to all the celebs and seeing all the other media stuffed to the sides of the stage. It just goes to show how the people running Comic Con really don't care about the press, they know that the bloggers are going to cover anything and everything that happens at the con. To see more images from Comic Con go here

Sad day

I was having lunch with my girlfriend when the phone rang, it was one of my editors, he wanted to see if I could rush out to the scene of an accident. So we finished up lunch and I headed down to the scene.



I knew it involved an elderly woman and her dog, both were assumed dead, so I wasn't overly excited about getting there. Once I got to the scene the police had some citizen officers blocking the road about 300 yards from the accident site, it took me about ten minutes and a commanding officer to actually get past the citizen officers.




After I did I saw a white pickup truck on the curb with a trash can under it and trash strewn all around the street. I started taking some shots, and then I noticed a white towel, that obviously had something under it, then I noticed a leash, and realized it was the dog. It was laying in the gutter in a small pool of blood under a few blood stains that covered the sidewalk above.



The eighty seven year old woman had been talking with her neighbor when the truck, coming from the opposite side of the street, started on a collision course with her and her dog. It drove across the median then struck her, her dog, and two trash cans before coming to a stop in a neighbors yard. The driver had an interlock device in his truck, and four previous DUI convictions.



There is nothing good I can say about this story, there is no silver lining to it, the outcome is awful and no one is a winner.

Golden light

This evening I decided to make a sunset image, so I drove around for about thirty minutes until I stumbled into the Murrieta equestrian center. The place was a ghost town, not even one horse, but the light was great and there was an abundance of wheat, or straw, or well I don't really know, but it was dry, golden and looked great in the last light of the day.

The B Sides

This evening I had an assignment to photograph some autistic children taking part in an art class. The light was just perfect, everywhere the kids weren't. So I decided to spend a few minutes making a few images of this wonderful tree with a swing on it. This also gave the kids a little time to get into their art projects without me being this looming presence trying to photograph them. So as I started to make pictures of this tree, a little girl showed up and started playing on the swing, and I thought to myself, wow this can't get any better, well I was wrong. Out of nowhere came this little guy who turned to the camera at just the right moment and gave me this great face. These images are representations of why some of my favorite work has nothing to do with the things I am paid to photograph.

Simple kind of shot

Today I shot a portrait of a local high school wrestler who is going to compete at the state meet. I used two lights and had him sit in a chair in-front of the teams logo in the wrestling room. It was a simple way to make an interesting image, anyway here's my favorite shot from today. To view the full story go here

Girls CIF Water Polo Finals

I spent yesterday covering two local high schools water polo teams in both of their final games. Here are a couple shots from the days coverage, and to view all of them click here