The past year was insane at work. The first five months were filled with work on G-Force, 10-12 hours a day, six days a week. After G-Force, I took a two week vacation and then jumped right into working on Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. I have been working 12 hour days, six days a week on Alice since September. All this work left me little time to shoot. I shot about half the amount that I did last year, and shot more spur of the moment type things rather than planning shoots.
Here are my top 10 photos of the year, in chronological order:
Last week I was fortunate enough to shoot The Swellers and Paper Route when they opened for Paramore at the Hollywood Palladium in LA. All three bands put on great shows. It was the last show of the US tour and the last show with The Swellers, so I stuck around and shot some farewell photos of all the bands together. Paramore is by far the largest band that I have shot and their fan base is much bigger than I imagined. For example, six of the photos I shot after the show are on Paramore’s website. In 24 hours, the photos have a combined 31,614 views. In contrast, my Flickr account which has 1,300 images including scantily clad women, has 27,400 views in a little under two years. Looks like I need a hit record.
Since this was a big show, I decided to rent the Nikon 14-24 f2.8 wide angle lens instead of my usual 12-24 f4. I had rented it before, but wasn’t terribly happy with it. This show confirmed my discontent with the lens. While the lens is tack sharp, the elements are just too big and bulky for a live show. Focusing is fine for landscape or portraits, but when it is dark and you need instant focus, this lens is too slow. Another photographer traded his 24-70 f2.8 with me for a song and most of what I posted from the photo pit was shot with that lens.
Jonathan - The Swellers
After the three song limit shooting from the photo pit, I switched to my Nikon 80-200 2.8 AF-S to shoot from the crowd.
Nick - The Swellers
Hayley from Paramore and Nick from The Swellers
Paper Route
Paper Route
Paper Route
Some post-show farewell photos. These were shot with the Nikon 14-24 and a SB-800 on camera.
Farewell photo from the Paramore tour 2009.
Hayley Williams from Paramore and Anto Boros from The Swellers
Next show – Less Than Jake with Fishbone and The Swellers.
The morning after we arrived at the beach house, Kristin and I went down to Florence, Oregon to go horseback riding on the beach. Kristin got the biggest horse they had and I got this old fat horse who liked to eat a lot.
Later in the afternoon, I took a trip to the lighthouse in Newport, Oregon. I’m not a big fan of lighthouses, but I heard the beach was pretty cool.
This was a pretty easy drive from Eugene, OR to Newport, OR. We were meeting Kristin’s parents at a beach house they rented in Beverly Beach, seven miles North of Newport. We decided to take the more scenic Route 99 instead of going up more I-5.
Mile 28: Took a quick detour to Benton Lane Winery and bought a bottle of wine. I’m not a big wine drinker, but everybody said it was good.
Mile 52: We stopped for a bathroom break. This place was in the middle of nowhere. There was a sign on the wall from somebody wanting to buy four goats for a good price.
Mile 80: We got to Newport a few hours before Kristin’s parents, so we continued on to Lincoln City to look around. We stopped at a glass blowing studio and watched an artist make a really cool abstract glass bust.
Started the day out with breakfast at Marie Calendars. It was quick and close to the hotel.
Mile 10: Kristin found a coffee shop called HeBrew. I guess a Jewish guy owned it. We thought it sounded cool and it had good Yelp reviews. Unfortunately, we drove around and couldn’t find it. When we got to the stated address, all that was there was a church. I’m convinced its a Jew-trap. So we stopped at Starbucks instead at Mile 30.
Mile 50: Keep an eye on the silver Merceded 7 series in front of me. This douche was zipping all over the place. At some points he had to be doing 110 mph.
Mile 99: The douche in the silver Merceded must have had a radar detector, since he slowed down and got in line with the rest of the drivers right before my little incident at Mile 99. I saw a giant cloud of dust in my rear view mirror and a Police car in front of it. I knew he had gotten me doing about 86 mph. The officer was very nice and wrote me up for 80 in a 70. A $198 ticket later and we are back on the road. You can see that after the ticket I’m driving more in the right lane with the cruise control set at the speed limit.
Mile 160: Stopped to use the bathroom and pick up the essential road trip snacks: Root Beer and Beef Jerky.
Mile 310: We stayed at the Phoenix Inn in Eugene. Dinner was at McMenamins, which is an Oregon chain of bars with decent food. The food was lackluster. Dessert however, was something to write about. Since my other half is the better writer, I’ll just link to her Yelp review here for Prince Pucklers Ice Cream.
I just returned from a road trip up to Portland, Oregon with Kristin. The trip was nearly 3,000 miles since there is a lot to see in Oregon and California. To document our journey, I used a Canon SD1000 point and shoot camera in time lapse movie mode to record our adventure. The camera took one frame every two seconds. One hour of driving equals one minute of footage.
Here is the first day of driving from LA to Redding, CA. We woke up early to get out of LA before rush hour. The drive to Redding took 7.5 hours and was 545 miles. Most of California is very flat as you can see in the video. The drive was a bit tedious, but it was nice to be doing anything buy working.
Mile 0: The trip started at Whole Foods for breakfast. Shortly followed by Starbucks at Mile 5.
Mile 350: Lunch at Sonic. There isn’t a single Sonic in LA, but we still see the commercials for them all the time. Kristin and I wanted to stop at one to see if the food lived up to the hype. Sadly, I was pretty disappointed with my burger.
Mile 545: We stayed at the Red Lion Inn, in Redding. It was a nice place. Read Kristin’s Yelp review here.
Today is the last day of official production on G-Force. I am on the show for another week to pickup any loose ends and possibly do some marketing shots. I worked on the show for 15 months and it has been nice to see it to the end. There is an updated website with a bunch of clips and a bit of my work.
