Digital Kloc Photo Blog

I was pleasantly surprised to see my photos of The Swellers in AMP magazine.  I shot The Swellers when they were on tour with Paramore. More about the shoot here.

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:

A friend asked me to shoot his Porsche 996 Turbo.

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Hayley joins The Swellers on Stage

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.

The beach by the lighthouse was all black rock.

View these images on a map with Flickr.

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.

Jake Garn has an interesting post about how the rule of thirds is really the lazy persons way of composing with the golden ratio.

http://jakegarn.com/the-rule-of-thirds/

Interesting stuff.

On Thursday night, I went and shot A Wilhelm Scream at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood. It is a small place and very dark. I have wanted to try the Tokina 11-16 2.8, but Samy’s didn’t have one available. So I went with the Nikon 14-24 2.8 instead of my usual 12-24 f4 rental. The lens is a beast at around 3 lbs. I found that it was very slow to focus and I ended up missing the shots I wanted. It stayed in its bag on my belt most of the night.

More shots after the jump.

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Repost of Jim Goldstein’s “Best Photos From 2008″ blog post – with permission. I am #77.

Once again 2008 proved to be an incredibly productive year for the many photographers who read the JMG-Galleries blog. The results of this “Best Photos From 2008″ blog project puts a twist to the normal “Best of Photo” list by aggregating links to the work of 93 photographers from around the globe who are passionate and dedicated to their craft.

The results from “Best Photos From 2007″ by JMG-Galleries Blog Reader’s were impressive, but this year not only did the number of participants exceed expectation the quality and vision of those who submitted were exceptional. This year participants ran the gamut of experience from enthusiasts to professionals.

Enjoy and good luck picking out your favorite from these great submissions

1. “My Top 10 Favorite Photos of 2008” – Jim M. Goldstein
2. My Favorite Shots of the Year – View from the Little Red Tent by Edie Howe
3. 2008 Favorites – Photine by Laurie Ballesteros
4. My Nephew – Amit Goyal
   My nephew woke me up in the morning and was in a very chirpy mode when this was clicked
5. Another world (+Vorher/Nachher) – Visuelle Gedanken by Martin Wolf
   
6. Boy, Hanoi – The Sun Shines & The Igloo Melts by Jon Gresham
7. Best Photos from 2008 – Abraham Neben
8. Apocalyptic Capitalism – Sultana Sandwich by James Hill
9. Top 10 Photos of 2008, My first year in Wisconsin – Sierra Visions by Steven Bourelle
10. My Best Photos: 2008 – Shutter Photo by D Travis North
    This past year was a huge growth year for my digital photography skills which I feel is exhibited quite nicely in my photo favorites of 2008. Read more…

These are images 11-20 that didn’t make it into the Top 10 of 2008. The best 10 from 2008 are here.

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My photography came a long way in 2008. I attribute it to the copious amount of time off from work which let me shoot during the week. I tried to shoot at least once a week, which led to me shooting more than ever before. This years Lightroom Catalog has close to 20,000 images in it ranging from landscapes to dance to fashion to artistic nudes. My gear got a significant upgrade this year as well. I upgraded from a 6MP D70 to a 12MP D300 and replaced my slow-focusing 80-200 2.8 lens with a sweet 80-200 2.8 AF-S.

Jim Goldstein over at his Landscape, Nature and Travel Photography blog posted a project to post your top 10 photos of the year. It was a tough pick, which left me with 45 best photos from 2008. I got it down to 10 photos with the help of my girlfriend and art director Kristin. I’ve also posted numbers 11-20 which didn’t make it to this list here.

My top 10 images from 2008 (in chronoligical order, I think):

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