Weezer at the Del Mar Racetrack

Saturday, August 21 was not your ordinary day at the races in Del Mar. The horses put on quite a performance but it was followed by an incredible show by Weezer. Rivers was all over the stage and at several points he actually took off with the wireless mic into the crowd. He even ran back stage for the lucky peeps with special passes and jumped up on the row of porta-poties since there was not a stage back there. I have never had so much fun shooting a concert. It amazes me how I got hooked on Weezers music in High school back in 1994 and they are still adding more high school kids to their fan base today. Be sure to check out Karl’s corner on the Weezer web page for more photos. Enjoy the photos!

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Matisyahu at the Del Mar Racetrack

On friday morning I got an email from Matthew Miller, better known by his Hebrew name, Matisyahu. He asked me if I could photograph his show on Saturday at the Del Mar Racetrack and this is what I was able to shoot. First of all, like many concerts, flash photography was not allowed which meant that in order to have an image correctly exposed and not totally blurry, I would have to shoot at a very fast film speed (iso 1600 or higher). Shooting at a fast film speed allows you to capture fast moving subjects in low light but it ads a lot of grain to the image. Since I knew this ahead of time I took a more creative approach, knowing that the images would have a grainy film-like look. On several shots I intentional positioned my self with the stage lights pointing directly into the camera. This fundamentally breaks every rule of photography, but in this case, the result was an abstract dream-like image. I figured since a perfect sharp crisp image was not possible in these lighting conditions, I might as well have some fun and push the limits a little bit. This is where shooting in full manual mode really is crucial. The stage lighting is constantly changing and if you try to use the cameras light meter to expose the image it will, in most cases, expose the image incorrectly. So once I got an exposure that I was happy with I pretty much stuck to that same exposure. Most of these images were all shot at ISO 3200, f4.0, 1/60 sec.

Another idea that I had going into this shoot was to shoot a lot of stills in rapid fire and piece them together in a stop motion animation. The main goal with every event that I shoot is to capture the vibe and energy in a way that will make people that didn’t attend the event feel like they missed something special… and for the people that did experience the show, I hope to help them relive the great memories and to re-live some of the emotions that they felt. This video is a quick rough cut of what it was like at the Del Mar Racetrack on Saturday night. Matisyahu put on an incredible performance and I highly respect him for staying true to his religious beliefs as a touring musician. Enjoy and I would love to hear any feedback.

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Haiti Project

In September I will be taking a trip to Haiti in support of Daybreak Missions and World Orphans. Shortly after the Earthquak hit Haiti, Daybreak Church felt lead to adopt a church in Haiti and provide financial, spiritual and physical support. Through the help of an organization called World Orphans, Daybreak has been connected to a church in Port-au-Prince that supports and operates a local orphanage and is actively helping the local community recover from the disaster. Generation Church is also partnering with Daybreak with this outreach and I will be traveling with the Senior Pastors from both churches to make the introduction and to pave the way for future volunteer groups. My assignment will be to capture their story visually, through photos and videos, to bring back to the congregations and supporters at home that have made this outreach possible.

I am very excited to volunteer for this assignment and I am hoping to get more people involved, which is where you come in. My goal is to raise $1400 for the project and I only have a few weeks to do it. As part of my fundraising efforts you can purchase some of my photographic prints from my last trip to Kenya. I have compiled a series of 12 prints that you can find on this page with an option of 3 different sizes. A lot of people have bake sales to raise support but…trust me… you would rather have one of my photos than one of my cookies.

Each print is printed on archival photographic paper and every print comes with access to online viewing galleries of photos and video’s that I will bring back from Haiti. Thanks for your support!

Walking Home

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Family

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Baby Elephant

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Cheerful Heart

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Kibera Boy

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Champagne Plains

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Herdsman, Satellite Dish and Coke

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Passing Through

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Eeny Meenie Miny Moe

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Lone Elephant

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Picha

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Stare of a King

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Jeff Daniels

Last week I had the opportunity of shooting an interview with Actor, Jeff Daniels as part of NAMM’s Wanna Play Music campaign. Jeff is best known for his acting but said that it all began with his interest in songwriting and playing guitar.

At one point in the interview Jeff said “Songs are stories and they have the ability to capture a single moment in time and the whole song spins around that one moment.” He added “Music has the ability to become your best friend and it is always there when you need it, in bad times and in the good times. You also find out about yourself through music. When you dive into music it takes you on a personal journey that discovers things that you wouldn’t otherwise know about yourself.”

This is exactly why I love working with musicians, actors and others that have an artistic outlook of life. I have always thought that still photography also has the ability of telling a story and in some cases it is more powerful than a moving picture because it captures one moment in time and all of the thoughts about that picture revolve around that one moment.

Find out more about Jeff’s passion for music at www.wannaplaymusic.com

Robert Downey Jr

Right after Robert Downey Jr had finished filming Iron Man I had the opportunity of working with him in the studio as part of NAMM’s Wanna Play Music campaign. You can also see an interview that we shot about the role of music in his life. We have all seen his acting skills but his music skills are also impressive. He released a solo album in 2005 called The Futurist. A man of many talents, he was also a ton of fun to work with and very unassuming.

I normally don’t like to be on the other side of the camera but we were having too much fun on this shoot to pass it up.

David Carradine

Shortly before David Carradine left for Thailand, I had the opportunity of working with him in the studio as part of NAMM’s Wanna Play Music Campaign. The last thing in my mind was that he would not return from Thailand and that he would not complete his role in his latest film, Stretch. I have always viewed photography as a celebration of life and my approach of photographing people is to capture their inner spirit in a image that will never die.

The nice thing about working with celebrities is that they know exactly what to do and require very little direction. The only thing I told David before taking these pictures was that I wanted to take a photo that really shows your inner spirit. He then quickly said” yeah yeah I’ve been doing this for much longer than you have” and he pulled out a cigarette and lit it up. So I immdeiatley started taking some shots and he started interacting with the camera.

The main thing that I learned from this shoot is that, as a photographer, sometimes it is best to disappear behind the camera so that your subject forgets that you are there. If a photographer tries to give too much direction, then the subject ends up doing something that is not in their own nature and the photographer ends up capturing an image that doesn’t depict who they really are. After-all a photographer can never really tell somebody who the are.

Harry’s Mustung at Tikki Oasis 2009

Several years ago Harry Decker and his wife won a lottery in Germany that allowed them to move to San Diego. Harry’s first job in San Diego was working with me at an advertising agency in La Jolla. I have been good friends with Harry ever since. Upon arriving in America’s finest city, Harry has dreamed of owning a ‘65 Mustang convertible. After several years of saving and searching he found his dream car. He repainted it from red to black and added a custom designed surf board (his own design of course) and entered it into the Tikki Oasis 2009 car show.

These are some shots I took from the show last year and I’m looking forward to his return to the show in a few months.