Monday, February 22, 2010

Two Kinds of Portraits

I've always felt that portraits are one of the toughest assignments for a photojournalist. To be able to convey to the reader the identity and personality of the subject is always a challenge. However, I enjoy the challenge. I recently had two different portrait assignments and I approached each in a different manner.

The first image in this blog post is of Kerner Studios Model Supervisors (left to right) Mark Walas and Carol Bauman. Within a few minutes of meeting Mark and Carol I could tell they took great care and pride in their jobs building miniature models. I thought a shot of them looking over a miniature of the Walt Disney's Space Port concept model the studio built for the new Walt Disney Family Museum in the Presidio would show their love of their art. The model was lit up and I like how the light from it fell on both of their faces as they gaze upon the model.

The second portrait is of Dominican University Lacrosse player Tai Sing Hee. The story was a preview of the Dominican Lacrosse team's first season as a Division II program and focused on Hee, their prized recruit for the season. When I arrived on the lacrosse field for the assignment I was drawn to the goal and circle around it on the playing field. I positioned Hee in the center in a strong confident pose to show the possibilities of the player and his team for the upcoming season. Also instead of just using the available light I also threw in a little bit of flash on the right to try and lighten up Hee's face a little bit.

Both portraits present opportunities and I hope these two images work to convey what the essence of each subject and help to tell their story as well.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Recent Sports Photographs

The winter high school sports season is in full swing and I have been covering a lot of basketball for the Marin IJ. There have been a lot of great games I've been able to photograph, and this was my favorite image from the past few weeks.
One of the other sports I photographed was wrestling. Its actually a rather tough sport to photograph. The contestants are constantly moving around the ring and it can be tough to get a shot where you can get a feel of the strength and power some of these wrestlers have. This was one of my favorite images from the Mountain Clash wrestling tournament at Tamalapais High School in Mill Valley