Yoga is a new one for me, though it strikes me that, as a photographer who shoots fitness, yoga has got to be the most visually graphic and artistic practice normally associated with “fitness”… and it makes me wonder why I haven’t shot any before this?

I recently had a chance to work with Sanieh, an Austin based yogini. Though the world had yet to know, Sanieh had been voted as one of Austin’s 10 Fittest people for 2010, and she wanted to capture some updated pictures for her website, knowing that people would be seeking her site out once the Austin Fit Magazine issue when the announcement dropped (and it just did, in the August 2010 issue of the magazine). Before anyone gets uptight, no, I didn’t know about the Austin’s Fittest accolades until anyone else outside the magazine did. (and, kudos, Sanieh! Well deserved!)

Her goal for the shoot was to capture the feel of her motion in an outdoor, but somewhat urban setting. This was right up my alley, in that quite a lot of my experience has been shooting moving subjects, and I’m pretty good at picking up on the timing of the movement I’m trying to photograph. Timing, of course, ends up being the difference between a great shot, and … “meh, throw it out…” Of course, being a yoga kaumaara (ha! look it up!), there was going to be a lot to learn in a hurry in the middle of a shoot. We decided to work at the Long Center for the Performing Arts, with a 6am start time, to take advantage of the morning light. The Long Center has some great features for this kind of work, including a great place to see the sunrise, and some interesting column architecture that would lend itself to having Sanieh’s form juxtaposed on top of it. Another bonus was that I could work in Strobist fashion!

I’ll admit, the morning did not get off to an auspicious start. Being that I’m used to still being asleep at 6am, I don’t suppose that’s too much of a surprise. Let’s just say, I discovered that you can get f/2.8 at ISO 800 out of an Alien Bees AB800 in a 60″ Photek Softliter … with the black travel cover still in place over the AB800′s flash tube! Oh boy… Figured that out, and we got moving from there… Luckily, no damage done to the poor AB800.

Luckily, that was the only wrinkle, and we managed to get some really nice shots in about two and half hours of work, including one minor costume change, and a total of three discrete locations on the site. Most importantly, we both learned quite a bit and have ideas on how to approach more shoots in the future – this won’t be the last yoga you see grace these pages, I’m thinking!

Some technical gibberish… I only remembered to take one setup shot of our middle location (below), but I can describe the setups for you a bit. The shot that opens this post was our first location. It was lit by two sources – the aforementioned AB800 in a Softliter at camera right, and a bare Nikon SB80DX at camera left (zoomed to 35mm or so). The SB80DX just provided a subtle fill, and isn’t readily apparent in the shots.

The second location leveraged those cool columns, but we had overcast skies so there was no contrast at all on the architecture. The columns were just a flat, dirty grey. Blech. In morning or afternoon sunlight, those columns really come alive. So, what you can see in the setup shot is I’ve again got the AB800/Softliter combo at camera right, and then two SB80DXs (zoomed to 105mm, this time) at camera left, each lighting a column to provide a little depth to those otherwise dull columns. That worked out very well, actually, just providing enough interest on the columns to make them a cool design element in the shots.

We’re not done sifting through these images, yet, and I’ll be publishing more in the near future (yes, there’s that third location I mentioned that you haven’t seen, yet…). For now, here’s one more from the first location. Enjoy!

This article’s a little old, perhaps (from 2008), but I actually only ran across it recently. But, around the time he fired up the “Best Camera” craze, Chase Jarvis posted his “5 tips” gem of a blog article. Always worth passing on worthwhile stuff like that, a couple years old or not!

There’s always this struggle I have when it comes to day to day photography… Carry around a big ol’ SLR rig (heavy… bulky… PITA…), or have some kind of point and shoot camera I can use for times when I’m just about an about? Usually, I’d find myself just leaving cameras behind… and then, inevitably, some opportunity to take a cool picture emerges while I’m out, and I kick myself for not having a camera… Crap.

I got tired of missing shots. After some nosing around the ‘net for a prospective camera (and there are several really nice P&S cameras out there…), I decided to do what it seems like a lot of photographers are now doing… use my iPhone! In terms of the spirit of the Best Camera, the iPhone is perfect. I’m generally always going to have my phone with me, it’s lightweight, and with the release of the iPhone 4, it actually has a reasonable little camera onboard. Best of all, it doesn’t require any new cash outlay, since I already own the thing.

To me, software is all important to really make the iPhone fly as a worthwhile P&S platform. Chase Jarvis’ Best Camera application is a good one to start with. I’ve been getting a lot of mileage out of Hipstamatic, as well.

There are some downsides, of course. It’s tough to use an iPhone with traditional photographic lighting (though some folks have tried and showed it could be done, though not without some controversy). There’s not really a way to sync the iPhone to a set of lights, or anything like that, so it’s pretty much available light only (the built in flash on the iPhone 4 is kind of a joke for any kind of real work). There’s no zoom, or ability to otherwise change focal length – well, you can add on a telephoto adapter like this one, but… really? So, it’s a relatively simple camera, but it does seem to get the job done.

I’ll probably end up getting something a bit more sophisticated at some point as a middle of the road sort of solution, but for now, this is turning out to be a fun little walkabout camera, and it’s putting me in a very creative frame of mind when I use it.

If you dig this stuff, check out my iPhone gallery in my archive for more images. New work will appear there from time to time, so check back sometime!

Ok, so maybe not the four legged, orange and white striped models you find in the jungle. I’m talking about the US Navy’s “Operation Tiger Cruise”, a time honored tradition whereby friends and families of sailors returning from deployment can meet the ship on it’s way back home, and sail in with them over the last few days of the deployment. If you happen to be super lucky, and know someone deployed on an aircraft carrier, this shapes up to be a once in a lifetime chance (for most of us) to spend a few days on 4.5 acres of floating US territory, experiencing what it’s like to live on a “bird farm”. In October of 2008, I got just that chance, and attended a Tiger Cruise on CVN-72, the USS Abraham Lincoln.

My brother, Brian, has been in the Navy for something like 15 years, and will probably retire at the ripe old age of 40 years old. Yeah, life is tough! He’s worked his way up from an E-1, was commissioned in 2006, and is now an O-2. He’d been a submariner for his whole career, but one of the stipulations of his commissioning was a surface tour. As it ends up, it was to be on the Abe. They deployed in early 2008, which had them coming home in early October, and right in that timeframe, the traditional Tiger Cruise! Brian invited me to meet them at Pearl Harbor, and the rest is history.

Talk about an opportunity for a photographer! Essentially unfettered access to a lot of operating military hardware that most folks never get to see up close. Target rich environment, anyone? Man, I overpacked. What would be worse than being in the middle of the Pacific ocean, and not having a piece of gear I needed? The only thing I wished for on the trip was a longer lens for the airshow the crew put on for us – a 70-200 with a 1.4x tele-extender was just not quite enough. A 400mm prime on a second body would’ve really made it right! I found myself wishing for a point and shoot of some sort, too – carrying a Canon 1D MkIII with a 17-40 all over the ship on tours and such really got to be cumbersome. A smaller SLR, or something like a G11 would’ve been the ticket for the majority of the shots I took, with the larger rig available for taking shots on deck, and that sort of thing.

One thing that came as a surprise is that the majority of the aircraft on the carrier were actually kept on the deck, not down in the hangar bays. This is the norm. Apparently, only equipment under repair, or stuff that won’t fit up top is kept below, with the flight deck being the staging area of choice. This obviously makes deck operations more difficult, but those guys have it down to a science, managing placement and movement of planes on the deck in a carefully orchestrated, complex ballet.

The views from the ship were amazing, especially late in the day. It doesn’t seem like water as far as the eye can see would be all that interesting, but there’s a sort of serene, peaceful nature to it that’s calming. If I were to have another chance to spend time on a carrier, I’d definitely make an effort to take as much advantage of early and late light on the deck as I would be allowed (they get all Tigers off the deck at sundown, to avoid having someone go overboard). In fact, right after I took the sunset shot to the left we were called in for the night.

So, it was a once in a lifetime chance, one I took advantage of gladly, and one I’d do all over again if I had the chance. I got to meet a lot of sailors that weekend, but I didn’t meet anywhere near the whole of the ship’s crew or aircrews. If any of them are reading this, let me thank you for your hospitality, your willingness to educate us on your jobs, and most of all, for your service to your country and countrymen.

If you’d like to see more work from my cruise, check out this slide show from my photo archive:

As we sit here in July, 2010, on the eve of the 2010 CrossFit Games, it seems fitting to take a look back at last year’s Games, and wonder what this coming weekend holds for the athletes who will be meeting at the Home Depot Center in Los Angeles to find out who will be crowned The Fittest Man (or Woman) on Earth. Check out the rest of the article for more pictures, and commentary!

The 2009 Games marked my first photo gig for CrossFit, Inc (aka, CrossFit HQ, or CFHQ). I’d shot CrossFit events before for CrossFit Central, so I had some idea what to expect, but the Games were several orders of magnitude larger than a local CrossFit event. I’d shot large horse shows before – I think the Games were bigger in scope, and definitely more interesting as a photographic challenge…

CrossFit Games 2009 – Images by Dave Re

The theme for last year’s Games was “Unknown, Unknowable”, in recognition of the point of CrossFit’s programming – to prepare the athlete for anything that might come their way, regardless of what it might be. What that means, really, is that the workouts wouldn’t be announced very far in advance – sometimes mere minutes before the competitors were given the signature CrossFit “3, 2, 1, GO!” start signal. For those of us on the CrossFit media team, that also meant that we had to figure out our angles and locations on the fly, with very little time to plan or coordinate how we’d cover each event. This had the potential to be complete chaos, and at times, it had that appearance with all of the different media personnel who were allowed on the floor of the competition. Luckily, we had a good group of folks on the CFHQ team, and we came away with a tremendous number of good pictures.

There’s a number of my shots in the slide show above – for a little more detailed look, view them in my CrossFit Games 2009 gallery in my image archive.

Nikon released a press release the other day with some nice shots from the shuttle and ISS. Anyone who knows gear knows that you could take these shots with any modern dSLR – but what you can’t do is get those subjects, or shoot things in zero-G (like the apple shot – if you can’t see it on Nikon’s page, PetaPixel nabbed a copy, too…). I’ll bet even David Hobby would be jealous of using the sun like this for off-camera light! Of course, Mr. Hobby got to go shoot the LHC at CERN, so maybe I’m even more envious than he’d be…

One funny thing, though… I like how Nikon mentions they’ve been with NASA since Apollo – but all the famous Apollo program shots were taken with a Hasselblad… LOL…

I shot the “before” and “after” shots for the recent CrossFit Central 2010 Spartan Challenge. The assignment was pretty straightforward – we wanted to document each athlete as they appeared at the start and end of the challenge, without any sort of “slick” or polished look to the photos. They should be lit sort of flat, but with enough contrast to pick up on the definition in the athlete’s body contours.

These things always sound simple on the surface… but the CrossFit Central gym doesn’t have a convenient spot to use as a makeshift studio (well, the gym itself works, but wouldn’t be usable during either shoot). In between the start of the challenge and the end, they remodeled the lobby, and essentially made the location we shot against for the “before” pics unusable for the “after” pics… So, we moved outside. Thank God for lights.

I think they turned out nice, and accomplished the goal the client had for the pictures. You can check the whole lot of them out at Challenge page linked above!

I envy this dude. Damn. He’s got his stuff together, he’s got a cadre of talented people to get the backend stuff done,  and he’s all over the world taking pictures of beautiful people in outstanding locations… Chase Jarvis certainly has it going on, and this blog post of his digs into the technical details of his digital workflow, from capture, to backup, to final product. Damn good stuff.

Makes me just want to pick up and move to Seattle and beg Chase for a job… or at least attend a Seattle Strobist meetup so I can drool all over… uh, shake his hand and thank him for putting stuff like this on the web for all of our education, entertainment, and enjoyment!