The Adventure Bum rides again

After having pretty much written this project off for another year I found a printer that is willing to work with me on my calendar. I am hoping to have this done and ready for people to order by the first part of August.

For those people who are not familiar with my Adventure Bum calendar project it was an idea I had a few years ago but started to seriously work on it last year. The idea is to put people in adventure scenes with all the gear and looking like they know that their doing but when you look closer you realize that they aren't wearing any pants. It is not meant to be sexual and most people when they see it just start to giggle, which was exactly what I was going for. Here are a few samples from the series.

This was the last image done for the project. I shot this near Lake Mead in Nevada. Once again natural light. This was just a few hours before I was supposed to jump on a plane to come home. I went from 70 degrees in Las Vegas to -14 in Fargo in about 4 hours.

This was the very first image for the project and I think it set the tone for the whole series. I had a silver Tri-grip camera right to help fill in the shadows other then that it was a very simple image to create. 

Been on a spree!

I have been shooting non-stop for the last three weeks. Everything from rock climbing to fashion to dance. A lot of the stuff has been just shoots to keep busy but every now and then I come across a subject or have an idea that jumps out at me. And these are some of the images that have stood out.

For this shot I was going pretty light. I had two SB-800s camera left, triggered with the SU-800. The lens choice again was on the light side but very sharp, I left my 70-200 2.8 at home in favor of the Nikon 70-300 racked out to 300mm.
This was a test shot I was doing with my new 35mm 1.8 Nikon, a great little lens. I had 2 SB-800s camera left, one kicking off of a silver Tri-grip on the ground in front of her and another back in the tunnel and triggered everything with a fourth SB-800.
This one was really simple, natural light and a little bit of post work with the levels.

Some new photos

Just thought I would share some new photos from a shoot that I did for a friends fundraiser.

This one has a V.A.L. with a light behind the book and a second flash camera right clamped to a bookcase. 
This one was a softboxed SB-800 camera right and a second in the back camera left to bring out some detail in the background.

both of the fire shots were done with a SB-800 in a soft box camera right and then a second SB-800 clamped to a chalkboard back and camera left.

And now it begins!

After 16 years of work I feel it is time to take a serious stab at shooting photos full time. I quit my job on wednesday. After three years of working there I got really tired of dealing with the general public and being treated like an idiot.

Tuesday I leave for two weeks of shooting climbers at the New River Gorge. I am getting pretty excited about this new direction that I am going in. The next few months I am going to be shooting for a month off and on along the north shore of Lake Superior, hiking in the Boundary Waters and a couple climbing trips to Wyoming. Wish me luck and keep checking back for new posts.

The image above was one of the first things I shot when I figured out how to use my SB-800's wirelessly with my D300. The main light is camera left, an SB-800 in a softbox, the red light is from another SB-800 on the floor firing up with a red gel and the exposure was about 30 seconds to get the LCD light to burn in nicely.

One of my favorite places

The whole point of this blog is to share my stories and photos from my travels so I figure it probably wouldn't hurt to tell a few stories from over the years and not just concentrate on the new stuff. A theme you will start to pick up on in my tales is that the conditions are never optimal, I am of the firm opinion that the more miserable the conditions the better the story is.

One such trip was my first trip to the Black Hills in South Dakota for three days of bouldering with three buddies. We decided to leave about 5 pm on friday and drive through the night since there were four of us to handle the driving. At about 3 am I am driving through Rapid City, SD  Jake is navigating and keeping me awake. All of the stop lights are flashing yellow so I am just taking it slow. Out of no where Jake tells me to turn left so I make the turn from the left lane instead of the turning lane since no one was around or so I thought. As soon as I made the turn lights went on behind us, I had failed to see the two different cop cars that were laying in wait. Come to find out that even though the lights were flashing yellow I missed that the turn light was red. Leigh who was in the back seat had woken up by this point which is good since I was driving his car. We told the cops where we came from, where we were going and that we were looking for a place to get off the road and get some food. Luckily the only thing the cop gave me was directions to an all night truck stop. After breakfast we hit the road again an hour later we had made it to Hill City, SD and to Sylvan Lake State Park just in time to scramble to the top of a cliff to catch the sunrise. We climbed till around 2 pm and headed off to set up camp. Once the tents were up it started to rain, hiding out in the tent it wasn't long before the night of no sleep caught up to me, I was out. The next two days were a blur of cold October days and nights but the sending was perfect, I even managed my first 5.10 lead, course none of us knew what the grades were guesses were as close as we had. The last night there we decided to get a room which proved to be a smart idea. It got so cold that night that the LCD screen in my DVD player I brought with froze, now it only plays in black and white. 

Two years later I made it back with my friend Aaron. I had planned a big project for that trip, I had about eight people lined up to go but about a week before everyone bailed out except for Aaron so we went anyway. This time around was in May so the weather was great but Aaron ended up coming down with the stomach bug his kids had when we left. But even that didn't stop him from sending V7s with ease. In all the years I have been climbing Aaron is probably the most talented climber I have ever seen, great blend of movement and power. The best part of the 2006 trip was meeting a climber by the name of Peter Lev. He used to guide for Exum and was now retired. He did a slideshow the night we met him, all of the images and stories were about his exploits in the Himalayas and other far flung destinations on government sponsored trips in the 60's and 70's. Back when we had to beat the Russians when ever we could. He told Aaron and me about a climb he did in Minnesota where they used a the steering column of his VW bus as an anchor to repel to the bottom of the cliff.

This guys name is Luke, met him on the 2006 trip with Aaron.
                                                                     Aaron 2006

Aaron in 2006

                                                                    Aaron 2004

                                                     Jake on a possible first ascent 2004

                                                             Bouldering right in camp.

                                                                              Aaron

                                                      Leigh warming up before a climb.

I just find this funny

Last year when I was in Joe's Valley the group I was with did all of our food shopping at the Food Ranch in Orangeville which also serves as the towns sporting goods store. Being a gear junky I had to check to see if they had any climbing stuff and I found this little gem. I love to see small towns like this do stuff to help out the climbers when there are plenty of other places that look down on us. I just find it funny that they chose to package the chalk they sell.

Photos on a beautiful spring day.

I am finally able to get out and shoot outdoors without me or my models freezing to death so I thought I should take adventage of it. I talked my friend Jenna into coming out and shooting with me yesterday and these are a couple of the shots that stood out right away. We didn't have any solid ideas before going out but I am happy with what we got. Everything was shot with a Nikon D300 and a 17-55mm f/2.8
This one was completely natural light. I prefocused and metered in manual mode then put the camera down to floor level to shoot.

I used a one stop Lastolite Tri-grip to difuse this shot. I held the tri-grip camera left and shot with my free hand.

Here I used one SB-800 on a Justin clamp in the rafters right in front of Jenna just out of the frame. Had it dialed down to -1.7 EV.