By Ben on October 22, 2011
A few weeks ago, I got the unexpected chance to spend the night shooting Earth, Wind and Fire. No, not the band, the elements. Shot Water and Sky too. It was pretty much just an elemental photography kind of night.
I was on the tail end of a road trip to California to go shoot the Gold Rush Adventure Race, set in the beautiful location seen above. I had just been dropped off by my awesome ride to Cali, Amy Marquis from the Digital Naturalist, for a brief layover at a Starbucks in Bakersfield. Four hours later, Brian Leitten of Hyperion XIII Productions, the film producer for this project, picked me up and we headed to Bridgeport, where the race was to begin 2 days later. The plan was to just go straight to Bridgeport, but that soon changed. We realized how close our route was taking us to Mono Lake and decided that we should go there, sleep a bit and shoot the sunrise in the morning. Little did we know that this was the beginning of a long night of increasingly great reasons to shoot instead of sleep.
Continue reading “Roadtrip to California and an All Night Photo Frenzy.”
Posted in Fire Spinning, Landscape, Photography, Scenic, Travel, Trip Reports
By Ben on July 7, 2011
LowePro ProTrekker 400AW with Kata InserTrolley
Traveling is definitely one of the biggest downsides of adventure photography for me. I love being in the places that I go, but as for getting there, I could do without that part. As I said in my last post about my past trip to Puerto Rico and the trip I was on to San Diego, travel issues were a special part of both those trips, which spurred me to write this post. I’ve had definitely my share of travel drama and airport pains, and to a small degree, I’ve learned from them. So, I’m going to try and offer up the best in travel tips that I can muster. I think it’s nearly impossible to for traveling to be pain free, but hopefully these will help it be a little more like a mild headache rather than an all out punch in the face.
Continue reading “Flying for Photos – Photography Travel Tips”
Posted in Education, Photography, Tips, Travel
By Ben on June 16, 2011
Pentax K-5 with DA* 16-50/2.8 @16mm - 1/125th at f/8, ISO 320. Elinchrom Quadra with 8 1/2" reflector from left behind rock.
This post was about to be brought to you by the letter S (The S is for Sucks.), but yoga had to go and mess things up. Sorry. Had to. Moving on…
Things have sure been warming up lately in The Colorado Front Range, and it’s sure starting to feel like summer. Right now, I’m on a plane headed for sunny San Diego, where I’m sure it’ll be even warmer. All this sunshine, heat and the soon-coming saltwater breeze of being near the ocean is reminding me of the time I spent this winter in Rincon, Puerto Rico. I was invited down by Adi Carter, of the YogaSlackers, who was spending the winter down there to get away from the cold of her New York home. It wasn’t a hard sell for her to convince me that I should come down for a week to shoot stills and video of surfing, slacklining and beachside yoga of her and some others that she was going to be with. Photos from San Diego will roll out in near-future post, but for now I’ll just share from PR.
Continue reading “Sunshine, Slackline, Sand, Surf and Yoga”
Posted in Uncategorized
By Ben on May 12, 2011
Two of the greatest parts of being a full-time freelance adventure photographer are the ability to be somewhat location independent and the freedom to take large chunks of time somewhat off from work. These two things were put to excellent use last month when Genny and I decided to spend the month in Connecticut. We grew up in neighboring towns in CT, so most of our families, as well as many of our friends are still in the New England area. And except for our two moms and one aunt, none of them had met Annika yet. So with Genny on Maternity Leave and our awesome doesn’t-cry-on-airplanes baby in tow, we were off for a month of…
Rain.
Continue reading “April Showers Bring Yoga And Flowers”
Posted in Photography, Scenic, Yoga
By Ben on February 16, 2011
This past weekend was the 12th annual American Bouldering Series National Championship. And as such, the climbing elite descended upon Boulder, CO to crush anything they can get their hands on. Children and small pets beware.
I love climbing comps. They’re tons of fun to watch, have tons of energy, and you get to watch some of the strongest climbers out there tear down the walls. But as fun as they are as a spectator, they’re twice as much fun as a photographer. All of the same stuff applies, but you’re closer because you get to be down in the trenches with the climbers, where you can almost taste the energy and emotion. One of my favorite parts of having that kind of access and proximity, is getting to observe the way they interact with each other in the face of competition.
Hit the jump for more images and for what I love most about climbing comps. Continue reading “American Bouldering Series 12 Nationals”
Posted in Uncategorized
By Ben on February 13, 2011
Boy has it been an exciting last few weeks! I am vaguely aware of the fact that it is no longer 2010 or that many, many weeks have passed since Christmas. I’ve fallen off the blogging wagon hard. Tons has happened in the last month and there are so many things I’m excited to talk about. But just this one time, I actually have a pretty legitimate excuse. And this excuse makes all the other things I’m excited about pale in comparison. From the picture above, you can draw one of two conclusions. Either I’ve given up on on adventure photography and am now a baby photographer. Or…
Continue reading “The Biggest Adventure Yet”
Posted in Lifestyle, Personal
By Ben on October 31, 2010
When I started this post, having already decided to stay in for Halloween night due to needing to get work done, recover from a long few days and be refreshed for a full day of shooting the next day, it was supposed to be a quick recap of the week, and some of my favorite images from the various shooting I’ve done in the last few days. I guess I was inspired by, no, depressed by, no, inspired by how depressed I was about sitting here, being Captain Lame Sauce for Halloween. This post is by no means meant try and garner sympathy, or try and make it seem like my life as a photographer is ‘sooo hard’ or anything. But for something as generally regarded as ‘wicked sweet’, or a ‘dream job’, like professional adventure photography, I thought I would use this moment of stewing in the unfortunate down side of this lifestyle, to reflect openly from the heart, and try to give everyone an honest look at the other side of the the equation of life as a professional photographer. It may be a little morose, and the events accounted might not have been quite as bad as described (close though!), but this is meant to be an accurate representation of how some days of ‘living the dream’ really feel. Inside, you’ll find a relatively unedited stream of consciousness that reflects how I was feeling at the time, and of course, the images that this whole post was supposed to be about! Cheers.
Continue reading “Professional Adventure Photography Is Lame”
Posted in Action, Photography, Sports, Yoga | Tagged Pentax, Photography, Rockaways, Slackline, SUP, Surfing, Yoga
By Ben on October 19, 2010
Holy crap, where have I been?!? Sorry to be silent for so long, bloggies. The last 4 months have been some of the busiest of my life, and unfortunately the blog got thrown under the bus. But enough apologizing. Tons of great stuff was going on, and lots more is on the horizon. Among my favorites from the last few months are:
-Doing an art gallery of climbing images at the prAna store in Boulder to benefit the Access Fund.
-Taking a trip with Genny and our friends Travis and Laura in a VW bus to the Black Hills, SD.
-Attending the ever-crazy, always-tiring and mostly fun Outdoor Retailer trade show in SLC.
-Teaching an intro to Adventure Photography Workshop, here in Boulder, with Julia Vandenoever, Photo Editor of Backpacker.
-Spending two days at the gorgeous YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park with Yoga Journal, shooting their annual Yoga Conference.
-And as always, doing lots more shooting with those rambunctious YogaSlackers.
Ok ok. Enough about the past, Ben. What’s this about the Aspen Lodge CycloCross?
Continue reading “Aspen Lodge CycloCross”
Posted in Uncategorized
By Ben on June 24, 2010
For the last two days Sam Salwei from the YogaSlackers and Adelaide Marcus of the Shimmy Sisters have been in town on their Discovering Harmony in Duality workshop tour. I always jump at the chance to shoot, hang out or play with any of the YogaSlacker team, so Sam and I had been trying to coordinate something for while they were in town. I had never met Adelaide before, but she is a belly dancer, hooper, stilt walker, fire spinner, and all around awesome performer and artist, so I knew working with the two of them together would make for something magical. The problem was that my schedule was very tight while they were in town, and theirs wasn’t much better. After one of their morning workshops in Boulder at the prAna store, we decided that the only way we would get to work together was to do something after their evening workshop in Denver, which meant we would be starting no sooner than 11pm. We got together at a Boulder park where we played, experimented and shot late into the night. I didn’t really have the time or energy, and I still don’t. I shouldn’t even be writing this post. But I’m just too pumped about how we made the shoot work and what we got from it. There are other things I should be doing, but they don’t stand a chance of occupying my brain right now. I’m stoked about these images and the about joy of be able to work with Sam and Adelaide, and the only way to clear the slate of my mind and get back to other work is to share it all. Their workshop is all about the coexistence of opposites: the stillness of slackline, the movement of hooping, the tranquility of yoga, the intensity of fire. In trying to find balance in life, I find that to get to you goal, you sometimes have to take a path opposite of what you thought it would be. To go faster, you need to slow down. To go forwards, you need to take a step back. And sometimes, to feel energized and full of life, you need to stay up way past your bedtime being recklessly creative. Enjoy!
Hit the jump for the rest of the images!
Continue reading “Yoga, Hoop and Fire”
Posted in Action, Fire Spinning, Hooping, Inspiration, Photography, Yoga | Tagged Acroyoga, Adelaide Marcus, Fire Spinning, Hooping, Sam Salwei, Yoga, YogaSlackers
By Ben on June 11, 2010
The Teva Mountain Games are stuffed to the absolute limit with whitewater paddling, rock wall crushing, dirt jump soaring action. But there are two things that that I might like more than the non-stop adrenaline rush of all the competitions, and those are the Emotion and the Lifestyle of the event. For all the athletes who compete, and more than likely the majority of the audience, these sport aren’t just activities, they’re a way of life. And in any given sport at the games you’ve got some of the best in the world competing against each other, and what’s best is, they’re all friends. So as you can imagine, there’s a lot of emotion in the air, as some of the best athletes in their discipline’s compete among friends for in the sport they live for. On top of that, you’ve got the hordes of spectators who are also passionate about outdoor sports, the gorgeous setting of Vail Valley, and the totally rockin’ nightlife like the free Julian Marley concert you see at the top. What I’m trying to say is, you really should have been there.
Hit the Jump for more images! Continue reading “The Lifestyle and Emotion of the Teva Mountain Games”
Posted in Climbing, Competition, Lifestyle, Photography, Sports | Tagged Bouldering, Climbing, Teva Mountain Games, World Cup
Recent Comments