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!

                          

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!

                          

Don’t let the name fool you, these images are actually from the semi-finals and finals, but that would have made for a crappy title. Here are my best action photos from the World Cup crush fest, and after this I’ll be doing one more post on the lifestyle, behind the scenes and emotions of the Teva Mountain Games. Then it’s time to move on. I don’t really have much to say, other than the fact that all of the World Cup competitors all did awesome jobs and the climbing action was non-stop, so I’ll just let the images speak for themselves. Enjoy!

Hit the jump for the rest of the images!

For those of you wanting more info about how the Bouldering comp went down, here are a few places that have done better jobs of reporting than I could do if I felt like trying:

The Spot Route Setting Blog and ClimbingNarc

                          

So it’s been pretty busy here, shooting the Teva Mountain Games. I’m pretty much ending my third 18 hour day in a row; shooting for about 12 hours and then editing late into the night, only to wake up and do it all over again. But I’m loving just about every minute of it! So forgive me if I can’t quite get the photos up here as soon as I’d like, and if I don’t have much to say besides, “Coffeeeee…” I spent Friday covering the Bouldering World Cup qualifiers. Even though it was just the first round, the action was plenty hot as the field was narrowed down from almost 90 competitors and over 20 countries represented, to 40 climbers and I don’t know how many countries for the semi-finals. Here are some of the top images from qualifiers. Images from the semi’s and finals are coming soon, I promise. Right after some more coffeeeeee…

Hit the jump for the rest of the photos!

                          

So, I’m about to head out for the second full day of running around shooting, downloading, editing, crying, cursing and cheering; all the while trying to capture, and also enjoy, the insane amounts of super sweet action going on here at the Teva Mountain Games in Vail, CO. Yesterday, things kicked off the the whitewater kayak event, the Steep Creek Championship. Top competitors were were running a section of Class 5 rapids about a half hour outside of Vail. I was getting down and dirty, wild and wet trying to capture as much of the action as I could. I spent a little bit of time shooting with longer lenses, but I really wanted to get up close and make it feel like you’re there. I scrambled around to a few different locations, getting as close as I could to the water and some of the major obstacle, also trying to keep in check with the fact that if I fell in I would at best end up in the hospital.

Hit the jump for the rest of the images!

It got brutal. Homeboy at the top of the page almost took me out. I was really putting the Pentax weather-sealing that they are always bragging about to the test. And it held up. Unfortunately, I wish my cameras had more Lens-hood-getting-knocked-off-and-floating-down-the-rapids-Sealing and Knocking-your-camera-into-rocks-repeatedly-and-eventually-cracking-the-screen-Sealing. Actually, it only cracked the screen protector, so I guess it had the protection already. But it was a close one. I can for sure say, that after a full day of clamoring around on the edge of Class 5 rapids, with multiple K-7’s and K20d’s swinging around my neck, because I sure needed my hands to scramble, and them getting repeatedly slammed into rocks and splashed with frothy whitewater… These things are beastly tough. A+, Pentax. A+.

Here’s what I got, besides a really sunburned neck and mild hypothermia.

                          

This week, I decided to setup a last minute yoga shoot.  I found out that I would be able to use a local yoga studios space to photograph in, and started trying to round up a person to shoot with.  The lovely Lucinda, who you see above, jumped on board and we were ready to roll.  The only problem was, the day of the shoot it turns out that no one can come let us into the yoga studio.  Now I’ve got a pretty model, an assistant, my camera bag, and a truck filled with studio lighting equipment… and no access to electricity.  Times like this always make my head go straight to “Crap.  I’m gonna get nothing.”  And I think that’s every serious photographer’s secret fear: coming home empty handed.  Luckily my thoughts never linger there for long, and quickly shift into figuring out how to make it work, as was taught to me by an important mentor.

You see, long before Larry the Cable Guy was saying “Git ‘er done”, I was working in an auto body shop owned by a guy named Toddio.  Now, I could make a whole new blog just about all the valuable things I learned from Toddio.  But the thing that has proved the most valuable to me that was the answer to just about every problem I came to him with: “Make it work!”  Hey, this new fender doesn’t fit.  “Make it work.”  Hey, I can’t get this panel straight.  “Make it work.”    Hey, this bumper is stuck on.  “Make it work.”  Every time I had a problem that I thought I couldn’t get around, the answer always came back the same.  “Make it work.”

It’s not that that Toddio wanted me to make up my own methods, or that he was uninterested in showing me the right way to do things.  Sometimes there is no ‘right way’ to do things, or perhaps the ‘right way’ just happens to be exactly what isn’t working right now.  It’s just that as the saying goes, “The best laid schemes of mice and men oft go awry”.    Translation: Being well prepared and knowing the ‘right way’ is great and worthy goal, but things just tend not to work out the way they were supposed to.  Toddio wasn’t interested in what the problem was, he was only interested in the solution.  He was in the business of fixing cars, not just identifying problems.

As a professional photographer, I’ve found that mindset to be invaluable.  It does no good to just point out what the problem is or what won’t work, unless you plan on figuring out what you can do about it.  When working on cars, it’s not an option for it to just not work.  Someone needs their car back.  Likewise, when someone is depending on you to get the shot, or even when there’s just a shot that you really want to capture, things frequently go wrong.  And you can either come home with nothing, or you can make it work.  Being a professional is about learning how to make it work.

So what did I do the other day?  I figured that if I wanted to save the shoot from the scrapyard, I would just have to find an outdoor location nearby and just stick with using reflectors and the light that God made.  So that’s what we did.  There wasn’t much in the area of beautiful scenery around, and we didn’t really have time to go to a new location entirely, so thin focus, tight crops and long focal lengths were the order of the day.  The shot at the top is just a yellow tree that looked really beautiful against the blue sky.  Grabbing my my Pentax K-7 and a 50-135mm f/2.8, I knew that if I laid on the ground in the middle of the road, I could get her up in there with the tree blurred out, and it would look pretty nice.  The rest of the shots were taken a few hundred feet from there in a very little patch of pretty greenery.  I was predominantly using my Pentax 200mm f/2.8 and  300mm f/4 prime lenses, which I both love.  But I loved them a little extra that day, since the long focal lengths and nice bokeh really helped with only letting what I wanted into the photos and keeping everything else out, and yielded the rest of these photos.

In whatever you do, don’t focus on what won’t work, what can’t be done or what the problems are.  If there’s something you want to get done, find a way to make it work.

                          

Saturday night was the final round for The Spot Gym’s Battle In The Bubble bouldering competition, and it was off the hook! The Spot pulled out all the stops for this awesome night of elite climbing. It seemed that there was a bit of a hitch at the beginning when one of the first problems was missing it’s starting hold. But everyone was pretty stoked to find out that it was being delivered via skydiving. A few minutes later the hold was on the ground, bolted to the wall, the competition was underway and the action didn’t stop until 4 hours later when the final problems went down to the two winners. Hit the jump for a breakdown and my favorite images of the event.

Julian Bautista on the 4th Men's problem.

The last of finals problems was done in a format I’ve never seen before, where the final two men’s and women’s climbers traded turns, going head to head; and whoever sends first, wins.  I was hoping that no one would just step right up and crush it, because this is the Battle In The Bubble, and I wanted to see something epic happen. Well, the event delivered! Daniel Woods and Julian Bautista were the final two men’s competitors and Alex Puccio and Angie Payne were the final women’s competitors. The route setters did a fantastic job making sure that no one got the send without working it first. The action was amazing!  Fall after fall, they traded turns trying to get the first ascent of the men’s or women’s final problem. Julian and Angie both put in awesome efforts and did some top form climbing, but then Daniel and Alex finally each stepped up to their respective problems and just absolutely crushed them, as if they hadn’t really been trying until then. It was truly a great comp, and I’m stoked to see The Spot pushing the limits of what a climbing comp can be!

Daniel Woods taking first place.

Carlo Traversi sending hard early in the game.

Kevin Jorgenson keeping the crowd amped with free t-shirts.

Alex Puccio sticking it on the 4th women's problem.

Angie Payne on the 5th women's problem.

Carlo Traversi getting ready to throw down.

Daniel Woods about to crush.

Carlo Traversi going for it on the 4th men's problem.

The action packed final round! Daniel and Alex on the wall.

                          

Last night was the first night of the much anticipated Battle In The Bubble bouldering competition, which is being put on by The Spot climbing gym in Boulder. Competitors were trying to qualify for the main action, which will be tonight. There are a lot of things that are unique about this comp. For starters the finals tonight are going to be held outdoors at the Boulder Reservoir. But also, the top 20 men and 20 women from last night will go into the semi-finals this morning, and have a chance to advance to the Pro Invitational Finals tonight. The finals won’t be like most comps, where all the final climbers climb each route and are then judged according to their cumulative performance. Instead, some climbers will be eliminated after each one of the 4 finals routes. It will be a much faster and more brutal form of elimination. If you suck it up on one problem, there is no making it up on the next one. Your just gone. Sounds like it will be extra nerve racking. I can’t wait to see what kind of mutant climbing action my lens can capture tonight! For now, hit the jump for a few more of my favorites from last night.

                          

A few weeks ago, my friend Bryon gave my a last minute invite to go with him to Moab; in the form of “I’m going either way. Do you want to come with me?”. Let’s see… Ride to Moab. Activities already planned. Cool dude to go with. I’m in! Moab is a little bit like Chuckie Cheese’s for adventurous adults, but without the bad pizza. This one small area is packed with world class rock climbing, mountain biking, off-roading, hiking, and not to mention it’s being flanked on each side by the gorgeous Arches National Pack and the gorge-eous Canyonlands National Park. It was a good time. There was some rain and some wind, but mostly just a whole bunch of sand and sunshine! I could launch into some verbose story right about now, but I’ll spare you all and shut up. Hit the jump for the rest of the photos!

                          

This last weekend was one of the first truly beautiful weekends of Spring here in Boulder. So on Saturday Genny and I decided to just grab our bikes, our water bottles, some camera gear, two coupons for a free bagel at Einstein Bros and hit the bike paths with no agenda (besides getting free bagels). After our tasty treat, we decided to head over to the Boulder Skate Park because Genny thought it would be fun to shoot a little skateboard action. Little did we know that it was the Spring Fling skate comp, and the place was jammin’ with good skaters. Score!

There were a lot of good skaters tearing it up and bringing lots of action to the table. Even cooler than that, there was a big age spectrum and people were riding in all sorts of styles; from old school to new school, and everything in between. It was a great way to enjoy the beautiful weather while honing action photographer skills and pursuing the ‘decisive moment’; that singular moment where everything within the frame comes together for a split second to shift from good to great, only to instantly shift back to good.

As for the Homage. The time spent watching through the lens as others ripped up concrete, rail and skin brought me back to the 6 years of my youth when I was a red-mohawked, ripped jeans, scrawny skate-rat punk with pipe dreams of moving to Cali and getting sponsored. And as I shot frame after frame, working on my future as a photographer, I couldn’t help but feeling that I was also paying tribute to my past as a skater. Even though I ultimately stopped skating due to trashing just about every joint in my lower body, for a brief moment I was that kid again, ready to jump back on the deck and finish the job.

Scroll down for a click through slide show of the final images.