By Ben on June 8, 2010
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! Continue reading “Bouldering World Cup Finals – 2010 Teva Mountain Games”
Posted in Action, Climbing, Competition, Photography | Tagged Anna Stohr, Bouldering World Cup, Climbing, Daniel Woods, Paul Robinson, Teva Mountain Games, Vail
By Ben on June 6, 2010
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! Continue reading “Teva Mountain Games – Bouldering World Cup Qualifiers”
Posted in Action, Climbing, Competition, Photography, Sports | Tagged Bouldering, Teva Mountain Games, World Cup
By Ben on June 4, 2010
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! Continue reading “Teva Mountain Games – Steep Creek Championship”
Posted in Uncategorized
By Ben on May 31, 2010
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. Continue reading “Make It Work”
Posted in Inspiration, Photography, Yoga | Tagged Pentax, Photography, Tips, Yoga
By Ben on May 17, 2010
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. Continue reading “Battle In The Bubble Finals”
Posted in Action, Climbing, Competition, Photography, Sports | Tagged Battle in the Bubble, Bouldering, Climbing, The Spot
By Ben on May 15, 2010
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. Continue reading “Battle in the Bubble – Day 1″
Posted in Action, Climbing, Photography | Tagged Bouldering, Climbing, Competition, Photography, The Spot
By Ben on May 11, 2010
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! Continue reading “An Adventure Photographer’s Dreamland”
Posted in Action, General, Landscape, Photography, Trip Reports | Tagged Adventure, arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park, Moab, Photography, Utah
By Ben on May 3, 2010
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! Continue reading “Homage”
Posted in Action, Photography, Sports | Tagged Photography, Skate park, Skateboarding, Sports
By Ben on April 29, 2010
This one goes out to all my homies holdin’ it down on the laser background!!
You’ll understand later, when you read Travis’s blog post and hit the jump! Continue reading “Inspiration From A Legend”
Posted in Education, Inspiration, Learning, Photography
By Ben on April 20, 2010
So, this past Saturday I made the mistake of heading down to Denver Pro Photo to pick up a roll of gaffers tape. I came home with a new set of studio lights (and a roll of tape). I couldn’t help it. They had the Elinchrom BX Ri 500/250 kit I’ve been wanting, and it was packaged with an Elinchrom 100cm Octabank softbox and a Kata rolling case for a steal of a price! Up until now I’ve been rolling the Strobist way, which is using smaller hot-shoe flashes, and ganging a bunch together if you need more power. The benefit of that is that they’re smaller and lighter, but they come at an expense of having less power. It’s usually enough to get the job done, but lately Ive been craving the extra power of true studio lights. I spent all day yesterday and this morning shooting in the Women’s Adventure Magazine office for their Summer issue. Having these lights certainly made things easier and sped things up, plus the quality of light from that Octabank is so delicious! After finishing up at Women’s Adventure, I got together with my friend Todd to play around for half an hour and see how the BX Ri 500/Octa combo can fare in a midday battle against the sun. It’s a blast having more flash power and it will open up a lot of possibilities, but now I just want more! Keep a look out for the Summer issue of WAM. In the mean time, go grab the Spring issue!
Once more photo inside! Continue reading “Let There Be Light!”
Posted in Climbing, Photography | Tagged Elinchrom BX Ri 500, Photography, Studio Lights
Recent Comments