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.

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Professional Adventure Photography Is Lame.

Not all the time, of course. Most of the time its awesome. Most I love my job. And most of the time, I’m not working on Halloween night.

I’m in NYC right now, and have been for the past few days. What started out as a casual trip to shoot some stand-up paddling yoga with Adi Carter of the YogaSlackers, has turned into a whirlwind, tour de force, marathon of shooting, editing, networking, trade-showing, and since I’m in the city, walking. Everywhere.

*Cue the wavy television scene cut that indicates the forthcoming account of events past.*

I get in at 12:30am on Thursday morning, and am at the Rockaways on the shore by 2am. After a bit of sleeping, I’m on the beach by 8am, shooting some surfers who are tearing it up at the 90th street break. After 4 hours of shooting, it’s back to the bungalow to download, sort and edit. Then a walk to the pizza place for two delicious slices of BBQ pizza, a quick hang out at Boarders, the local surf shop, and then back out to the beach for some sunset shooting. Back to the bungalow. Download, sort and edit. I try to get to bed early, but it doesn’t work.

Six-thirty rolls around, and it’s time to set out on dawn patrol. Back to 90th street while the water is calm (in a relative sense), to try and shoot some stand up paddle yoga. Things go well. The sunrise is gorgeous. And I’m back in the bungalow, downloading, sorting and editing. But this time I’m in a hurry, because I still have to reassemble all my traveling bags, leave two in Adi’s car, and take the other one with me to the train I hope I won’t miss, to get to the PDN PhotoPlus Expo.

Things always take longer than I think they will, and I barely make the train, which gets delayed later on anyways. I make it to the Javitz Center with 2 minutes to spare before the workshop I’m supposed to be at. Just enough time to buy a coffee and a overpriced, mediocre cheeseburger. The very awesome Corey Rich teaches an equally very awesome workshop, and for the first two hours since the wheels touched down at JFK, I can relax. By now, it’s already 3, I’ve already been at it for 8 hours, and the day isn’t yet half over.

Spend a few hours on the show floor, until it closes. Head out to grab some dinner, and get some work done on my laptop for a few hours. Then hit up the PDN Bash networking party, where I run into Corey again, and we have some great conversation about the future of photography. Hang out for a while longer, and manage to find my way into the VIP room where the drinks are free. Never a good thing. By the time I leave, it’s 11, and after wandering my way to the Times Square subway station, delays on the 7 train, and figuring out the alternative route, it’s 1am by the time I get to the new place I’m staying, where Adi dropped off my stuff (what a nice gal!). Getting to bed early was already long gone, and it doesn’t get any better when the creative bug bites and I stay up till 3:30 video editing.

Up at 6 the next day to finish the video, and I’m off into the city to have breakfast with Michael Clark, one of the top dogs in adventure photography. Then the rest of the day is spent at the expo, listening to talks, taking a workshop, checking out new products, talking to editors and marketing people, and getting my regular hustle on. This day ends at 7 which feels early. I finally manage to actually get to bed early.

That brings me to today, which thanks to the PhotoPlus Expo ending a day earlier than I thought it did, is void. I sleep in late. Then have a delicious brunch at the Cafe Henri, a small french restaurant in Queens, with Kathryn, (with whom I’m staying), and Dan, who is also staying with her and is another of the ubiquitous YogaSlackers. The day is slow and mellow, and involves far more playing on a playground than a usual day. And finally, I can spend some time sorting through and organizing my stuff, my inbox and my brain.

And that leaves me where I am right now. Which is behind my laptop writing a blog post, inspired by how lame I am for intentionally doing nothing on Halloween. I guess what I meant when I said that professional adventure photography is lame, is that professional anything is lame from time to time. But photography has more of a habit being lame at all the wrong times. Like right now. I think Halloween is great, and I’m in NYC, which is a very fun place to be on Halloween. I would love to hang out all night, have a blast, eat a bunch of unhealthy food, have a few beers, stay up late and feel like crap in the morning. But I have two full-day shoots the next two days, and I want to be on the ball for them. It just so happened that Halloween night is the one evening amidst all this chaos that I have to get my head back on straight, and the one evening before the morning that I have to once again be awake, alert, organized and creative. Which leaves me with a choice. Do what I want to do, and go have fun all night. Or do what I know I should do, and get my crap together.

I guess this isn’t just limited to professional photography, or professional anything-ing. Being successful at just about anything often comes down to whether you’ll do what you want to be doing, or what you know you should be doing.

This was just supposed to be about posting pictures, video and a few words. And now after all this negative reflection, I don’t even want to attach my images to this post. It would feel too much like, “Hey guys, I just got all emo and cranky, and complained about being tired, lame and lonely for 10 paragraphs. Here’s some cool pictures!” And I wouldn’t want the negativity of this preceding paragraphs to rub off on the images. But then I realized that I have to attach them to this post. Because they are what redeems the whole situation. They are what makes this whole game worth it. And they are why I’m here doing any of this to begin with.

Maybe the last few days have been uber-hectic, chaotic, long and tiring. Maybe it’s Halloween, and I’m not doing anything. But then I look through the images from the last few days, and I realize that I saw all those things. With my own eyes. Through the lens of my camera. And that in those moments, I was at work. On the beach.

And when I think of it this way, the last few days don’t seem that bad at all. Enjoy the images!

                          

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.

                          

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.

                          

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!

                          

Err, I mean Winner. And, I mean Are. There are two of you, and you’re not wieners. You’re winners. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.

Two weeks ago, I started a contest to win a copy of my 2009 Teva Mountain Games photo book. After realizing that I had no plan for how this contest was to end, other than that someone would win, I decided that the activity seems to have ended, and it is now over. I jotted down everyone’s answers and compared them to my own picks, and come to the troubling conclusion that there was a tie. No one had guessed all three, but two people had guessed two out of three. And what’s more, they picked the same two; meaning that I couldn’t just go for the person that picked the better two. I saw that I only had two choices. I either pick based on which of their third picks I like best (and what could be less fair in a contest that is clearly already governed by “what I say goes”?) or, they both win. I went with the latter. Find out my favorite three, why I like them and who the winners are after the jump!

So let’s get to it. At the top was Numero Uno. That is hands down my favorite image of the whole event. I love this image for many reasons, like it’s significance, it’s energy, it’s complexity, my own attachment and how much it illustrates the craziness of the Bouldering World Cup event. In this image you see Jonas Bauman on the left, climbing for Germany, and Alex Johnson on the right, climbing for USA. At an event like this you have many of the top climbers in the world, all in the same place, and frequently climbing at the same time. Many times the problem isn’t whether or not something awesome is happening, but which of the many awesome things currently happening you want to point your camera at. The stage was set. Alex was on the final Women’s problem and Jonas was on the final Men’s problem. Both were serious contenders for first place. I had my eye to the camera tracking Alex as she went up the route, when I see out of the corner of my eye that Jonas approaching the top of his route. Pause. People had been flying off the Men’s final problem for the last hour. The last move was huge, and left the climber with feet swinging and two bad hand holds, trying to arrest a lot of momentum. It was Jonas’s first burn and no one has stuck it on their first try yet. Play. I see a burst of movement from my left eye and swing my camera over to just barely catch Jonas sticking the move to take first place. He then proceeds to freak out and celebrate while hanging on to the finishing hold, which can be seen in the original post’s slideshow. I’ll be totally honest and say that this is one of those magical shots that is 95% luck and you can’t take much credit for. I like that I somehow managed to get both of them in the frame. But what I love the most is the juxtaposition of their bodies and the way that Jonas’s wildly swinging legs don’t obscure any part of Alex, which can mostly be attributed to good fortune. Alex went on to take second place.

And that bring us to my second favorite.  This was on the lat day of the event and all of the climbing events were finished, so I figured I would check out some of these “other sports” people kept talking about.  I headed east from Vail Village towards Vail pass, which would be the steepest part of the time-trial distance bike race.  Positioning myself near the top of the climb, I expected that I would be in a good place to document some suffering.  What I wasn’t expecting was to see aHoney Stinger rider doing Gladitorial battle with the hill.  This guy was a beast.  Here he comes, ripping up the hill like it’s a bump in the road, with a ferocity the would fit right in with Brad Pitt and the rest of the Myrmidons charging the beaches of Troy.  I saw him coming and started unloading.  I didn’t need to look at the back of the camera to know that something awesome just happened.  Everything about this scene was completely epic.  In fact, the Lightroom preset that I used to start the editing process on this photo was even styled after the movie ’300′.  Naturally, it was a perfect fit.  My only hesitation was that I hoped he wasn’t faking the look because he saw the guy with the camera.  But a few weeks later I ran into another Honey Stinger rider at the Summer Outdoor Retailer and I asked him if he could identify the cycling combatant.  He took one look at the photo and said, “Oh yeah.  That’s Ben Portilla.  He always looks pissed when he’s riding.”  Done.  Anything that was holding this photo from my top 3 just got cut down by the confirmation of Ben Portilla’s “always pissed” riding face.

Lastly.  And by ‘lastly’, I mean ‘in third place’.  This was an image that resulted from wandering around at the end of the day with a camera still around my neck.    I saw this girl with a friend, standing and talking on the flanks of of a evening concert audience.  They were laughing and having a good time.  Something about the jacket, the background colors, and the fact that she just had an incredibly natural and great looking smile immediately grabbed my attention, and I had to grab a few frames.  It wasn’t until I downloaded and started editing that I realized how much I liked this image.  I don’t think I could have done any better if I had complete creative control over location, wardrobe and model choice, and was directing the scene.  Sometimes images just come to you as a complete package and all you have to do is be there and see it.

What is common in all three photos is the element of luck or serendipity.  I think as a photographer, you can do everything right on you part; have the right gear, know how to use it, be in the right place, and be ready.  But the thing that takes an image from top 50 to top 3 always comes as a gift from your subject. And speaking of gifts, the winner are…

Katie L and Dave M!  Congratulations, you are the (hopefully) proud new owners of a 2009 Teva Mountain Games image book.  Thanks to everyone who guessed, and get ready for more action packed images from the 2010 Games in June!

                          

Last weekend I headed down to Ouray for the annual Ouray Ice Festival.  As promised, here is a slide show of some images I took during my trip.  This weekend I’m goingto be snowmobiling in Steamboat Springs with a bunch of high schoolers.  Then next week I’m off to SLC for the Outdoor Retailer Winter Market.  Enjoy!

                          

No, that’s not the new motto around here, but it’s pretty funny. And funny, is how I like to start the New Year. For all the beautiful places I’ve been this year and great athletes I’ve photographed, this might be my favorite image of the year. I took it at a bar in Keystone, and something about the colors, simplicity, balance, warmth and crispness of it, not to mention the fact that it’s hilarious, really captures me. 2010 has started off with a bang, and a lot has just changed. There’s a pile of good times on the horizon, so keep reading for a breakdown of what’s new, what’s old and a slide show of some of my favorite 2009 images that don’t already appear somewhere on the webpage.  Enjoy!

New Year. December 31st marked the end of my first year in business as a full-time adventure photographer, and I have to say that I’m pretty happy with the way it went. In 2009 I spent a month living in Joshua Tree National Park in California with an old friend and a new friend, climbed and shot in the dry deserts and lush mountains of Utah, failed miserably at climbing the Grand Teton, spent 4 weeks gallivanting around the northeast collecting an array of images, went back to J-Tree for another week, logged well over 100 hours of road trip time, took over 30,000 images, almost died 3 times and much more. Not a bad start. If I can continue the trend of visiting and photographing beautiful places, while lowering the occurrence of near death experiences, it’ll be a pretty good beginning to 2010. There’s a lot on the horizon that I’m excited about. Some things are planned, some things are prospective, some things are just ideas and hopes, and the more I think about it all, the more it fills me with energy to make it all happen.  Stay tuned!

New Website. For the better half of 2009, getting a new website was high on my list of things to do. The old one was a template site and wasn’t customizable enough for me, was to limiting, and in my opinion, just wasn’t professional looking. I wanted something completely original, completely me. So why did it take so long? Because I was originally hung up on the idea of doing it myself. I got books on HTML and CSS, watched a bunch of tutorials, and tried to learn everything. Us creative types are usually also control freaks and want to exercise our creativity in every possible arena. But that mentality often just causes us to be distracted from whatever it is that we’re really trying to accomplish. Luckily, I got wise (it happens ever now and then) and realized that if I continued trying to do it myself it would not be done for many more months. Not only that, but it would also considerably pull me away from my real objective, which is growth as a photographer, not a web developer.

That’s when I decided to bring in some back up, er, someone to do almost all the work.  I went to my friend and climbing partner Jeremy Fields, who just so happens to also be a professional web developer.  He agreed to “help” me build the site.  Jeremy is absolutely fantastic to work with, and as I already knew, is a great guy.  He is very prompt, professional, creative, easygoing, and very talented.  Thanks to him, the website is ready now, not the six months from now/never that it would of been if I had continued trying it myself.  A few weeks ago, I was talking with a photographer friend of mine, and he said something that stuck with me: Do what you’re good at, and outsource the rest.  That’s not always an option, but when it is, it seems to be a good plan.  I think this a a great example of that in action.  Thanks Jeremy!

New Blog. I always felt that the old blog had a bit of an identity crisis.  What was it about?  Genny and I?  Climbing?  Photography?  Pictures and stories?  Nothing?  Who was it written for?  Friends and family?  Photographers?  Adventurers?  With this new blog I hope to remedy that problem.  The old blog will stay active and will go back to it’s original purpose of just being about the life and adventures of Ben and Genny.  This blog will take a more professional look at my life as an adventure photographer.  Meaningless diatribe and incessant rambling might will yield way to more purposed content.  I will still share lots of stories and photos from the field, but will also begin including some posts that will have a little more substance for photographers, while hopefully also still having some significance for the non photographic folks out there.  I will also delve into the occasional gear related post, talking about what I use and why, and about what ever kind of cool new toys that are out there for photographers and adventurers alike.  My mission is to have a well balanced mix of content that has something for everyone.

New Resolution. No, I’m not talking about higher megapixels. That hasn’t changed.  I mean the kind of resolution one tends to make around New Years.  I’m generally not the type for any kind of resolutions, but I’ve been trying to be more intentional about setting goals and pursuing growth as a photographer and as a person.  A few weeks ago, I came up with a rather odd goal and I’ve recently decided to make it my theme for 2010.  My new resolution is *drumroll*… to take more bad pictures.  This of course is not to be confused with wanting to take less good pictures.  Now most photographers would probably agree with me that taking bad photos isn’t really something you need to put effort into.  It generally just happens all on it’s own.  I’m not talking about those mistakes, things like missed focus, bad exposures or poor framing.

If there’s one skill that I certainly have, it’s the ability to know ahead of time what things I’ll be good at and only do those, while at the same time completely avoiding the things that I know I’ll be bad at.  It’s great for appearing like you are good at everything, but it’s terrible for growth as a person, since it causes me to skip the part of life that might have the opportunity for failure.  The kind of bad photos I’m looking for are the kind that come from experimentation, the kind that come from not knowing how something is going to turn out, or the kind that come from intentionally working with subject matter that you know is boring just to see if you can capture it an interesting way.  The bottom line is that sometimes a great image only comes on the tail end of a bunch of crap.  As Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed 10,000 times.  I have successfully found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”  So, now I will welcome failure as part of the path to becoming a better photographer and as part of pursuing perfection.

And that’s what’s going on in my world.  It seems like 2010 will be all about ‘more’.  More trips, more mistakes, more growth, and hopefully, more great images.  So, now you’re all caught up.  Moving on.  This weekend I’ll be hanging out, climbing and shooting in Ouray, CO for the annual Ice Festival.  Keep you eye out for some fun images upon my return. Peace!

Scroll down for the slide show.