Last August a group of friends organized a 12-hour endurance bike race in St. Petersburg in the hopes of trying to create something like ATL’s now defunct Faster Mustache 24 hour race. They organized the event on a shoe-string budget with the hopes that a few cyclists would show up and have fun under the sweltering Florida sun. About 200 people came out with more than 80 cyclists racing making the event a huge success. I worked as a volunteer and decided I’d document the race with my Canon 5D MKII and new shoulder-mount rig. It had been a few years since I’d shot any video and it was with a big Panasonic DVPro rig back when I worked at MSNBC.com. Shooting with the 5D MK II is a joy compared to a big beta-cam type rig and I was able to easily dangle out car windows and move quickly from tripod to shoulder. It’s nice to know that video is back in my bag of tricks for telling stories. Even better is the Canon 5D MK III that should be on it’s way in the next week or so.

A huge debt of gratitude goes to Robert Browman for handling production duties and pulling my footage together into something worth watching. It’s always great collaborating with my old partner in crime.

The music track is by Galaxy 500. More info on this year’s event can be found on the 12 Hours of St Pete website.

That’s a 12-foot long alligator. I know it’s 12 feet because I was just inches away when Paul Bedard (pictured straddling the beast) measured it. Paul and partner Jimmy Riffle run a nuisance animal removal business near the Everglades in Miami and go by the name the “Gatorboys.” Alligators are their specialty but they also trap and remove pythons, rattle snakes and anything else with scales and teeth. What sets Paul and Jimmy apart is their unorthodox method of capturing gators. Instead of roping the reptiles from a safe distance they hop into the water and wrestle the gators into submission and then drag them out. This unorthodox style of capture caught the attention of the Animal Planet channel and a reality TV show was born. Animal Planet hired me to produce the publicity images for the second season of the Gatorboys reality show. This involved wading into the water with Paul and Jimmy which if I hadn’t been busy shooting and actually thought about what I was doing I may have stayed dry. Looking at these images 3 months later I can’t believe I was that close to live reptiles. My “job” can be pretty amazing sometimes.

How close was I? These behind-the-scenes shots by Robert Browman show I was probably a little too close. At one point while working with a rattle snake the producer of the show kept telling me to back off and then finally told Paul to put the snake away because the production insurance wouldn’t cover me if I was bitten. I wonder if my business insurance covers venomous snake bites?

Here’s a short clip from the show – these guys are cut from different cloth.

The campaign centers around a character named Lucky who ends up being anything but. The concept was to place Lucky into different bad situations like him being alone and drunk at a bar or not using protection during a one-night-stand. We were able to do this by using a plush doll and lots of fishing line and velcro. I did as much of the image creation in-camera so the images would have a more realistic look. I also did most of the prop design and purchasing which included sourcing $200 worth of fake marijuana plants and a blow-up doll. Who says all the fun is in the photography?

I worked with two awesome creative directors on this campaign – Richard Hughes and Tim Kostka. Both helped with the ideas and of course put together the final products. Special thanks to Jenn Greacen for bringing me aboard at Redfrog to shoot the phase one of the campaign. Photograph of me in action by Richie Hughes.

In Sept I photographed Marcedes Lewis of the Jacksonville Jaguars for ESPN the magazine. Super nice guy and a trooper. I had him doing a rowing and punching workout for nearly an hour and he didn’t complain once. I would have passed out after the first 5 min’s if I were in his shoes.

Forbes magazine also came calling last month for a fun full-page portrait of developer Charlie Brasington in Sarasota. Charlie is a force to be reckoned with and Forbes used an image I made of Charlie taking a business call during the shoot.

I’ve never been big on strobist-style gadgets. I’m sure the light that comes out of your salad-bowl beauty dish and SB-24 is fantastic, but why not just purchase the tool for the job and get on with your life. That’s not to say I’m not a fan of fellow Gator David Hobby’s web site. Hobby does a fantastic job of explaining complicated lighting techniques, and he has inspired a huge number of people to take their photography to the next level. But I’ll keep my Profotos, thank you very much.

Recently though, Scott Krebs showed me something he was working on called a Saber Strip. It’s a long black tube that could double as a potato cannon with a small speed light strobe stuck in one end. It looked cool, but the first thing I asked him was if I could shove a Profoto head into it. Unfortunately, the answer was no. I played with the two prototype strips he had and asked to borrow them some time.

Some months later, I began work on a personal project and I was dreaming up a way to light portrait subjects on location in a small outdoor tent. Space was a consideration, and I also wanted a unique look. I remembered talking to Scott about the Saber Strips, so I gave him a call. He agreed to lend me three strips with strobes to experiment with. I shot with them for an afternoon and was sold. They’re so much more than a speed light modifier. I now use them as edge lights, fill lights and even occasionally as mains. They’re light, and you can put them up in a sustained wind with no worry about them falling over. They pack easily, and the tubes are made out of a material that is damn near indestructible.

Did I mention they’re compact and work great in tight situations? A few months ago Time magazine hired me to photograph Youtube sensation Vegan Black Metal Chef for their “culture” section. I packed my truck with all of my Profoto gear and made sure to bring the Saber Strips along to see what I could do with them. I had several ideas involving VBMC posing in his kitchen. Little did I know that his kitchen was the size of a small closet. My assistant set up a small octobox and two medium softboxes with my Profoto heads, and then we proceeded to see if we could shove it all into a 6’ x 6’ kitchen. When we were done, there was nowhere for me to stand and my main light was hovering dangerously close to a hot oven. There just wasn’t enough room. We set up three Saber Sticks with Canon speedlights and moved the Profoto gear out. We were able to boom a Saber Stick over the subject against the ceiling and use two Sabers at 45 degrees of the subject. Everything fit with plenty of room to move, and the light looked fantastic.

Here’s what it looked like

I’ve become a fan of Saber Strips and I now pack them for every shoot. Scott has invested a lot of time and money into making a killer product. If you’re interested please take a look at the Saber Strip website and at $135-a-pop they’re really a bargain for what they can do.

Here’s what Time ran:

And one that I liked:

Black Metal Vegan Chef doing his Youtube thing:

And me acting like an idiot in the BMVC’s newest addition to his home:

Here’s two outtakes I like:

And this is how you light a subject when you don’t have a 20 foot Matthews stand handy:

Here’s 2 images I shot of my daughter Emily and her best friend Elizabeth. Both were shot under continuous light.