Baltic / Imperial Porter Tasting at Upright Brewing

I was asked to attend and photograph a Baltic / Imperial Porter tasting tonight at Upright Brewing.  I don’t mind mixing work with pleasure, especially when it comes to beer, but the physical aspects of holding a glass and shooting photos can be tricky at best.  Couple this with the fact that we are gathering in the basement of a building with uneven lighting and there can be some issues.

I used my 50mm 1.4 for most of the night because of the low light where the taps (and hence, most of the people) were gathered.  I also used my 10-22mm around the brewing equipment where there was much more light available.

It took about two hours to go through the photos tonight with selection and remastering.  Make sure to click on the photos to see the larger versions as the tones and brightness are compressed in the thumbnails to the right.  Great night, awesome beers, and now it’s late and I want to go to sleep.

The Ten Percent Rule

One obvious advantage of shooting digital is the almost unrestricted amount of shots I can get.  I usually carry about 20GB worth of cards around with me, so it’s shoot, shoot, shoot.  Because of this, I can take chances with different lenses, various angles, and unlimited compositions.

Over the years, I’ve noticed a familiar formula popping up when I take photos.  I call it the Ten Percent Rule.  It’s pretty simple.  Out of all of the images I shoot during a session–an event, a game, a hike–I’ll be happy with about 10 percent of the photos.  Out of the final 10 percent, I’ll be very happy with 10 percent of those.  So, if I shoot 900 photos during a game, I’ll send about 90 to my publishers, and end up with about 9 shots that I really love.  Or if I go for a hike, take 100 photos, I’ll end up posting about 10 for people to see with one exceptional shot.

Once I realized this pattern popping up in my photography, I put it to good use.  If a client wants 20 final photos of their business, I know that I should be shooting around 200 photos.  Now, this isn’t an exact science, but it’s a good benchmark.  If I finish that client’s shoot and realize that I’ve only taken 50 total shots, I’ve got a lot more work to do.

With a 90% “waste” rate, I’m lucky that I love post-production.  There’s a lot of sitting, sorting, tagging, and eliminating photos after the shoot.  After shooting a two hour game, I spend about three to four hours of post production going through and remastering the final photos.  This isn’t a very glamorous aspect of my job, but for some reason I enjoy it as much as taking the photos.

Maybe in a few years, I’ll get good enough to rename the rule to the Twenty Percent Rule.  For now, I’m happy with ten percent and very happy that no one else knows where to find the other ninety percent of the photos I take!

Goodbye Portland LumberJax!

Well, it’s been kind of slow around here lately, though I’ve been extremely busy.  I’m pretty sure that those two concepts are related.  Ideally, I’d like to post whether I’m busy or not, but blogging usually takes a back seat to my other projects.  Unfortunately, this is a post about bad news–at least for Portland lacrosse fans like me.  The demise of the Portland LumberJax has been confirmed.  Owner Angela Batinovich stated that she was looking into moving the Jax to a new venue, but that looks pretty unlikely at this point.

Despite growing number of fans, the economy has played a devastating role in declining sponsorship. Add this to the huge costs of operating at the Rose Garden, and you can see a bleak financial outlook for owners and investors. With a huge National Lacrosse League franchise fee and other startup costs, the big hit was supposed to come at the beginning of the 2006 season, when the LumberJax started here in Portland. After that, the following years of ticket sales and sponsorships are supposed to make up for that loss and then in later seasons, start actually seeing a profit. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out for the LumberJax.

There are thousands of fans who are just as disappointed as I am, wondering where they’re going to get their LAX fix. I spent the first two seasons in the stands with the rest of the crowd, but then decided to take a leap and talk with the team about becoming a photographer. Everything worked out, and I became a photographer for the NLL, shooting LumberJax home games at the Rose Garden. During that season, I managed to get several online publications and a couple of billboards around Portland. During the 2009 season, I became a freelance photographer for NLLInsider.com and Inside Lacrosse magazine, as well as other local and national sports outlets.

Without the LumberJax, I wouldn’t have been able to start my photography career at the professional level. It was a great opportunity for me, and I made the best use of the two seasons that I photographed at the Rose Garden. I wish I was going back to photograph next season, but maybe this was just a gateway sport for me.

Portland LumberJax v. San Jose Stealth Playoffs

Tonight’s game was the last game of the year for the Portland LumberJax. A loss to the San Jose Stealth in the playoffs ended their Season. It was great to have a playoff game at home, but it wasn’t the ending that the fans had hoped for.

I left at halftime tonight. Since this playoff game was scheduled in the last two weeks, I had to squeeze it into my busy weekend. Normally, on game nights, I’m up until about 3:00am, spending hours on post-production and getting the photos off to my publishers. Tomorrow, I have to be up at out of the house by 7:00am and being up until 3:00am tonight could be quite a hassle. So, I left early in hopes of finishing up by midnight.

Astoria Beer Adventure

Last weekend, I had an overnight assignment in Astoria.  And guess what?  Yep, it involved beer.  I was sent out to explore the beer scene in Astoria and meet the movers and shakers, and of course, drink a lot of great beer!

Even though I retired my Canon 50mm 1.4 lens to the studio, I can’t seem to live without it.  A couple of months ago, it was knocked off the players bench at the Rose Garden while shooting a Portland LumberJax training session.  Both auto-focus and the focus ring were broken, but the glass was intact.  So, while the photos turn out fine, I have to manually focus by pulling and pushing the end of the lens in and out!  It’s really not convenient, but I don’t have a replacement for it yet.  For still shots of objects, it’s not a problem.  But when people are involved, it’s hard to capture that spontaneous moment when it takes 7 seconds to pull or push and fumble with a broken lens!  Oh well, glad to have it, even with it’s flaws.

On Saturday, I met with the brewers of Fort George Brewing Company and Astoria Brewing Company–and then proceeded to drink a lot of beer.  From noon to 5:00pm, we drank an assortment of over twenty beers in samples, pints, and goblets.  I’m glad I had a notebook and a camera to document it all, because I will be relying heavily on those to piece together my article.  Usually, I’m not so excited to work on the weekends, but there was no downside to this weekend!

Portland LumberJax v. Calgary Roughnecks

While this game didn’t really mean much to either team in the bigger picture of the season, it was still pretty hard to see the Jax down 8-2 at halftime.  It’s still a great sport to watch and photograph no matter what the score, but a deficit like that at home takes a bit of the life out of the Rose Garden.

I had to toss an abnormally large amount of photos out tonight while going through post-processing.  They just weren’t usable.  The glass seems to get exponentially worse each game, more scratched, more scuffed, and more hazy.  Because of this, shooting at any angle along the glass can trash a photo easily.  That limit can’t stop you from crossing your fingers and shooting, but the percentage of usable shots drops dramatically.

This was the last game of the season, but the LumberJax made the playoffs, so they’ve added a home playoff game on May 1st.  It should be a great game against the Stealth, very physical and emotional–a great way to end the home season!

Portland LumberJax v. San Jose Stealth

Tonights game was more of the same from a photographer’s perspective:  Shoot warm ups, read through stat sheets, shoot game, go home and process.  It was an unusual 3pm Sunday game so getting everything done early and not working until 2:00 in the morning was refreshing.

The LumberJax lost tonight, and luckily, that was the worst thing that happened.  During warmups, a lacrosse ball nailed the wall right next to my head–and more importantly, right next to my camera.  I was less than two inches from losing $2500 worth of camera gear.  Luke Forget and Bruce Alexander stopped dead in their tracks and were amazed that I didn’t get smashed.

I could stay off of the floor during warm-ups, but getting close to the players and not having to shoot through the glass is too good to pass up.  I bet I wouldn’t feel the same way if my camera body and Canon 70-200mm F2.8L IS lens were destroyed.

Firkin Fest 2009

It’s not all coincidence that I’m able to mix beer and photography.  It takes careful planning: 1) Find an event, 2) See if someone needs photos for the event, 3) If you can budget in time to photograph and attend the event, even better!  It doesn’t always work out that way, but when it does, it’s great for both you and the client.

Well, the upside for me is pretty self-explanatory: free event.  The upside for the client is that the more I’m involved in the event, the better I can understand what it’s all about–and then translate that into photography.  The perspective of an attendee and photographer can tell two different stories.  It is the job of the photographer to not only capture the spirit of the festival through the eyes of the attendees, but also capture unique angles, subjects, and action that require much more than a casual eye.

For this year’s Firkin Fest, I took photos for the Oregon Brewer’s Guild.  The festival was split into two three hour sessions.  I attended the first session as a photographer and the second as a patron.  But, as a photographer, even when I’m not on duty, I usually carry around my equipment.  So, it’s usually safe to say that whatever label I’m under at any given moment (patron, attendee, employee, student, staff), you can always append /photographer to the end.  Today, the energy was very different at the second session and about half of the final photos ended up coming from the then, when I was supposed to be off the clock.

Portland Breweries

In the middle of 2008, I started a project to shoot all of the breweries in Portland.  Photography and beer, how could it get any better?  Well, despite some hot temperatures, slippery floors, and sticky mash, it was a great experience.

I got to meet all of the brewers in town, talk about their brewing styles, and compare brewing equipment.  While the process is the same, the breweries are vastly different, ranging from 3 barrel systems to 500 barrel systems.  There’s a also a big difference in the physical interaction with the beer: some are very automated, while many others still require the art of the mash paddle.

I don’t want to spoil too much here, as I have a plan for a book in the works that will fill in all of the details.  What I can say is that Portland has a great brewing community and fantastic beers.  From Lagers to Russian Imperial Stouts, fresh beer to barrel aged beer, every beer lover can find exceptional beer around every corner in Portland.

March PDX Snow

More snow in Portland today!  My photography appointment for the day canceled, so I spent some quality time with the dog–and the television.  I worked all weekend, so I deserved the day off.  From about 7:30am until 1:00pm, it snowed, rained, sleeted, and hailed.  It kept repeating those various precipitation, but in no particular order.

I guess I’m in the minority in Portland, but I love the snow and always welcome more.  Even Otto likes it.  Despite it’s lack of flavor, he loves to eat it.

And run in it.

And stare at it.