ABBA Lives?

Last night I was shooting an event at the Nordic Museum in Stockholm, Sweden, and we got surprised by ABBA... Or did they break up two decades ago? Meet Waterloo -- Sweden's leading ABBA cover band!

WPPI 2009 - Viva Las Vegas!

I just got back from the big Wedding and Portrait Photographer International pow-wow in Las Vegas. It's where the people who sell stuff to photographers, the photographers themselves, and the wannabe photographers all get together and try to convince each other to buy stuff, compete for the title of most popular social butterfly, or--for newbies-- to create the illusion of actually being in the industry at all. It's quite entertaining! And of course, we all had a few drinks.

Here we are arriving at the airport. That's Jake.



He just turned, with the beginnings of a tear in his eye, and said "Viva, Las Vegas." What can you say to that?

And Mary, who just saw Wayne Newton stepping out of an Escalade limo with Kanye West. I know, it doesn't make sense when rappers fly commercial.



Jake got inspired by Canon.



Cory joined us after a later flight. I found these great frozens in the basement of the MGM grand. We carried them into Puck's.





Below, we have two guys in arty hats enjoying Blues Traveler a little too much at the Nikon BIG Event. If I had a plastic flash diffuser for every arty hat I saw at this convention, I'd be Gary Fong. Can somebody pass me an arty hat, PLEASE?



The view from our 1500 square foot suite at the MGM Grand.



Whole Foods fans, this is Vegas.



I own some dorky camera stuff, but this dude has some brass, standing in front of the Apple booth wearing Steve Jobs' official uniform with a view camera attached to his Canon 1Ds... I'm speechless.



Sometimes I wonder where my Pictage dues are going, then I see the wonderful boots on this go-go dancer at the Pictage party.











I loaned Cory my SB900 so she could set the world alight with the promise of liberty for huddled masses.

Thriller World Record!

On Saturday, the Alamo Drafthouse organized a Thrill the World dance at Austin's Long Center and set a new world record for the amount of people doing the infamous Michael Jackson Thriller dance in one place. Lucky for me, I was their official photographer and got to take lots of photos, including this really fun collage of six different images.



This is a GIANT picture. If you were there and somewhere in the front half, be sure to zoom in and find yourself!

Photographing the Photographer

It's not everyday that you get to shoot the wedding of one of Austin's best wedding photographers (no pressure!), who also happens to be one of your best friends and colleagues. Yesterday I had that honor, along with Jake Holt, at the wedding of our fabulous photo friend Mary Sledd to our pal Scott Owens, who you may know from his Do512 website and parties. The wedding took place at Mercury Hall. This is just a very small preview of the ceremony.

Street Photography Contest Winner

I'm a regular participant in the Canon and Nikon forums at dpreview.com. Last week, somebody got the bright idea that we actually "use our gear" instead of just talking about it. Of course I use my gear all the time AND talk about it, so I don't have the implied problem, but I figured I would go along with the premise anyway. The contest was very informal and international. My winning pic, below, was taken in the NYC subway in June. The second place photo appears to be from Prague.



There is a humorous "controversy" surrounding my totally sweet DPR victory, because the contest originated in the Nikon forum, and I admitted that one of my three entries was taken with a Canon 5D, while my other two were taken with a Nikon D3 (incidentally, the voting happened on this thread). I brazenly shoot both systems. I know, I'm crazy! I'm not saying which camera took the winning photo, but I will give the exposure info: 35mm, 1/30s, f/7.1, ISO 400 -- which goes to show one of the perils of street photography. My ISO was still set for topside, and this opportunity was so fleeting that I didn't have time to change it. But since I shoot RAW, I was able to push the image in Photoshop. An in-camera JPEG would not have cleaned up this good.

Anyways, when I saw this, I just imagined how funny it would be to see this guy actually riding his skateboard as part of his multi-modal transportation scheme. While such a site is probably common in Dubai, it makes an Austinite stop to think. The imagination is probably funnier than the reality.

Funny Prank, Ha Ha

I spent the three-day weekend shooting the Austin City Limits Music Festival. It was great. This morning, Pitchfork Media published my photos. Then, a couple hours later, I get an interesting email. Here it is in its entirety:

message: I'll have my lawyers contacting you soon.
I suggest you seek some legal advice in regards to your brand name.

D
--------------------------------------------------------------
First: David Hill
Last: na
email: info@foxcreative.net
phone: na

Of course, I'm well aware that there are various other guys in the world named David Hill who take pictures, such as this one in San Francisco, this one from the 19th Century, this one in Canada, this one from Atlanta, and this one in England.

However, the one relevant to this email is currently the most famous of us all, Dave Hill. Dave does really awesome work with bands, WWE superstars, the guy from Napoleon Dynamite, products, and all kinds of other stuff. His look is famous in photo circles for being the first to mix stylistic elements the way he does, and a google search will reveal countless forum posts written by people trying to get his look. I've always hoped that one day all the David Hills would get together, and I'd get to meet him.

So naturally, I found this email slightly disturbing. From a legal perspective, it's practically impossible to trademark a combination of a common name and a common word. "David Hill Photography" is about as likely to get trademark status as "John Smith Food." Wanting to know if this was for real, I immediately called David's agency, Fox Creative. They said they would look into it and call me back. Meanwhile, I found Dave's cell phone and left him a voice mail assuring him that I would be willing to disambiguate our brands on the friendliest of term. I waited a few hours and called Fox again. I spoke with Paige, who said she represents Dave, and she assured me that she had contacted Dave, and that Dave said the email I had received was a phony. That was a relief. UPDATE: Today, Sept. 30, Dave himself emailed me to reply,

"No one can copyright their own name! Especially one as common as ours! haha ... Keep rockin' in Austin!"

So, to the prankster: You're very funny. I hope this made your day!

Requiem for an Amusement Park

America loses two run-down New York City treasures this week--Yankee Stadium and Coney Island's Astroland. My most recent pics of Yankee Stadium are on film, so you're not going to see those today. But I did recently travel to Coney Island. Above is the 1918 Wonder Wheel. Yes, we rode it.



GTA IV players will recognize 100 percent of these locations...






Since this is a nostalgia blog entry, I'm using cheesy vignetting effect here, and generally screwing around with the colors. I would not do this to you unless you asked.



Fortunately, the Cyclone sits outside the main Astroland area, and it's supposed to survive. The Wonder Wheel park is also separate and is continuing for the time being. Coney Island is in the center of a really ugly battle to gentrify the area and force out all the low-rent entertainment for which it's been known since World War II. Coney Island's heydey was around 1917. I highly recommend the Wikipedia entry.



Jared Leto fans will get this reference.



Here we're simulating a faded 1970s print. Some people like that.



And this was just some random moment I got later in the subway.

Rustang GT street racer tanks it at my house

The driver was (somehow) fine. The car, no so much.