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.