ATV on a sand dune at sunset

I was helping out a friend on a commercial shot for this shot.

Wow, what a cool place. It feels like you are in a different country when you go here. Maybe somewhere like Egypt! or another middle eastern Country. Turns out the film a lot of movies out here, sahara, Transformers...ect.

I took tons of shots all day of everything but only ONE shot at sunset with the ATV in it and it worked out perfectly. About 5 minutes later and the sun disappeared behind the mountains.

Shot with a Canon 5D at 160 ISO, 800 Shutter speed, and 7.1 aperture with a 16mm lens.

A photo that is not sports related!?

I know, I know. Its weird. But I do take photos of things that do not have a stick and ball in them.
This was an impromptu photo taken on a tram in Las Vegas at about 4 am when we were coming back from various casinos. The man in the back was pretty darn drunk but was able to hold his match long enough to get his face to glow. The guy in the front is my friend Dan.
Believe it or not, I did not use a strobe on this. It was purely all available light from the tram (hence the random colors) I had one but it killed the natural color so I decided to not use it.

The shot was taken at 1/30 of a second, aperture 2.8! and Iso 500 on my trusty Canon 30D (a great camera to carry around Las Vegas so you dont get your expensive ones stolen)

The reflection on the window of the guy was placed there in photoshop.

Dodger HISTORY!

The other day I got to witness history at the Los Angeles coliseum a place they haven't played in 50 years. To top that off there was over 115,300 people there! It was insane. I left 5 hours early just to get into the place. Also, make sure you check out the left field fence. It was only 200 feet long. I felt like i could have hit it out.

In this shot, I went to the top of the stadium at the begining of the game and waited until the sky got a liittle darker but light enough so you can still see LA in the background.
Then pieced together 7 photos to make this panoramic shot.

Portraits at Saint Mary's

I got to go on a road trip recently to the San Francisco bay area and shoot a basketball game and some portraits of Australian basketball players from Saint Mary's college in Moraga CA.

To top it off, the night before I shot a basketball game at UCLA which ended at 10 then I went straight to san fran after that and didn't get to my hotel in (scary scary) Oakland until 4am in the morning only to wake up at 9 to get ready for the portrait, FUN!

Seriously, I had a great time. I had the help of a pro and some fun guys to shoot.
Thanks for looking!






This is the one they picked for Sports Illustrated.

A day shooting Nascar

So a few weeks ago I shot NASCAR for the first time. I was reallly bored the first two days but the last day I had some fun. Turns out there is much more to this than cars going in a circle. Thanks to Mark for being a pal and showing me the ropes.
Here are some pictures from the last day.
Any questions, please feel free to ask.

Sorry for the lack of posts....

I have been really busy lately with other "stuff" at work. One is our new blog at our site! I will be updated a bunch over there but also I will be posting here too.

Well go check out www.askthephotographer.com

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Dustin

Trying something different at a basketball game

During games I try to take a few minutes from shooting the normal stock action and focus on other things. For this shot I was at the USC versus Oklahoma basketball game. I found a hotspot on the court (from the lights) while I was walking around the arena on the top level. So I grabbed my 70-200 and 1.4 extender, exposed for the hotspot to make it silhouette the players and turn their shadows black. (iso 200, shutter speed 1000, and f5.6) The color in the floor is a color shift from the lights.
If you have any questions about the shot, please leave a comment or email me.
Thanks for looking.

The hotspot on the court

Here are some other general shots from the game, mostly OJ Mayo...actually all four.

I had to take a photo of OJ Mayo's Shoes for work.


OJ Mayo as he is announced in the starting line up. (They lowered the lights and put a spot on him, I layed on the ground underneath 3 giant bball players to get a shot.

My Christmas Card

If you want one, leave your address! When there printed, Ill send you one.

This year, I wanted to do something fun for our christmas card. We always plan out one but never follow through with it. So this year I had to go all out. What better way to start, than with a crude 1st grader like drawing that took about a minute.



Then we add the models. This was a tough one because peanuts (our dog) schedule is very full and doesnt like to be photographed and Rachel gets tired of me taking pictures of her almost immediatly after I start.
First we started with peanut. To get this amazing poise Rachel held a treat above her head to make her stand up. The viscious craze in her face was just a bonus.
Then we added us. I had to place my camera on a tripod and use remote to trigger the camera. To light it, I used 4 alien bees, a large soft box for the main light , 2 lights behind to give some highlights, and one on the background.



I then took the photos and cut them out using OnOne's Mask Pro 4.1 (free trial!) This is a really cool program and a huge time saver. I toned the images together and gave our legs shadows under to make the photos blend together better. I then took the head of Peanut and rotated it down. Then I put it on a green background (using a new layer and paint bucket) to clean up the rest of the pic.


Then I needed a background. So I found a sky picture on a free stock photo page on the internet.


We just moved to Los Angeles this year from washington so what better way to show that than the Hollywood sign. (courtesy of my friend and his point and shot camera) I obviously took the liberty of making the hill the sign sits on a little more rounded. I did this by taking the left side and pasting it at an angle on the side, then blended it.



I added some palm trees to make it more california like and birds cause we were flying and needed company.



Finally I changed peanuts paws in the rear to look more like she is not standing on something. I did this by copying her front paws and then transforming them and blending them in. Then I put a motion blur on us and peanut to make it look like we are going fast (and cause its fun)

Thats it! If you have any specific questions leave me a comment.
Thanks for looking! Special thanks to our dog for being a trooper.

Arizona State vs. UCLA Football

Touchdown! Shot laying on the ground with a 70-200 with a 1.4 teleconverter.

Sack! Shoot from directly behind (near goal post) with a 400mm 2.8 and 1.4x converter.





This shot was taken in the tunnel before the game. 16-35mm lens on Canon 1d MArk III

A hail mary under hand shot while he was signing autographs. I used a canon 1d mark III and a 16-35 2.8 at 16 and faced it straight up, the camera was almost touching the ground underneath him.

PAC-10 Basketball Portraits

One room, one chair (which i stole from the lobby..err ask politely for), and like 30 people with an average of 1-5 min each. Here are some of my favorites.

Remember to click on the photos for larger sizes and true color.

Bryce Taylor, Oregon

Taj Gibson, USC



O.J. Mayo, USC



Kevin Love, UCLA
Dustin Snipes, Awesomeville

The set up, it was different depending on the person but this is the room i was in. The white background over on the wall was used for headshots. The table had a white table cloth on it and we used it as a reflector. The shot with the dark background was done with a black table cloth held up by Ric.
Thanks for looking!