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Let’s go way back on this post… Here’s a few from the Houston Rockets vs Boston Celtics. Back when Bonzie Wells was a Rocket! As a die-hard sports fan and an avid photographer it was great being able to combine my two obsessions. I do believe this was the first game I used my Canon EF 15 f/2.8 Fisheye lens so to pay homage to it I’ll post 3 shots from the night that were taken with that lens.

What’s shooting a Rockets game without getting up in the stands to shoot a few photos of the Red Rowdies. These guys are ALWAYS crazy and you can guarantee that they’ll be on their feet cheering the entire night! So here’s part of the group getting a little fired up during pregame warm ups. I dragged the shutter a bit in order to get some of that motion blur in order to get a sense of movement with these guys since “still” is not a word in their vocabulary for 48min strong! hehe.

Canon EOS-1D Mark IIN : Canon EF 15 f/2.8 Fisheye : 1/13th : f/6.3 : 800 ISO : 15mm : Aperture Priority : 0 Bias : Flash Fired

Rockets pregame huddle just after the player introductions… again with the fisheye. I had a couple of shots where I held the camera down low and shot up into the huddle but I kinda favor this shot a bit more. I think the reason I favor it more is because you can’t tell who the players are, if I posted the other one looking into the huddle you’d notice that half of the players are no longer with the Rockets! Ha!

Canon EOS-1D Mark IIN : Canon EF 15 f/2.8 Fisheye : 1/100th : f/6.3 : 1000 ISO : 15mm : Aperture Priority : 0 Bias : No Flash

I must say this next photo is probably my favorite shot of the night. A nice wide angle of Boston’s Paul Pierce shooting a jump shot over Houston’s Bonzie Wells. I’m not a fan of Bonzie getting shot on like that but I am a fan of the shot itself. If that makes any sense whatsoever. =]

Canon EOS-1D Mark IIN : Canon EF 15 f/2.8 Fisheye : 1/640th : f/2.8 : 800 ISO : 15mm : Manual Mode : 0 Bias : No Flash

It’s been a long time since I’ve sat on the baselines during a Rockets game and I am sure I will find myself there again soon once my sports shooting itch can’t be ignored any longer. As a fan, it’s a blast sitting so close to the action and hearing all of the smack talk and trash that’s being said only a feet away. It really does add to the game and it’s something I’ve never experienced sitting in regular seats much less watching it on TV.

Pug Mark Park is a wildlife preserve which is located in McKinney, Texas. The park consists of 3 large cats, a lioness named “Sugar” and two female Siberian Tigers named “Sheba” and “Pookie”. The preserve is family owned an operated and it is obvious how much this family loves these magnificent animals.

For probably the past 4 years or so they have opened their doors to groups of photographers from my other website TexasPhotoForum.com to come in and spend a couple of hours photographing these animals. Typically at a conventional zoo, by the time you get in the doors and make your way to the tiger habitat the animals are in “lazy mode” and are just laying around since they’ve been out for a few hours already. What’s nice at Pug Mark Park is that you get there at 7am and the family will let one cat out into the habitat one at a time giving us photographers an opportunity to photograph them while they’re all frisky and playful. This really makes a difference from a photographer’s standpoint since that definitely makes for better photographs!

Here is Pookie, their eldest female Siberian Tiger. In fact, I was given a whisker as a gift by the owners which they said was a very rare find and was also to be good luck. The whisker is about 8″ long and is very thick yet pliable. I have it set aside so that I can mount it along with a photo of Pookie for my office wall. I just need to decide which one to print!

Canon EOS-1D Mark IIN : Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8L : 1/800th : f/2.8 : 640 ISO : 200mm : Aperture Priority : -1/3 Bias : No Flash

Here is Rocky, the 600lb male Siberian Tiger that unfortunately had to be put to sleep earlier this year. I believe he was about 15-16 yrs old and his body was just too worn down in order to keep him in good health. Knowing the family that owns the preserve I can assure you that this was probably a very tough decision for them to make. R.I.P. Rocky.

Canon EOS-1D Mark IIN : Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8L : 1/400th : f/5 : 500 ISO : 200mm : Aperture Priority : -1/3 Bias : No Flash

It was amazing to see an animal of Rocky’s size and stature stand just a couple of feet away. It was also crazy to feel the ground tremor when he plopped his big ole body onto the ground to scratch his back much like a domestic house cat would do. Hehee… =]

I spent a few days in Oahu, HI before my Hawaiian cruise left the island so I asked a couple of locals where I could get out and shoot some surfing/body boarding action. Their first response was that it was the off season for  surfing so the waves on the North Shore were pretty lame. They did recommend Sandy’s Beach just east of Waikiki a bit. They had others reporting like 6-7ft faces so that was definitely the hot spot for the day.

So I hopped in my pimped out rented Festiva and made my way over to Sandy’s. The water was as blue as I had ever seen! I mean I am from Houston so our beach water looks more along the lines of chocolate milk than anything else. Yuk. The waves were huge (based on what I’m used to anyways) and were breaking VERY close to the shore so my 70-200 f2.8L was the perfect focal length.

Out of all of the photos I took I favored the shots I took of this skim boarder. What was really cool from a photographers stand point was that the white wash water acted as a reflector bouncing a ton of light into the boarder which made for great fill light. The majority of my other photos were pretty harsh since the sun was directly over head and had a lot of deep shadows on the surfers and body boarders.

Canon EOS-1D Mark III : Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8L : 1/2000th : f/3.2 : 100 ISO : 175mm : Manual Mode : 0 Bias : No Flash

I would so love to get back out to Hawaii in the winter months since that’s when the waves are their largest. I’ve shot all of the pro sports here in Houston and would love to spend some more time shooting some water sports ESPECIALLY if the water is as turquoise like what I saw at Sandy’s.

Going through some of my images from past trips and I thought I’d post a few here on the blog. Here’s a few photos from my Alaskan Cruise through the Inside Passage. This stop was Juneau, Alaska where I signed up for a Tree Top Zipline Excursion. Once the cruise ship was in port, our excursion group was taken by a small boat a couple of miles down the waterway to the Zipline Basecamp.

Canon EOS-1D Mark II N : Canon EF 17-40 f/4L : 1/320th : f/5 : 200 ISO : 17mm : Aperture Priority : 0 Bias : No Flash

The boat carried about 20 passengers and because of how the motor was situated in the hull, the boat could sit in one spot and completely spin 360 degrees. The boat captain asked us if we wanted to see and we all said “Hell Ya!” (literally! hehe). So the captain cranked the wheel to one side and dropped the throttle! He was right, the boat sat in one spot doing donuts in the middle of the bay. I’m sure onlookers from down the way were pretty amused by what we were doing.

Canon EOS-1D Mark II N : Canon EF 17-40 f/4L : 1/5th : f/16 : 50 ISO : 17mm : Aperture Priority : -1 1/3 Bias : No Flash

The Zipline Tour was very cool! I took my Canon 1Dmk2n and my 17-40 f4L along for the ride even though workers kept asking “Are you sure you want to take your camera? It’s awfully big and we can’t be responsible.” I took it regardless since I figured that if I didn’t that I would probably regret it later. I did have a plastic bag that I brought along since it had been raining earlier and I didn’t want to get caught in a down pour without having something to cover my camera and lens.

I didn’t get any photos me actually on the Zipline since I had one hand controlling the brake and the other controlling my steering. Two controls that I was not about to sacrifice in order to snap a photo or two on the way down if you know what I mean! =] Here’s a photo of one of the footbridges we had to cross in order to get to the next set of zipline platforms. There was a cool little creek running about 50 feet down below.

Canon EOS-1D Mark II N : Canon EF 17-40 f/4L : 1/1250th : f/4 : 1000 ISO : 17mm : Aperture Priority : -1 Bias : No Flash

I really enjoyed the ziplining tour (even though I did get rained on) and would definitely recommend it to anyone no matter where they are! If you go on vacation anywhere be sure to see if there are any similar excursions in the area. You will not be disappointed.

Well after having attended the Blue October show back in June in San Antonio I knew I just had to shoot them when they made their stop in Houston this past weekend.

The Houston show was much better in my opinion since the crowd was definitely bigger and more energetic which really helped fuel the band’s presence on stage. Verizon Wireless Amphitheater has a much larger stage so it was nice to have the band have more room to spread out and walk around as opposed to Sunset Station in San Antonio which was a bit confined.

Canon EOS-5D Mark II : Canon EF 24-70 f/2.8L : 1/200th : f/2.8 : 2500 ISO : 70mm : Manual Mode : 0 Bias : No Flash

For those that may have been living under a rock, Blue October is originally from Houston and judging by the crowd’s intensity you could definitely tell that many in attendance has been following them since the early 90’s. The funny part is that I knew about 12-14 various people that were in attendance that were either long time fans, ex co-workers or ex class mates with someone from the band.

I saw so many other people there that I recognized from high school but had no clue what their names were Ha!

Canon EOS-5D Mark II : Canon EF 24-70 f/2.8L : 1/160th : f/2.8 : 2500 ISO : 70mm : Manual Mode : 0 Bias : No Flash

The setlist was great which had most of my favorites included on it such as Say It, Should Be Loved, Dirt Room, The End and of course they wrapped it all up with Hate Me. Perfect! The crowd (myself included) sang every word!

Canon EOS-5D Mark II : Canon EF 24-70 f/2.8L : 1/250th : f/2.8 : 2500 ISO : 70mm : Manual Mode : 0 Bias : No Flash

This was a concert that I had been looking forward to for months and I had a blast! Too bad I didn’t make plans to make the roadie to Dallas to see them there as well the night after this show. Yea I’ve been known to do weirder things in order to attend concerts…