No, this is entry has nothing to do with the USSR or the Cold War, but we do like red. Libby and I have some bold red curtains that span an entire wall in our living room, so we decided to have a bit of fun with some gear that was laying about being inventoried. These past few weeks have seen little shooting as I have been laboriously preparing my entries into the various photo contests that all have deadlines either fast approaching or shortly past. I had some lighting gear laid out over our living room floor space so during a break in the editing action Libby (and in a few frames TT) graciously posed for me during an impromptu portrait session. The trick here was that I used my point and shoot Canon G9 camera instead of my big cameras. I’ve had the G9 for a little over 2 years now and still love it. I used to use it for multimedia projects back when I was in Colorado, but now that my main camera bodies both shoot full HD video, Libby has taken over the G9.

One of the major benefits of the G9 is its hotshoe and its ability to sync with a flash up to 1/1000th of a second +. Knowing this, I slapped a pocket wizard on the G9 (which looks silly as the wizard is just about the same size as the camera itself) and went to town. The background light is a little harsh, partially because the G9 doesn’t render colors as well as a proper camera and partially because the light was just thrown up there, but you get the drift. After several different expressions we wrapped up and I went back to editing.

I put together 9 that I particularly liked into a little grid, which is below, along with a slideshow of the individual images.

As we wrap up the first week of the new year I can’t help but reflect on the past year. There were struggles as there are with anything, but I’d be remised if I didn’t sit back and be thankful for the good things. I met a lot of great people, made a few new clients, learned a ton of great things and made a few decent images along the way.

2009 was the year I was blown away by being accepted as a participant into the Eddie Adams Workshop.
2009 was the year my first major documentary project premiere to a sold out audience of over 250 people.
2009 was the year that documentary project won not 1, but 4 awards including a Gold Remi.
2009 was the year that I owned the copyright for 100% of the images I captured.
2009 was the year that I got to visit 5/7 continents in the span of 4 months.
2009 was a good year.

Here’s to 2010 being even better. The short piece above showcases about 65 of my personal favorites from 2009. They may not have run, they may not have been the best pictures, but they are my special to me in one way or another, so sit back and enjoy.

I’ve been pretty busy lately and have much to catch up on the blog world. I still need to update my blog with my stuff from Africa, Brazil and my story completed at the Eddie Adams Workshop last month, but this post is devoted to a rather interesting trip I took last week to Qatar in the Middle East.

One of my local clients, a hip hop dance academy was chosen to assemble a team and represent the US at a rather large event in Doha, Qatar. I have been on several trips with various different teams and dancers over the years, but this one was different. Usually the trips are only with a few different dancers and usually the dancers that go are from the pro team. The pro team consists of a group of professional hip-hop dancers and break dancers that range in age from their late teens to their mid-20’s. The group I accompanied to Qatar was mostly younger kids some of whom had never previously been out of the country, so their curiosity hopefully translates in some of the images.

Our whole trip, albeit a week, seemed to last only a few days. The itinerary was mapped out weeks in advance and a lot of time was spent in waiting to rehearse in a hotel ballroom, riding in a bus to and from venues, at the hotel buffet and on 17-hour plane rides. Towards the end of the journey my photo wanderlust took hold and I started to feel like I was being robbed of really experiencing Qatar, however during one of the event’s the Amir (head honcho) of Qatar met us and graciously paid for our entire group to tour the desert. After the crew’s final performance we traveled a ways into the desert to the Saudi/Qatar border and went crazy on the sand dunes. The light was magnificent, the sand, the sky, the warm water of the Persian Sea. It was lovely. I wish I had more time to spend out there, but for the time we were there, it was paradise.

On the tired ride home I asked one of our new Qatari friends when the last time it rained was, he replied with, “It has not rained in seven years.”

Wow! After another 17 hours in the air, I arrived home to a rainy Houston. Go figure.

I was a little skeptical about spending a week in the Middle East with a bunch of kiddies, but I had a great time and it will be something I won’t soon forget. This trip marked my 4th continent visited in as many months…now if only someone would hire me to shoot in Australia or Antarctica!

PS. Everyone in Qatar was amazing and amazingly hospitable. I like to travel rather inconspicuously and alone when I shoot abroad, however it was quite the opposite during this trip. We were in a large group of about 18 or 19, mostly kids and parents and all of them were wearing “TEAM USA” apparel. Not once did I feel awkward or out of place in Qatar. The one exception to this is at the international airport in Doha. We went through several security checkpoints as usual, however there was one right before we boarded the plane. Long story, short, it was a complete disaster that lasted about 25 minutes in total and ended up with all my gear all over the place and all my gaffer’s tape and AA batteries thrown away!

This is my second installment of my 2 part favorites post highlighting my favorite images taken during Houston Chronicle assignments. This post contains images from roughly mid-May 2009 through this past weekend taken from my Houston Chronicle assignments only. I am a regular contributor to my hometown newspaper and get to shoot all kinds of things. A few months ago I posted my January through mid-May favorites and I thought now was a good time to post some selects since then. Some may have made it into the paper, some may have not. They were all taken from images sent to the paper from my various assignments.

*Note: I have consolidated my favorite images from all of 2009 into one nice and neat Photoshelter gallery. View the slideshow of 57 images below!

I have a few updates and news(ish) items to talk about. First off my recent article, “Riding A Wave” was published this earlier this week in the SportsShooter.com newsletter. The article which talks about my recent experience producing the documentary, The Messenger: 360 Days of Bolivar, was featured on the front page for a day as well.

I have also used some much needed downtime this week to update my main portfolio website TODDSPOTH.COM. I changed up the look and went with a new sleek white look, added a “recent work” section, added some video and multimedia projects under the new “multimedia” tab as well as added some new images here and there.

One of the multimedia pieces is a project that I worked on with two of my favorite local photographers and good friends, Robert Seale and Dave Einsel for Do1Thing.org. We volunteered our time back in February to tackle this multimedia project to help bring awareness to the homeless youth community. I was in charge of interviewing the youth and assembling the audio to accompany the images, however the person that was supposed to assemble the piece was busy so I decided to take on the task and throw something together. It wasn’t my greatest multimedia feat, but it works I think. It was for a great cause and we were happy to volunteer our time. The piece is also up on Do1Thing.org as well.

In other charity news, I am donating several prints to a charity art fundraiser this Saturday. Wolf Camera has graciously agreed to donate their printing services to the cause so thanks to them for that. My good friend Thomas and I are going to be doing an 8-song acoustic set at the event as well in an effort to raise even more money for the cause. Hopefully we raise money and don’t drive people away. Libby, although in LA for business has agreed to donate a few of her early (limited edition and amazing!) silk screen works.

If you are in the Houston-area and are interested in coming to this event please let me know!

As a regular freelancer for The Houston Chronicle, a major metro daily, nearly half a million people see my pictures from day to day, but the next day many of the photos are either used as kindling, pooped on by pets or recycled. Of course they are archived by me, but are rarely shown. It is now May, and 2009 has flown by thus far. I have covered everything from courtroom drama to baby rodeos. Below are 22 of my favorite images that I have taken on assignment from The Chron in 2009. These were taken from my SENT folder which means they were selected only from the images that I have sent to the paper. There are a handful of images I can think of that are not in this “favorites” post because they were not sent to the paper for whatever reason. I oftentimes shoot photos during an assignment that don’t bare any relevance to the story, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good. For the sake of time and effort I simply chose from my SENT folder. Some of the images made it into print or online, others did not.

*Note: I have consolidated my favorite images from all of 2009 into one nice and neat Photoshelter gallery. View the slideshow of 57 images below!

I’m dipping my toes into all kinds of stuff in this new year, 2009. I don’t really do engagements all too often, but this was for a friend and her fiance who happens to work for the greatest baseball team of all time, The Houston Astros, so for that, I will. It also didn’t hurt that we would have free reign of the Astros home field and my summer home, Minute Maid Park in Houston. I was really excited about the shoot the whole week. The weather forecast looked good and I was confident that I could really knock the session out of the park (you see what i did there!) but come Saturday morning, the weather was cold, windy and overcast.

All was not lost when we noticed that the roof of the stadium was open as we approached downtown. Having the roof closed would have made things even worse. When we got there I scouted locations and met the couple, Dave and Sondra in the press box. They weren’t really dressed for the cold so the shoot went a little quicker than planned, each shot was sporadic some using a small light I had brought, others using just natural light. I tried as much as I could to play on the composition of the stadium, shooting some obvious shots that revealed the locale and other, more abstract images that played more on the composition. We were able to get their names on the outfield screen for a few shots too. Some of my favorites were taken in the manual scoreboard. They spelled out the date of their wedding on the scoreboard for a few. We shot some images on the diamond and in the dugout as well.

After the couple had enough of the cold stadium, they changed and we did a few impromptu shots on a nearby street in the warehouse district.