I spent some time this past Saturday afternoon with longtime client, Planet Funk Academy at the Wortham Center in Houston’s theater district as they prepared to take the stage. I have photographed the renowned dance academy for nearly 5 years now and although the faces have changed, the energy is still the same. During my tenure as their chief photographer, I have seen kids go from Planet Funk to dancing for top tier pop/hip hop acts and tours, open their own dance studio or even star in feature films.

The group performed their latest theatrical dance show on Saturday night and I was there for a few hours during their prep and tech time. I photographed a few of their run-throughs during tech rehearsal, however I am always most excited to simply wander around backstage while everyone is getting ready and make images there. I have made several images that I particularly love during backstage moments from shows past and even though I had a shorter amount of time on Saturday, I still make some images that I enjoy. They are in the gallery below. I converted several to a very high-contrast black and white which appear first followed by color versions.

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!

Its been almost a month since my last update. Wow. I’ve been busy, which is good I guess. Working on the movie, working on new internship things, and working on my brand new MacPro system. There’s nothing like 10Gb of RAM, 3 wide screen monitors and a fresh install of Final Cut Studio 2 to get the film-making juices flowing. Ive picked up a new Adobe Lightroom book as well as one on FCP 6.0. I’m determined to be proficient in both programs by the end of Summer. I’m also really proud of my girls in Distorted X. They are representing Houston, Texas on season 2 of America’s Best Dance Crew on MTV. The season premiere airs June 19th. Go to MTV.com and vote for them now!

For those of you who have not heard, I have relocated (temporarily) to lovely Colorado Springs, Colorado to work with The Gazette, the award-winning daily here. It is an amazing photo paper and a great experience for me. It does mean being away from people I love, places I love and the general comforts of home. I plan on returning right before Christmas in case any of you are wondering. In order to satisfy another wonder for those of you in Houston, you will be pleased to learn that my casual attire consists of Astros caps, various Astros shirts I have accumulated working for the team, Don’t Mess with Texas shirts and other Texas paraphernalia. It has not yet began to get cold here yet, however 75 degree days are the norm and the windows and doors are rarely closed as a cool breeze is always welcome. I have been working for almost a week now and have already taken some amazing assignments including covering the Rockies (MLB), a monarch butterfly release, and a breath-taking white water rafting trip (see below). While I keep busy for many hours of the day with work, it does get lonely being in a new place with no friends, so if you get bored call me up and make me feel like home.

On Tuesday the director of photography asked me if I consider myself a good swimmer, to which I responded positively, after all I was born on an island and well, I had a pool back home…right? The assignment was to capture photos for a story that will run in a section of the paper called Out There. Out There runs every Friday and features stories on anything you can do outside that doesn’t involve guns or a motor, and since this state is obsessed with everything outdoor, it lends itself to some great pieces. The story is about a commercial white water rafting company called AVA. What makes AVA special is that they are one of only a few companies out of the many in Colorado that guide the Gore Canyon. The Gore Canyon is a Class V stretch of white water rapids on the upper Colorado River in northern Colorado. It is extremely dangerous and reserved for experts and advanced white water riders. It is considered by many to be the third most treacherous run in the US. The Gore is only available to run during 1.5-2 months out of the year (Aug-Sept) since minor fluctuations in the water level and flow can render it a Class VI run, which is unnavigable and extremely deadly. No one is supposed to run Gore Canyon without prior experience, and I had no such experience.

Wednesday night I covered a Rockies game at Coors field in Denver (an hour + away from the Springs) and didn’t get home until midnight. I went to sleep at 1am and was awake by 3:45am to meet Dave, the reporter in the newsroom at 5am. I was hardly asleep as we watched the sunrise over the Rockies and drove through the valleys that were filled with herds of buffalo and other wildlife uncommon to me. On the way to the ski town of Breckenridge, which was where we would meet our guides, we drove through a small town called South Park, which you may recognize from a certain cartoon. When we arrived in Breckenridge we met our guides for the trip and the other adventurers who included; a father and son team from southern Illinois, who had been rafting all week, albeit not any class V rapids, a couple from Kansas with experience, two sisters from California who not only had experience, but knew the guides, and a father and his son and daughter from Minnesota. Everyone except me had been white water rafting previous to this journey. We all jumped into a 15-passenger Econoline and with the rafts in-tow we made our way 45 minutes north to our drop-in location of Kremling.

There were three rafts and one safety kayaker who job it was to help save us in the event that we needed saving. In our raft was Dave, the father and son team, myself, and our guide, Zach. Zach was other than the other guides, had longer hair, less teeth and many years more experience, 29. While he was not around the other guides dubbed him the “Jedi Master” of white water rafting. A few of the younger guides are actually members of the US Olympic rafting team and are some of the best in the industry.

The trip consisted of 10.5 miles of water and lasted approximately 4 hours. The first 2.5 miles were still water and required significant paddling. The bank at this point was only about 5-10 feet high and then flattened out allowing us to view various wildlife. The guides have seen bears and bald eagles, but we saw neither. As we approached the mouth of the canyon we pulled over and got geared up. Full wetsuits, life jackets and helmets accompanied our normal gear. After shoving off a second time, we began 1 of 2 swim tests that participants must pass to run the Gore. For the first test we had to enter the 45 degree water from the raft, swim face up under the raft and climb back into the raft, unattended, on the other side…no easy task. Everyone passed the first test. For the second test we parked the rafts downstream of a class III rapid near the mouth of the canyon, walked about 25 yards upstream and had to dive into the rapid, swim about 5 strokes into the river, float down avoiding rocks and swim back to shore. Only one person failed this test. He was instructed to walk around some of the more challenging rapids of the day. After the two swim tests I was pretty intimidated and that intimidation only grew as we entered the canyon. With 1500ft+ of menacing canyon rock surrounding us, Zach lets us know that the first rapid contains a vertical waterfall that is 10ft high. We navigate it without issue. In fact we navigate many of the rapids without incident. Our raft would go through a rapid first and when possible we would pull off to the side and watch the other two rafts go through. All of the rafts made it through the rapids fine until we reached an unnamed rapid near the end of our day. Our raft was trying to navigate through a narrow chute between two boulders when we high sided our raft on one of the boulders. We attempted to shift our weight in correction to no avail and flipped our raft. To put it in perspective, no one has ever flipped a raft in that particular spot, Zach has not flipped a raft in 8-9 years, as flipping on the Gore is not something that you want to happen. The other 4 members of the team bail out and as the raft comes down I notice that my left leg is stuck to the raft. At this point I am attached to the raft and since it is flipped over on its belly, I am under the water with it. I panicked for a few seconds and soon after caught my senses and used my weight to flip the raft over. At this point I am still attached to the raft somehow. The raft is right-side up and I am hanging over the right side of the raft with my left leg attached and fighting for air and a way out of danger. Soon after I see the dry bag of camera gear that I took with me fly over the side of the raft. Even though it was secured to the raft, having it out of the raft was not good, so with my dangling free, right leg I consciously managed to kick the gear back into the raft, simultaneously hitting Zach in the head as he re-boarded the raft. After a few more seconds the team led the raft with me attached over to the side and dragged me back into the raft. Apparently a cheap, non-locking carabiner was used to secure a water bottle to the raft and when we flipped the carabiner somehow hooked through my wetsuit near my left shin and attached me to the raft. Even though the carabiner did not break the skin, I was near death. Zach was shaken up and the rest of the guides marveled at the event, stating that they had never seen anything like that in their years of experience on the rivers. After taking a few moments to catch our breath and reflect, we were on our way.

We successfully navigated the rest of the rapids, including the final, most difficult rapid, Kirschbaum.

Although I had a spectacular event occur, this was probably one of the most exciting things I have ever done. I cannot wait to go back. The camaraderie, the excitement, and the feeling you get after going through each of the rapids (without flipping) is indescribable. I am proud of myself for being one of the only ones, if not THE only person to run the Gore without prior rafting experience. I look forward to many more extreme outdoor adventures with Dave and the rest of the Gazette crew.