Dawn to Dusk by Bill Frakes

Watched the sun rise over the North Sea between Sweden and Norway this morning, and watched it set lazily over Nevada's Spring Mountains this evening.  I spent the weekend with our friends from Nikon Sweden and now I am in Las Vegas at the National Association of Broadcasters.

Tough to hide from Laura when she is on a mission... by Bill Frakes

We're in San Antonio this week covering the Women's Final Four for Sports Illustrated.

Today we're working on a multimedia project for SI for Kids and we needed to interview Maya Moore. The locker room was crowded and loud. Not ideal for sound gathering. We NEEDED a quiet place and the locker room full of loud journalists and hungry players wasn't ideal.

Randy Press, UConn's SID delivered, in an original fashion, on cue and with quiet grace.

Maya was perfect. We had three minutes. She used 2 minutes and 58 seconds giving us articulate, thoughtful quotes that will make the piece sing.

Backstage with the "Babies" by Laura Heald

The Backyard Babies are our favorite Swedish rock-n-roll band. We were lucky enough to spend a couple days with them at the beginning of their European tour in January. We watched them perform from the best seats in the house at their shows in Turku and Helsinki while we taped the music video to their new song Abandon. The venues were small so we had to make a lot happen in small spaces. We shot the whole video on the Nikon D3s using Manfrotto Supports, Chimera lighting solutions and Cinevate DSLR and linear tracking systems. Our goal was to show the intensity of a Backyard Babies' live show by using movement and tension.

This is a quick look at the production.

Legion Photo by Bill Frakes

Legion Photo is a collaborative photo agency of the top US military photographers of this generation.

Last week they asked me to do a picture of them in Arlington, VA were they were assembled at the DC Shootout. I was there giving the final presentation of the weekend, showing my multimedia work to the conference.

They're my friends.  I was honored by the request.

It was impromptu, but I was coming off a week of portrait shoots so we had the right gear along. A few minutes in a ballroom, and our friends have their first official group photograph.

Bikers Bikers Everywhere by Laura Heald

Bike Week in Daytona Beach is only one of the many famous events to come to the coast of Florida but may be the most flavorful among them. You never know who or what you might see. Something interesting is always around the corner. I set out at the beginning of the week to see what I could see. We found the weather unseasonably cold, keeping many inside. Plus an interesting assignment from Sports Illustrated sent me on a 20 state road trip. More on that next week.

For now, a few images from my lone day at Bike Week.

Langston Rogers by Bill Frakes

Thanks for your skill, kindness and professionalism Langston!  I'm gonna miss you mightily in the office.

The good news is now we can spend more time at the Ajax.

http://www.olemisssports.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=2600&ATCLID=204889314

John Ed Bradley wrote a book called The Best There Ever Was --which is terrific by the way--and when I saw the title I thought he was writing about Langston.

But John Ed is an LSU guy so sadly his brilliant book is about something entirely different, but the title could be on Langston's biography.

Usually I write about photography in this space, and in a way this post is too.

For a whole bunch of years Langston has been a great friend to those of us who've worked with him. His knowledge and easy going we will get it done style have helped me make images with an economy of motion.

Holt County by Laura Heald

Apple released Aperture 3 last week. I was lucky enough to work with the software for the last few months as well as create images for its release last summer. Apple asked me to represent the advanced slideshow capabilities of the new software. To do that I headed home to Nebraska.  My friends Katie and Kevin Morrow are teachers in O'Neil and invited me to come see them and document the Holt County Fair and surrounding areas. It was a full day of 4-H, rodeo, diners and driving the country side.

You can see Bill's profile on Apple's web site.

This is a review of the application

This is the slideshow I built in Aperture 3.