Paddle, Pound and Pedal

On a cold and windy Saturday morning I awoke at 5 a.m. to go photograph the Denton Parks & Recreation, Paddle Pound and Pedal Challenge. Being awake that early allowed me to be one of the few to witness snow furies for a couple hours. The furies pretty much stopped right as the race started. Anyway, here are some of my favorite shots of the race.





























This racer lost a crank shaft and finished the race on foot.

The rules of the race are fairly simple. Teams of two race together in three stages, 3.5 mile canoe 2.5 mile run and 12 mile off road bike. The team that finishes in the least amount of time wins. There were many categories to enter and the top thee contestants from each category received an award.

Robbers Cave Oklahoma

I spent last weekend in Oklahoma climbing the sandstone and ironite cliffs of Robbers Cave. These beautiful cliffs are composed of hard sandstone with ironite plates covering random sections of rock. It's some of the strangest rock I have seen, but it's gorgeous. Despite this being mostly a top rope crag I love going here. There is excellent bouldering and a hand full of routes you can lead that take good gear. Despite getting rained on most of Saturday the sun came out on Sunday and provided us with a gorgeous day!

The climb pictured here is The Vein (5.9). This route is one of my favorite climbs of all-time.

Portfolio progress

Lately I have been working on my portfolio during whatever free time I can get, which honestly is not very much these days. It has been a slow process, but things are coming along. The updated portfolio will show case my photos at 800px wide, as opposed to 600px wide in my current portfolio. With a majority of the internet now on high speed connections there is no reason not to display my photos large format.



I will continue using SlideShowPro to display my photos, especially since there is a plugin for Light Room 2.0. For any photographer out there looking for a way to show off their photos SlideShowPro is an excellent and inexpensive way to display your work. Though there is a bit of a learning curve involved it is well worth the effort.





Featured in this post are a few of my favorites so far. Although the Sammy Sosa photo isn't brilliant, it was a historic moment as he hit his 600th career home run against the Chicago Cubs at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. The photo of Mike Hankins climbing The Baptism at Quartz Mountain in Oklahoma is one of my favorite photos. I just happened to be in the parking lot with a long lens when he began to solo the route.



While I really enjoy wedding and action sports photography my passion is for outdoor/adventure photography, specifically rock climbing. This has been the case ever sense I started rock climbing and opened up issues or Climbing Magazine and Rock & Ice. It may be a pipe dream, but it is something I will continue to shoot until the day I turn in my lenses, which will likely be never.



All of the images in this post are large format. Click the image in enlarge.

Ole Baldy

This past weekend I spent the day climbing at Baldy Point, known to climbers as Quartz Mountain. Despite being overcast and windy up high on the rock it was a beautiful day of climbing. Our team of thee had the entire mound of granite to ourselves for the entire day. It was the first time I had experienced that. It was just an amazing experience to be able to sit at a belay and hear the wind howling and feeling it whip you around as my partner came up behind me. This was by far one of the best days of climbing I have ever had.

As my trend of posting climbing photos continues I may end up starting an Adventure Blog of sorts and discontinue this one. As of now I still plan on shooting sports and weddings. I am currently in the process of updating my portfolio and plan on posting some of those photos here as I progress. I also plan on updating the website. So be looking for a change there.

My long term goal is also to primarily focus on shooting climbing. This may even involve moving to Colorado, as has been my long time dream. It's hard to pursue such a narrowly focused form of photography in a predominantly flat state. Although opportunities do exist, they are just fewer, especially when another Texas photographer has the niche on climbing photography and an in with editors at major climbing rags.

So, for now I will just continue doing what I am doing and press forward. I also recently discovered a new website with a focus on extreme sports. Check out Wheels & Wax. Oh, and just a note on the panoramic shot. It would have worked out better, I found out latter, if I kept my lens in one place and rotated around that point rather than just shifting the camera across a plane. Next time I am out there I plan on getting another shot like this.