Sheba's Monthly Photo Contest are due Sunday.

Here's my submission for this months contest. The subject is History, which at first I thought was going to be quite easy but as time moved on into the past I realized its not as easy as you'd think. It's such a broad topic that it was difficult to try and nail down what captured it.

Of course there is the basic idea of history of stautes, old cars and I did shoot the Colorado History Museum the other night when I was out on the night shoot with Efrain from Illuminate Workshops. I wanted to try and capture "time" in my foto for history because I think history is more then the past, it also incorporates "time" as well as what happened.

So here it is.... This huge Oak tree was struck by lightning many years ago. It has remained dead and hollowed out even though life has continued to grow up around it. I shot it at night with a Vivitar 285hv flash on both sides(triggered by PocketWizard radio slaves) it's a 30 sec exposure to get the night sky to light up.



For some reason this seems all pixelated. (click on the foto to be taken to the gallery to see the original) Vote for my foto on Sheba's blog

You never know what's gonna happen on a Night out in Denver....

Last night I met up with Efrain, Armondo, Traylor and Dave for the July Night Photography Shoot. We met at the Denver Art Museum and headed out to see what we could take long exposures of.



We took some fotos of the local architecture then head up by the capital and ran into the 16th Annual Kaiser Permanente Moonlight Classic. It's a 15 mile bike ride through the streets of Denver. So off we all went in our own directions photographing the 100's if not 1000's of people on there bikes.



There was a costume contest that brought out the very creative bike community. Many dressed up from rockers, bunnies, Sesame Street character, bikes covered in colorful light, and even a piano on two bikes.



After several hours of shooting bikes and being stopped for some portraits.



Efrain and I headed back to the capital. We stopped to shoot a local church



and then the State Capital building.



We met up with Efrains brother Ed whom showed off his mono-forked Carbondale mountain bike. Thanks Ed for riding down the stairs about 50 times till we got it right.



Finally calling it a night a little after 2am we headed back to the car to stop for one last shot of the Colorado History Museum.



Which brings us back to the "you'll never know whats gonna happen". Efrain and I set up on the grass next to Broadway. Started the first shot with some nice success. 10 seconds into the second exposure there is a sound that brings joy to children's ears on a hot August day. "Shhhhht shhhhhht". Sprinklers ripping through the air can send two grown men into a frantic run with camera and tripods in hand. I haven't run like that since high school when the cops busted our party for under aged drinkers.



Thankfully none of the equipment was ruined or actually even wet. Just a few drops here or there. Definitely a fun night out with some good people. I'll be turning this into a regular monthly thing.

2008 Starz Promax Winners

Yesterday on my lunch break I got to dazzle some of my fellow co-workers with all my camera gear. I brought out the gear to take a couple fotos of the winners of the 2008 Promax Awards. These Starz Entertainment employees won 2 Golds "Starz - Happy Mother’s Day", "Starz - Into the Scene" and a Bronze "Starz - World Television Premiere Weekend with Jeff Goldblum".



Congratulations to Chris O'Brien, Erik Larsen, Jess Ramsey, Linda Holloway, Marilyn Cook, Vendria Sirlona and all the other people who worked on these projects. I'd like to thank you six for giving me the opportunity to take some group fotos.

Maybe the fotos will get used in the company newsletter? This is my favorite it looks like their all thinking of next years winners!

Yao Health Professionals Product Shoot

Boy am I tired today. I was up till almost 2am this morning (then up at 6:30 for regular day job) finishing some fotos. Athena's acupuncturist and chinese herbalist developed a new product called Altigen. They needed some product shots for their web and brochures.

I offered my foto skills to help them out, since they've done so much for Athena and I. Once I get the okay I'll post the fotos and get the webs opinion.

Hopefully this will lead to more product photography.

----UPDATE----- Daniel gave me permission to post the fotos and links. Check them out at Altigen and Yao Clinic.

4th of July with boats, friends and fireworks.. oh my!

Hope everyone had a wonderful 4th. Mine was busy at first but ended up being quite relaxing. It started off early with going down to help my dad move into his new house. My brother B, his wife Anna and I cranked out all the heavy stuff and got it all done so we could get back to Denver.

They went to the 1st Friday showing downtown, but dropped me off at Cherry Creek Reservoir, so I could go out on my new friends boat. Athena and I met Sean and Tomi several weeks ago riding dirt bikes. They invited us out with them and their friend Arron on the boat to relax and watch fireworks.

I brought the camera to get firework shots even though I was paranoid all day about dropping it into the lake. As night fell we didn't know if we'd get to see any fireworks but as time went on we got a 360 degree viewing. They were going off all around us. It was pretty cool.

I've got a lot of work ahead of me to get the firework shots looking good but here's a look at the beautiful sunset we witnessed.



Thanks Sean and Tomi for inviting us out.

"A Night Out" with some friends....

---UPDATE uploaded video finally -----(Thanks Efrain for helping me shoot this.)



Back on June 28th, I went out and met a group of fun amazing people. It was the 2nd monthly free Illuminate Workshops Night Photo shoot. We all met around 8:30pm at the Denver Skatepark. When I showed up it looked like Britany Spears was there. Photographers, tripods, and flashes going off, made the scene look and feel like the paparazzi were there. Bikers, Skaters and Rollerblades all stopped me and asked "what's going on?". After a brief explanation and a plug for the Efrain's school, it was back to shooting a meeting new people. Sheba from Picture Your World Photography was there and we had a good couple laughs.



We then traveled around did some overpass shots. I was frightened I was going to drop my camera gear off the bridge and prematurely end my photography career. Instead I dropped the battery cover to my shutter remote. After some panic and self discussion like "at least it wasn't the camera" I continued shooting until the big guy stopped by to check on me. Efrain (Illuminate Workshops head honcho)is a great man, and watched my camera and gear while I ran off the bridge, through the trees, past the sleeping bum and almost into traffic to find the battery cover. All the while Efrain standing overhead shining his flashlight around for me.



Once my wild rampage was over and everyone was gathered we continued on into the night shooting Denver's Millennium Bridge and all along the waterfront. It's absolutely amazing how time flies by when your making 30 sec to a 1 minute exposures.



If hanging out with a bunch of fun loving photographers in the dark, or you want some new friends, maybe a night out on the town, well sign up for Illuminate Workshops newsletter to get the 411 on the next event. I'll be posting the shots I took as soon as I get them out of photoshop.

RTD Lightrail

Took the Lightrail to work yesterday morning. The train I was on, the G-line, was packed full at 7:20am. Standing there trying to get my mp3 player to work I started thinking about stock photography of all those business people going to work. This is a gold mine if you could get everyone to sign the model release form.

Out on the platforms you could shoot a million different pics of trains, cars, pedestrian. The guy waiting with his bike. The girl on the phone. etc... Then inside the man in the Oakley sunglasses reading the Business Journal, me with my Ipod on, everyone crammed in the aisle. No kidding its a gold mine.

But still the question remains how to get all them to sign? Would a General Premise Release work? It works in video production would it work for stock photography?

Now off topic of photography. Why is it so expensive to ride Lightrail? It cost me $1.75 one way, That could buy almost 1/2 a gallon of gas! Is it really cost effective to take public transportation? I'm going to have to check the mileage to and from work and do some number crunching on this.

The End of freeman-media... The begining of freemanfotos.com

OK, so I haven't been doing this for a while why the change? After taking the Illuminate Workshops Profit and Passion class, I started thinking about my company and branding and all that stuff the corporate world is all about.

One thing I've heard in the past that's stuck with me is "fail faster!". I take it as if it's not working get rid of it or make it better but don't hold onto it. So since I didn't want to be doing the "media" thing and want my business to focus on the photography... I dropped freeman-media and started freemanfotos.com.

Now I know every ones asking whats with the (f)? Why not spell it correctly? Well in this big blue world with the billions of people on it and only one web there's a limited number of names. Do you know how many Jonathan Freemans there are out there? Apparently most of them are into photography too. Which reminds me of that other saying "You unique.... Just like everyone else".

So www.freemanfotos.com it was and I've set up my gallery at www.freeman-fotos.com.

I'm working on getting all the old links to forward onto the new sites but the rest is up to the people in charge of the web servers.

So please be patient and if you need drop me and email.