Get the Job Done: Shooting Jodi's Race for Awareness

This weekend I will be the event photographer for Jodi's Race for Awareness, a 5k race/walk benefiting the Colorado Ovarian Cancer Alliance. This is the second year the race has been held, and I'm excited to be helping this young event chronicle its progression.

My colleague, Denver Post columnist Bill Johnson, wrote this great article about Jodi, thehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif woman for whom this race was named. Here is a video her as well:



It's always fun to be a part of something new when the people involved are passionate, hopeful and overflowing with ideas because I always leave these events inspired. I look forward to building a lasting relationship with event coordinators who embrace the need for professional photographic coverage. I have been asked to give special attention to capturing storytelling imagery, including before and after race pictures and detail shots. It will be a great challenge for me to try to put into photos what these survivors, their family members and friends are experiencing as they participate in this race. At the same time, I've got to be able to capture shots the organization can use to promote their goals of raising awareness about this deadly disease. If you are in Denver this weekend, stop by City Park and make a donation to keep Jodi's dream alive. Hope to see you there!

Get the Job Done: Shooting the first annual Rocky Mountain Early Childhood Conference

It's confirmed! I will be shooting the first ever Rocky Mountain Early Childhood conference
running April 15, 2011. I'm crazy excited about this opportunity because it's so much fun to be involved in the kinetic energy attached to a new event. But this is also the first time I put in a bid for a photography contract, competed against other photographers and won the gig!

The conference is a two-day session featuring events on Friday and Saturday including receptions, lunches, general workshop shots, and a vendor/exhibitor hall. Specifically the preschool program has requested that I be creative about my shots and use some depth of field and other photographic techniques so the imagery doesn't look like snapshots. I'm more than happy that I've been given a little more freedom to try some unconventional shots as well as shoot the necessary posed shots the organization needs as well. Thanks to my four years of consecutive coverage of the National Brotherhood of Skiers annual summits, the Council on Foundations event as well as numerous other smaller dinners and receptions I've shot locally, I have no doubt I can give the preschool program what they want in just about any lighting situation I might encounter.

It's purely coincidence, by the early childhood conference's featured speaker is Geoffrey Canada, CEO of Harlem Children’s Zone -- a guest speaker that I shot last year during the Council on Foundations annual conference held in Denver. Out of all the esteemed foundation guests (including Former Vice President Al Gore), I remember feeling more connected to Canada because a good education has been the basics for why I've been successful.

Here's one of my shots of Canada that appeared on the Council on Foundations 2010 event wrap-up page:



I'm beginning to think that I should try to specialize in special event coverage since they have been the bulk of my assignments recently. I would never give up shooting portraits because I love focusing on people, but maybe it's time I start to consider a specialization. I'll chew on this and get back with you later! :)