Conservation Summit alum Morgan Heim launches Eco Leads

Morgan Heim has launched Eco Leads, a story source for conservation photographers. It is a free monthly newsletter that gives photographers the scoop on fresh science news just begging to become a photography project. Morgan attended the Summit when a student at the University of Colorado and has been pursuing a freelance career after school in the area of environmental issues. You can visit the site at: The Nature Files

Keith Ladzinski’s images for ESPN Magazine up for Top Award.

The pictures of Keith Ladzinski, Adventure workshop instructor, are part of as ESPN The Magazine story that is a finalist for top award by the Society of Publication Designers.

Jim Balog speaks at Winter Games Sustainability Summit

Jim Balog was a speaker and exhibitor of his Extreme Ice Survey project at the Winter Games Sustainability Summit presented the day before the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics. He has been named the Eco-Ambassador by Samsung Electronics in support of his efforts to educate the global community how climate change in empacting the panet. These are just the latest of the acknowledgements of his project which he outlined to participants at the Summit three years ago. Today, those remote Nikon cameras have been recording the world’s shrinking glaciers and iceburgs more than a year, producing amazing pictures. National Geographic television and Nova have produced an hour special on the project.

Strobing the Final Four, The End of an Era?

Sports Illustrated strobed its first NCAA Final Four in 1964 in Kansas City ’s Municipal Auditorium and five years later, began using big strobes at Final Fours for all the years since. The early days required huge Ascor strobes with four 1000–watt/second condensers with a quick charger on each of the four light clusters. As the tournament moved to indoor football arenas in 1962, the requirments for the long throws took the magazine back to large clusters of lights in the four corners. But until last year, those arenas were configured to use half the dome for basketball. Last year at Detroit’s Ford Field, the entire football arena was used and the high lifts used on one side disappeared. And the costs went up. Way up. Particularly when SI provided two additional sets of lights to pool with others who wanted time on strobes.

In the meantime, there were other changes beginning with cameras such as the Nikon D3s which make high quality possible without the strobes. And at the same time, new arenas are lighting from the same places as the strobes were placed in the ceiling providing light coming from the same directions — and looking much like strobe lighting.

Thus this year at Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium, there will be no strobes. The 41-year run has ended.

SI’s director of photography, Steve Fine, said it would cost $25,000 just to get power to the locations and the total bill to strobe the arena would top $50,000. SI will strobe some early round and regional games where the lighting isn’t good or in some cases, where there are already strobes in place.

But it is not just the cost that is potentially ending an era — the camera technology has advanced to the place strobes aren’t needed for high quality pictures.

Workshop Faculty, What Are They Doing

David Griffin in Amsterdam judging World Press Photo — Mary Ann Golon in Washington is now consulting picture editor of the AARP magazine — Keith Ladzinski rock climbing in, of all places, the rain forests of Puerto Rico

And then, Bill Eppridge went to his neighborhood Costco store with these results.

“Yesterday I was at my local Costco buying a large bag of Purina dog chow for my loyal pet, Kramer, the Wonder Dog and was in the checkout line when a woman behind me asked if I had a dog. What did she think I had, an elephant? So since I’m retired and have little to do, on impulse I told her that no, I didn’t have a dog, I was starting the Purina Diet again. I added that I probably shouldn’t, because I ended up in the hospital last time, but that I’d lost 50 pounds before I awakened in an intensive care ward with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in both arms.

I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it works is to load your pants pockets with Purina nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry. The food is nutritionally complete so it works well and I was going to try it again. (I have to mention here that practically everyone in line was now enthralled with my story.) Horrified, she asked if I ended up in intensive care because the dog food poisoned me. I told her no, I stepped off a curb to sniff an Irish Setter’s ass and a car hit us both. I thought the guy behind her was going to have a heart attack he was laughing so hard.
.
Costco won’t let me shop there anymore.”

Workshop alum Nancy Crase featured in Arizona Highways

Nancy Crase, who attended both the Sports and Summit Workshops, is the author of a light-painted picture in the March issue of Arizona Highways. Dave Black’s hands-on teaching of the light painting technique led Nancy to photograph the flower in the picture with that technique and Jeff Kida, the photo editor of the magazine, told of Dave’s influence in making the picture. But there is one thing that Dave probably didn’t teach Nancy — to use a new “light source” for her light painting. You see, for a light, she used her iPhone.

2010 Superbowl

Two Sports Workshop alums both made the defining picture from the 2010 SuperBowl. Sports Illustrated’s Heinz Kluetmeier, who has instructed as many of the workshops over the years, and Getty Image’s Jed Jacobsohn, who attended the workshop in Los Angeles, were next to each other and made almost identical pictures. The Saint’s Tracy Porter who intercepted the fourth quarter Peyton Manning pass for the game-winning touchdown, is running into the end zone with two teammates celebrating — with Manning laying on the ground behind, watching the championship disappear. Jacobsohn’s picture made front pages across the country and Kluetmeier’s is featured on SI.com.

Kirk Williams Update

Kirk Williams has moved from his room at Denver’s Craig Hospital, the world’s leading facility dealing with the kind of spinal injury Kirk suffered last November. Moving into a Denver apartment with his brother Clayton, who is helping care for him, his progress has been so good as to impress even the doctors. As always, Kirk’s optimism and enthusiasm defines his rehabilitation — and the rest of his life.

But is a wheelchair life and he is learning to do over simple things, like zipping his jacket up. He and his brother have created an amazing (and well produced) web site, www.aspokenlife.com, a Kirk Williams Chronicle, in which Kirk writes each day about what happened and his progress. He tried out various wheelchairs before settling on one — and looked at how a monopod could be attached so he can continue his photography.

Kirk attended the Adventure Photograph Workshop in Jackson Hole in September. An active outdoor athlete, he was riding his bicycle on a mountain trail when as he moved over to allow an oncoming cyclist the right of way, his bicycle struck a rock and he was thrown to the ground. And in the accident, lay motionless with a serious spinal injury that instantly paralyzed him. Thus began a series of events that leaves Kirk saying how lucky he is. Lucky in that the oncoming cyclist was an orthopedic surgeon who instantly recognized the seriousness of the injury and who cared for him until the medical helicopter arrived. Lucky in that on his arrival at the Denver Health Hospital, two top surgeons were there and began the operation to fuze and replace severely-fractured cervical vertebra. From there it was to the Craig Hospital to begin the rehabilitation where doctors were unable to say how much movement he would ever have in his arms and hands, much less the rest of his body.

But the progress has been amazing and though he may never walk again, much of his movement has come back — enough to talk optimistically of the rest of his life and a changed normalcy. If you want to keep up to date on his progress — and to share in a big dose of optimism, visit his daily blog. www.aspokenlife.com

Workshop Alumni In Briefs

Kort Duce, who has attended the Summit, was photographing the 2011 Yamaha line of snowmobiles for Yamaha in central Wyoming.  The ad agency and Yamaha group along with Duce and another photographer had just finished the shoot when at 4 a.m., the main lodge that was the project headquarters, burned to the ground.  With all Kort’s equipment — and three days work.  With quickly borrowed cameras and computers, the entire group had to start from scratch and do the entire shoot over.  Kort, who was staying in one of the nearby cabins to the lodge, probably takes his equipment to bed with him now . .

–

John Moore, who continues as one of Getty’s top photographers, travels from his Denver home to wherever Getty needs the prime shooter.  Lately, he was sent to cover the close of the Congress in Washington as the health care bills moved through the senate.  After the first of the year, he returns to Afganistan as that war escalates.

–

Kevin Moloney is back in Boulder, Co. from a six-week session teaching photojournalism in Burma.  Moloney teaches photojournalism at the University of Colorado and is the New York Times contract photographer for the Mountain West states.

–

Chen Xiaomei has returned to the states from her homeland China to continue her quest for a master’s degree at Ohio University.  She attended the Summit while a student at the University of Colorado and after graduation there, went to the acclaimed Ohio University program in documentary photography.  When finishing her thesis and course work, she will intern at the Dallas Morning News this spring and then move to an internship at the Washington Post.

Workshop Faculty regular James Balog attends UN Climate Change Conference

James Balog, a regular teacher at the Summit Workshops over the years, continues to attract attention with his latest project using 30 Nikon cameras in all-weather housings to record some of the world’s shrinking glaciers.  His previous projects, which he has described at the evening sessions at the Summit have included an ode to the world’s endangered species followed by an innovative book of portraits of the nation’s greatest trees.

Balog, founder and director of the Extreme Ice Survey, represented NASA and the U.S. State Department at the Copenhagen United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 15. Over the course of the 12-day conference, he has presented a total of six times—five times on behalf of NASA and once on behalf of the World Wildlife Fund—about the Extreme Ice Survey’s ongoing photographic documentation of stunningly rapid glacial retreat and the implications of these findings.

“I am profoundly honored to participate in this landmark climate change conference and to share our work with government officials, policy-makers and concerned citizens from all over the world,” Balog says. “NASA’s sponsorship is a tremendous vote of confidence in EIS and its mission.”

En route to COP 15, at the invitation of the Alaska Conservation Foundation, Balog spoke at an event in New York City at the home of Susan and David Rockefeller, Jr. and made a live appearance on CNN Newsroom. Since arriving in Copenhagen, Balog has appeared in footage shown on CNN’s American Morning and was featured Tuesday on CNN.com’s Opinion Section.