a day with Pierre Tostee

Yesterday was an awesome day I spent assisting Pierre Tostee at the Boost Mobile Pro surf competition. Pierre is an amazing surf photographer who has been traveling around the world for many years photographing surfing events. He is the official photographer for the ASP World Tour.
Man does Pierre know his stuff!! It was amazing to see his workflow in action. He shoots the photos and within an hour (sometimes even less) the images are transmitted to newspapers, magazines, and TV broadcasting stations all around the world. He usually does this all himself, no assistants!

Here are a few snapshots I took during the day-

funny story from today

About a week ago Bethany and I went furniture shopping and got a really good deal on a sofa/loveseat combination from Ashley Furniture. So today we borrowed my Grandpa's truck to go pick the sofas up and bring them to our place. We couldn't wait to get them set up because we have had nothing to sit on since we moved here!

The guy at the warehouse packed up the back of the truck and said exactly these words- "That ain't going nowhere! No need to tie them down!" Little did he know (and still doesn't know I guess) our loveseat would be tumbling down highway 78 at 60 mph! After he made that statement I still tied them down and went on my way.
Well about halfway home I was driving along and talking to my friend Nate on the phone when I said "OH CRAP I gotta go! Bye." At that moment I watched in the rearview mirror as the loveseat rolled out the back of the truck and either tumbled, slid, skid (or all the above) down the freeway at 60 mph! Somehow the loveseat slipped past my ropes, and I still have no idea how it did that! Anyway, luckily the car behind me was pretty far back so he was able to avoid it by braking and swerving. The couch in the middle of the freeway caused an instant traffic jam and of course the California drivers were all honking and getting ticked off instead of offering to help me out. I was able to drag the sofa by myself 2 lanes over to the left shoulder where the truck was stopped. Here's a couple pictures I took right after I put the sofa back in the truck-

Another funny thing is that Bethany was driving a little ways behind me in her car, talking to her dad on the phone. All the sudden she hit the traffic and was wondering what it was from. She then saw the couch and me and said to her dad "Umm, I gotta go Dad, I just passed my new couch laying in the middle of the freeway!". Haha!
So the reason we can laugh about this is because no one was harmed at all, and the couch has a couple little battlewounds but it's not that bad at all! Heres a picture of the worst part, and it's on the back of the couch so you can't even see it!
At least now we have a great story to tell our friends who come over and use the couch!!
Lessons learned: 1) Don't listen to the furniture guy who says you don't need to tie down the couches. 2) Tie down the couch better. 3) Ashley furniture is pretty dang tough!

published in Risen Magazine

I just picked up the Sept-Oct issue of Risen Magazine and checked out the final product of a photoshoot I did in June. The shoot was of the hip hop artist Common. They didn't use my favorite shot, but thats ok, it still looks really cool!
Risen also used another photo of mine in the "Miracles" spread (the yellow tree picture).

I scanned the mag so you can check it out! It's also sold in major bookstores like Borders, Barnes and Noble if you want to pick it up.