Warrior Challenge ESU

On April 7th, I was at Warrior Challenge MMA at ESU.  It was a great show put on by Mark. 
The fights were action packed, and everyone there had a great time.  Here's just a few from the evening.  I'm spending a lot of time researching this whole website change-up thing, and I need to get back to that.  I just wanted to get some of the photos out there. 

As a bonus to this post, I'm going to post the Warrior Challenge photos from VA on the 17th of March as well.  As always, you can see the full galleries on my website,

Warrior Challenge 4_7_12

Warrior Challenge 3_17_12

Coffee Break

I shot this for Red Eye Coffee Company in March. Wanted to post it, but had some recent event photos to put up. I've got Warrior Challenge 16 photos to put up from the 7th, but I'll put them up this weekend. Shooting a friend's band during the Jeff Wallack Memorial Show at Pellegrines Saturday night, so maybe I'll do a double feature. Please forgive my site, I'm slowly learning to redo it myself. My webmaster has retired from service, and I figure web design is something I can add to my bag of tricks. The subject of our Coffee Break is JJ from Red Eye, and the Red Eye brand. Pretty cool assignment. Was able to break out my "travel pack" (as I need to break away from education I won't get into the specifics. Just Canon 580EXII's on my portable Bogen stands). I also shot all primes this day as well. It was a great time, and interesting getting some looks from everyone in the mall.

For Complete Devastation MMA's fourth event, they brought in a special guest, former UFC lightweight champion, Sean, "the muscle shark" Sherk. They also conducted a seminar with him the day after the event. I want to touch on one thing first. If you didn't attend the event, shame on you. 3 hours of instruction, getting to meet him, and get some items signed...$40...that's a steal. It amazes me that sometimes these seminars attract people out of the wazoo, then other times, they don't attract near the people they should. Okay, the seminar was fantatic. I photographed it, but I picked up a lot of cool tricks. Sean is super laid back, and extremely nice. I was star struck, as he's been one of my favorite fighters for a long time. Watching him fight BJ Penn sucked for me, because BJ is another fighter whom I've liked for just about ever as well. (mainly because he's like this oompa loompa guy who will rip your head off and it gives me hope that I could've done something with myself). Here's some candid's and some "posed" photos from the day. I had a really good time, and it was awesome meeting him. Lighting for these types of events is always a challenge. You can use ambient light, but with those cycling fluorescent tube lights are a bitch. That's the honest truth. They are at "about" 60Hz (balast/length of service blah blah blah). So your shutter speeds are letting in some, but not all blah blah blah. What it comes down to is, blue/green/white in your photos, and there's really no way to correct it in a time efficient fashion (you could take the file, do several layers, and white balance each section of it individually but no...I am not doing that.). You can make it black and white...but I'm of the mind that photos shouldn't just be "black and white". I'm not going to get into my b/w philosophy (because undoubtedly some clown will read it, and quote it out of context trying to sound like they know more than they do). So another option is to introduce strobe to the session, and mix it with ambient. You can gel it...but...people are now buying "cool white" and "day light" and "butt light" bulbs and mixing them... If you put some window green on your flash, when the tubes are daylight...well...it's going to be educational. So I let enough in so you know what's going on, but use my strobes as the main lights. okay, enough tech talk. I'm not an educator, but I am a gear/tech head. I could talk shop all day, but more than likely you just want to see the pictures.

CDMMA 4

March 31st, the Complete Devastation promotion puts on its fourth show at the Cambria County War Memorial. If you're an event promoter, be careful using the War Memorial...They will put you on a crumby electrical panel, and not tell you until after you tear down your lights that they use the panel on the other end of the building. As usual, I'm very busy and this blog is what suffers. I photographed a heck of a show in VA on the 24th (photos from that will be up later this week in the blog, but you can see the complete gallery on my website already). I'm shooting another one of their shows this Saturday, so I'll do a combo. Enough of that, this is Complete Devastation's time :) There were 11 fights slated, but last minute (this is the nature of the smaller show fight business) 2 fights didn't happen. Tyler Updike was ready to fight, but his opponent didn't get his paperwork in, in time. Brad Mountain was ready to fight, had a signed contract and his opponent no showed! Here's some photos, and here's a link to the full gallery http://roblynn.smugmug.com/Mixed-Martial-Arts/Complete-Devastation-MMA4/22211133_8BJ4gw#!i=1773961212&k=sjWc2Tx Remember, fight photos make a great gift for the fighter! Also, don't forget, even though you see plenty of fight photos here, I'm a portrait and wedding photographer as well.