On June 22nd, there was another installment of the Warrior Challenge MMA fights. It was a packed house and a great night of fights. Here are some photographs from the night. As always, you can check out the full gallery HERE




  I did a few things different this time around, and experimented a little bit. I brought my standard fare, and then a few other lenses to give them a go. The results were pretty good, so I am pleased there.

I am meeting with a web design company sometime this coming week or next week, and speaking with someone else as well about my website. The construction phase will be over soon, and I will have a brand spanking new site online. Please stick with me until it is completed. It will showcase some of the other work that I do and bring that more to the front line.


  Even though I shoot weddings, and portraits and consider them just as important of a focus for me as the fights, a lot of people aren't aware that I photograph anything but fights. If you know of anyone who is looking for a photographer, have them get in touch with me. I definitely photograph more than just sports and events.

I'm not going to lie. One of the cool things about being a father is that I get to play with cool toys. While my son is only 14 months old, and they suggest that cars are for 3+, I can't wait. I let Erik play with cars under supervision. What boy doesn't play with toy cars? So I was playing around with some of his cars and snapping a few photos. When I realized how few Hondas he has, I had to get on eBay and buy a few. The 2 most popular car companies are only about 88 cents a piece. Well when you buy them on eBay because you cannot find them at K-Mart, Target, Wal Mart or any other store that may have matchbox/hotwheels...you pay a lot more. On 6 cars, I spent enough to get 25 cars. Looking back, it was probably a stupid idea. My 14 month old doesn't know the difference between a Honda civic and a Shelby GT500. So what possessed me, I'll never know. It sounded like a good idea. Well we were outside playing and I was setting up these cars and shooting some photos. Part of it was to challenge myself to get these shots QUICKLY! My son and wife were present the whole time. Do you think I'd be able to spend hours or even minutes setting up this scene with my kid playing? Nope. SO part of it was just challenging myself. In my work, I'm often not given much time. I need to be able to get a good/salable photograph quickly. I'm not longer one that wants to educate people, but I'll say this. Salable photography is a lot like the movie Moneyball. I'll leave it at that. Anyway, these are some neat photos of the cars, and one of my little dude playing.

WCC, Cycling lights.

Welcome back for our next installment of fight photos, and a little tech talk.

All three of the below photographs were shot with the same settings. While the only part that matters about the settings is the shutter speed, it was something like f/2.8, ISO 6400, 1/640. The shutter speed was faster than the lights cycling. What this means is you don't catch the full cycle. There's a lot of literature about this. A lot that goes into it. A lot of commercial buildings are 3 phase systems, where lights on one leg are peaking while the lights on the other leg (power) aren't peaking. This gives a little bit more "even" illumination of light/color shifting.

Now, one needs to understand, this stuff all happens auto-magically, without you being able to see it. However, when you're trying to photograph moving targets with fast shutter speeds...the above is what you get.

Three photos, all shot within 1.1 seconds of each other...three different looks.  But not one single camera setting changed.

It's a battle you have with event locations, because...though post processing for them is a mother!  a Bear!  There is a simple solution...lighting on trusses blasting thousands of watts of light EVENLY (I've been to some poorly aimed situations before) on the subject. 

The full gallery of fight photographs can be seen here, WCC June 8th, Greensburg PA

It was a great night of fights.  A training partner Lenny was there fighting, in what in my mind was fight of the night.  He came out early looking like a pro boxer, and got caught on the wrong end of a busted nose.  Lenny was game and the bloody battle continued into the 3rd round.  It was a tough one Lenny, but you'll get them next time.  Best wishes man!

I'm not sure when the WCC's next installment is, but I'm sure I'll be photographing their events in the future.

Chantilly VA Warrior Challenge

On May 19th I photographed the fights for the Warrior Challenge promotion in Chantilly VA.  Another great night of fights.  I'm still working on the photographs from a May 12th wedding I shot, I'll get some of those posted soon. I met a photographer there, but didn't catch his name. He came up and asked me who I shot for. I told him the promoter and free-lance media (I string for papers sometimes, or I contribute to others so on so forth). He said, oh cool, I'll stay out of your way. So when the guys were walking up to the cage, this guy is right in front of me. I'm thinking, "oh, out of my way, right?" No big deal, I don't like confrontation, so I just work around him. Besides, I like the idea of meeting new people. Well one of the workers there knew me from the previous show, and asked me if he was with me. I said, "nope, I just met the guy". They went over and gave the guy an earful, as I didn't see him doing what we was doing before. So strange dude, if you're reading this I just wanted to let you know I didn't say anything to get you in trouble and I hope you know that I had nothing to do with it. Sorry man.

Last evening in Boalsburg PA, Mayhem on the Mountain's 1st event took place.  I've heard different reports on the number of people that were there.  I can't really make an educated guess on it.  The values were between 300 and 1300. 

There were 10 fights on the card.  There was to be 11, but one of the fighters failed...badly to make weight.  I do not know the whole story on why, so I cannot comment on it.  I just know 164 is not 155. 


As always you can visit my website to view the full gallery Mayhem On the Mountain Gallery

The event results as told to me are,

Jason Royer defeated Scott Chandler by unanimous decision 2:00 of round 3

Glenn Barnes defeated Jesse Price by TKO round 2

Tyler Feist defeated Brandon Watkins by unanimous decision 2:00 of round 3.

Colby Slonaker defeated Scott Diggs by unanimous decision 2:00 of round 3.

Jordan Morales defeated Darlington Peralta by submission (guillotine choke) round 1.

Mike Hefflefinger defeated Tyler Saltsman by disqualification (kick the head of a downed opponent) round 1.


(PRO FIGHTS)

Brad Mountain defeated Greg Wolfe by submission (arm bar) round 1.

Eric Steppe defeated Adam Renn by submission (rear naked choke) round 2.

Lewis Rumsey defeated Robert Corpora by submission (guillotine choke) round 1.

Brendan Barrett defeated J.A.Dudley by submission (strikes) round 1.

Circus 2012

Hello everyone, I don't have a lot of time to post tonight, but I wanted to get a few of these out here, before I go back to editing a few other projects. For anyone that is wondering, for about every hour a photographer shoots, we spend about that much time behind a computer, if not longer. Here's a few shots from the recent 2012 Jaffa Shrine Circus. I'm a fellow Shriner, and it feels great to be a part of something that does something this fantastic. The show was wonderful this year. My wife, my son and I went. It was their birthday (they share a birthday). Here's the photos :)

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