Uncategorized

These guys are funny – even at the Smithsonian!

One of the many nice things about this job is the near constant laughter. Generally speaking, news media people, with the exception of most TV talking heads – who take themselves way too seriously, tend to have an extremely well developed sense of humor and rib each other constantly. Anyone who knows me can tell you I love to laugh and that’s what made this assignment a fun one for me. The cast of the new movie “A Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian” are very funny people and they were in exceptional form for this press conference – as can be seen in these pictures.

{Click on any image to view images larger and enter slide show}

Actors (L-R) Owen Wilson, Amy Adams, Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Ricky Gervais and Hank Azaria answer reporters questions in the Smithsonian Castle at a news conference to discuss their new movie, "A Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" in Washington May 14, 2009. REUTERS/Robert Giroux

Actors (L-R) Robin Williams, Ricky Gervais and Hank Azaria answer reporters questions in the Smithsonian Castle at a news conference to discuss their new movie, "A Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" in Washington May 14, 2009. REUTERS/Robert Giroux

Actors (L-R) Ben Stiller, Robin Williams and Ricky Gervais answer reporters questions in the Smithsonian Castle at a news conference to discuss their new movie, "A Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" in Washington May 14, 2009. REUTERS/Robert Giroux

Tags: Entertainment, Funny, Hollywood, REUTERS, Smithsonian

Saturday, May 16th, 2009 Uncategorized Comments Off

Blowing Through Vancouver

When I received the call from Getty Images to go shoot travel/tourism, aka: “pretty pictures” in Vancouver a couple of weeks ago with the budgetary stipulation that I could go for only 3 days, and had to have it filed by end of Feb I was outwardly confident and happily accepted. On the inside I was a little bit unsure. After all, it’s February, in the Pacific North-West, there are no flowers, no leaves, relatively short days, virtually no tourists and a high probability of rain on any given day – could this even be done?

{click on any image to view slide show!}

As it turns out there are a couple of advantages and I did get lucky with the weather with Sun every day I was there. Few tourists means fewer obstructed views, shorter lines getting into certain “attractions”, less traffic (I did a LOT of driving around). Thanks to weather.com being fairly accurate I even managed to pick the right 3 day slot but still only decided the day before leaving to actually commit to hit the road as forecasts change from day to day.

I’ve been to Vancouver quite a few times for work but only once to see the sights and briefly at that… I had quite a few ideas, but probably not enough.

While looking at Google maps, to find directions to the Marriott, I noticed the “photo overlay” feature for the first time. Yeah, I think it’s been there for a while, but I never played with it. Turns out this was a hugely valuable research tool to plot my trip and find locations of interest. Believe it or not, there are lots of good amateurs out there and while I didn’t outright copy anything I found online I’m not ashamed to admit some of the pictures I found there inspired my own versions.

Here are 14 of the 66 pictures that ended up in the final edit. They are some of my favorites but I think they are also representative of the whole take. ~ Please comment!