1. November is by far the best month to photograph the campus here, the colors on campus are amazing during that time. Usually I take students out to the area between the Bizzini Hall and Demergasso Bava Hall buildings (which many people on campus refer to as the “Yellow Brick Road” during November), but I actually got this shot of Raina and Amanda right outside the Mary Stuart Rogers building at the start of our shoot. Usually I don’t capture my favorite shots with students until midway through the session when they feel a little more comfortable with the fact that there is a camera following them, but Raina and Amanda seemed to be working well with the camera right from the start. Once I started taking a few pictures I knew I had a chance to get a decent shot, but the only element I was missing was a sense of depth. I knew we needed some more students in the shot, and eventually the right set of walkers passed by to help give a better “campus-life” feel to the image. 
3. Everyone who’s ever worked with me knows that I love to work in the rain. Well let me rephrase that a little, … I love to see the pictures I get from working in the rain. It’s not that much fun to work in, and you really have to do your best to keep your equipment as dry as possible, but the images you can get from it are usually worth the extra effort. On this day the rain had died down a little and I was able to keep dry underneath the entrance to the library. The berry trees, (which looked a little bare in person), looked great from the angle I found,… And again the only thing I had to wait on was for a student to walk by. This was actually a harder task then most days since I took the photo in January when there weren’t many students walking around on campus, but eventually I found that girl with the umbrella I was looking for.
4. This is definitely one of my favorite photos that I’ve taken since working at the school. One of our graphic designers came up with a great concept for students to get their new Warrior ID cards through the use of a character named “Ben Carded”. We made a trip across the street to the yogurt shop called “The Frozen Cow”. The colors inside were very bright which helped bring some life to the background… And once I moved the group close to the window to get some good window light… I really didn’t have to do much else. I’ve worked with all the student models before, and Marisol, Desmond and Katrice kept working the shot until we got a photo where all of their expressions matched at the same time.
5. Being that our school is located in the Central Valley of California, it’s not everyday that we get to see great cloud cover. When “Pole Vaulting in the Quad” was occurring, I did not even see this shot until I was almost done shooting. The women pole vaulters went first and I took all the standard shots of them which turned out good… But nothing spectacular. I didn’t have time to stick around for the whole event so I only had a chance to get shots of the men’s team as they were warming up on the runway. I decided to get a little more up close and personal, and once that happened I noticed how prominent the clouds looked. I then changed my approach and started working to get a great silouhette shot which resulted in a pretty good photo.
6. We had to do a shoot for Housing with the phrase, “Practically living here already?” One of our graphic designers came up with the idea to have a student sleeping on campus, and when he mentioned that it was obvious where I had to take our student model. Our library has a very colorful selection of couches in one of their quiet rooms which worked great for the photo. I had to move a few things around, stand on a table, and help position the student a little… But other than that the photo was a piece of cake.
7. This was just one of those days where I wanted to go out and get a photo even though I had no idea where the photo would be used later. But I was able to round up some students and have them participate in a fake “leaf fight”. The shoot went kind of slow at the start, and I think it was mainly due to the fact that no one wanted to be the first person to take a pile of leaves and dump them on their friend. But once the first pile of leaves were thrown, an all-out war ensued, and that’s when the fun started. Honestly it was pretty tough to shoot because there was so much going on, so instead of trying to focus on one person I backed up a bit and tried to get a picture that showed a group of students at once. Once Gary jumped in the air I knew I got a shot that was pretty dynamic.
9. Class shots are always fun for me because I always love to capture true candid moments. It can be very challenging to get a good photo in some classes depending on the subject, but it’s always fun to work with the nursing department. They have a skills lab on campus which always makes for great photos. Usually I’m looking for shots of students laughing or having a good time in class, but in this situation students were intent upon learning how to properly use needles. I love how intense and curious everyone’s expressions are in this photo.
11. Every time I see this photo now I laugh because our Public Affairs specialist Don Hansen was shocked when he saw that I actually captured an image of this bird in flight. Although I like to downplay the fact I got the bird in flight… It did take patience to capture it. I stood out under one of our berry trees one day when a group of Cedar Waxwings were frantically eating what seemed to be all the berries off the tree. The hard part was that while there were so many birds to focus on, there were also a lot of branches and berries which made it difficult for me to find a clean background. I have hundreds of shots of the birds eating the berries while resting on a branch, but I had to wait until one of the birds got up near the top of the tree so I could frame them with the sky as my background. I didn’t even realize until I looked at the photo on my computer that the bird I got in flight also had a berry in it’s mouth as it flew away. Sometimes it helps to be a little lucky.
12. I took a variety of “Student Spotlight” photos for our web-site. My favorite photo of the bunch was of Christina Costa, an art major who just graduated. We headed over to the art department to see what was available in the painting/drawing room. I’ve been in the room before to shoot some classes, so I knew there was a lot of window light available, but I got extra lucky on the day of the shoot. There were some painted canvases that were in the room which worked great as a background. All I had to do was pull over an easel from the side and then Christina did the rest. She was super relaxed about taking photos and I think that came across well in the photos we took.
13. I don’t know any photographers who don’t enjoy shooting fireworks. At one of our “Fantastic Fourth” events I had scouted out a spot where I believed the fireworks would be easy to see between the trees and over our gazebo. Once the show started I wasn’t too far off. I had to move over about twenty feet or so to get a clear shot of the fireworks, but that was about it. After getting a few decent photos from that spot, I ran around our lake desperately looking for a different angle to capture the show. Nothing proved to look as good as the first spot I found so I eventually ran back to the same spot to get a few more photos before the show was done. Sometimes it’s best to go with your first instinct.
