The location for the Miami Mark Wallace Meetup is announced!

http://mwtour-miami.eventbrite.com/

The Meetup on November 14 is FREE and open to the first 100 people to register. And, err, 25 people have beat you to it!

The Meetup will be held at Mobile Arts Production Services (MAPS) in Studio A. Website

Register now!

Check out the buzz on Twitter

What’s better than a morning spent reading LOLcats? A national Meetup Tour with Mark Wallace chock full o’PocketWizard and get this – it’s free!

Mark recently held a Tweetup at Photo Plus Expo where lucky attendees got to learn and play for free. It was so awesome that Mark is now going on a 8-city tour of the USA.

Miami – Nov 14
Seattle – Nov 21
New York – Dec 5
Los Angeles – Dec 12
Phoenix – Dec 19
Nashville – Jan 11
Atlanta – Jan 23
Mystery City – Jan 30

Guess what? Mark is leaving the last city open so that YOU can vote where the final meetup will be held! Vote now!.

Read more on PocketWizard.com- links for event signups.
And, read more on Mark’s blog.

Here’s a PPC article with behind-the-scenes footage of a recent Tony Donaldson shoot for Curve. Watch how the team brings this successful shoot together. Multiple PocketWizard MultiMax units help Tony get what he’s looking for and quality images the magazine’s readers expect.

Link

Jason Reed doesn’t have one thing most photographers have: his own Web site. He has no need for one. We see his images every day. Jason Reed has one thing most photographers would trade all their gear for, even for one day. Reed is a seven year veteran of the White House Traveling Pool, and has been shooting for Reuters for twenty years.

Photo by Jason Reed, ©Reuters. Note remote camera with PocketWizard on floor against shrubs.

News photography fans and much of the public will recall some of Reed’s memorable images, such as George W. Bush bumping chests with a new graduate at the Merchant Marine Academy, or Karl Rove rapping at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association dinner, or Barack Obama shedding a tear over the death of his grandmother on the eve of the election he was to win. What really got the attention of photography fans was his “White House Moments: A Time-lapse View,” created after a video editing course got him interested in time-lapse movies. In it, he documents a day at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, from the West Wing to the East Room to the Rose Garden to the South Lawn. This is the White House as you’ve never seen it before. 8000 exposures later, PocketWizards proved critical to the project.

Photo by Jason Reed, ©Reuters

“The PocketWizard is something we’ve been using at the White House since they’ve been around,” says Jason. “I use the MultiMAX Transceivers. I can’t imagine working without them. They’re so easy to use. I can put multiple cameras at different angles all on the same frequency and trigger them as either motor drive sequences or using the intervalometer, which are really easy to set up from the menu. You can shoot a picture every three seconds, five seconds, ten seconds, and you can change those settings pretty quickly.”

Photo by Jason Reed, ©Reuters

Australian-born Reed began a Bachelor’s degree in Photography in Sydney. The first day he showed up to discover just one class was unavailable: his photography class. This unfortunate event was the loss of higher education and the gain of the news photography industry. Soon he was able to get a job at Reuters hand-printing color film to 8 x 10 format and loading prints onto analog drum transmitters. That led to some photographer-mentors encouraging his talent, supplementing a two-year technical course in Photography at a local college. Then began Reed’s Forrest Gump-like professional life of being present at world events as they unfolded. In 1994 at age 23, he moved to Hong Kong, which was the Reuters regional headquarters at that time. He served there as an editor and photographer until the handover to China in 1997. Moving on to the new headquarters in Singapore, Reed was dispatched around the region to cover earthquakes, plane crashes, and civil unrest in Asia. From 1999 until 2002 he used Bangkok, Thailand as a base from where he travelled to Pakistan to cover the 2001 war against the Taliban and Indian natural disasters, among other news stories.

Photo by Jason Reed, ©Reuters. Note remote cameras with PocketWizards on floor at right.

Presidential visits to the region drew his interest. President Clinton went to Vietnam, India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Reed lent support to Reuters White House photographers who travelled with the President wherever he went. The young photographer found himself caught up in the energy of being in the entourage of the Leader of the Free World, as the old cliché goes. He dreamed of doing it full-time, and in 2003 a position opened up, and Jason Reed became a Reuters photographer at the White House.

Although situated at the White House, the road didn’t stop calling him. Reed covered the 2004 Bush campaign and he spent the last two years on the road following the Obama campaign to victory from before the Illinois junior Senator’s announcement to run in February of 2007. He finds what he’s learned in the capital is applicable outside it. “Shooting every day at the White House is challenging. You constantly try to find something new. Those skills you take away to any other assignment and look for something new, something you wouldn’t be looking for if you hadn’t worked at the White House. Trying to make things subtly new day after day for years and years teaches you to be a better photographer. The PocketWizard is an extension of that. When I travel to events I see where I can put multiple cameras. I’m always looking for a key moment of a historical event, such as the signing of an important act of Congress, or a bilateral meeting with a foreign head of state. As a photographer you try to find multiple angles of everything. You’re working harder, but the reward is you’re getting more angles, better pictures and better moments. The PocketWizard frees me up to look at different things and execute them really easily.”

Photo by Jason Reed, ©Reuters

Although shooting at the same address, Reed isn’t about to get bored. “History shows us anything can happen at any time,” he says. Occasionally he’ll be photographing the President at a graduation ceremony, looking through the viewfinder for hours at a time, careful to never miss a moment. “If there’s anything this job teaches you, it’s about being ready.”

Photo by Jason Reed, ©Reuters

Photo by Jason Reed, ©Reuters

Reed also has to be ready for other assignments. He covered the last Academy Awards ceremony, and was full of quips pointing out the difference between photographing politicians and celebrities. “They say Washington is Hollywood for ugly people, and Hollywood is Washington for beautiful people,” jokes Reed. “I like to do different events like the Olympics or Formula One races — something different to mix it up.”

Photo by Jason Reed, ©Reuters

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, however, remains the location of his dream job, as it would be for countless photographers around the world. “At the White House, it’s full HMI (hydrargyrum medium-arc iodide) light. There’s a whole group of television lighting technicians dedicated to lighting every event. We’re really blessed with the ability to walk in and shoot an indoor event at 400 ISO at 250ths of a second at f/2.8 or 320ths at f/2.8. It’s fantastic. This is the center of the universe of making things look good.” For this, our leaders and candidates are grateful, and viewers around the world wait for the next click of Jason Reed’s shutter while working at his dream job.

Photo by Jason Reed, ©Reuters

Jason Reed at Reuters

Bush Years: Defining his Presidency

Riding with Obama — A Final Look Back

White House Moments: A Time-lapse View

Reuters Photo Blog

Reuters News Pictures Official Site

Yes, it’s been awhile since the last update and for those that feed off every tidbit of information, we apologize for our silence as we work on the products you are anxiously waiting for.  Here’s what we can tell you today: READ MORE at PocketWizard.com

And in other news, here is a video from Mark Wallace about the new AC5 Soft RF Shield:

The Strobist recently featured Florida shooter Jon M. Fletcher’s portrait of his family enjoying a night launch of the Discovery. Fletcher used PocketWizards to shoot his family after three 30-second exposures without strobes to capture the launch.

©Jon M. Fletcher

http://www.jonmfletcher.com/

People are hard to find in Kevin Bauman’s photographs, but they are there if viewers relax, maybe squint a bit, and open their minds. You will see them in each frame, transparent echoes in his native Detroit photos: children running up now-crumbling steps after their first day at school, young men in khaki kissing their sweethearts in the broken-windowed Michigan Central Station before their last train ride to the Atlantic and war, and muscular veterans swinging drag chains in the cavernous, disintegrating Fisher Body 21 facility.

©Kevin Bauman

Those people are gone, but our imagination can’t help but put them there. We know they lived prosperous lives in Detroit because Bauman has spent over ten years chronicling structures they’ve left us, and continues to do so with a balance of art, technology, honest delicacy, and reluctant indictment of a system gone wrong.

©Kevin Bauman

Detroit was the fourth largest United States city in 1950. Since that time, due to the the ever-shrinking U.S. auto industry, it has lost half it’s population; approximately one-million residents. The city itself covers an astounding 143 square miles, and as entire neighborhoods are depopulated, their structures decay and fall, opening vast tracts of urban prairie. It is amid this background Bauman finds his personal project bliss.

©Kevin Bauman

Although an accomplished photographer in several genres, Kevin Bauman receives the most attention for his series entitled 100 Abandoned Houses. It has caused him to be profiled by The New York Times, ABC World News, and AOL, among many others. Purposely shot in from a uniform point of view at a wide enough angle to put the home in context. Everything from vacant lots to inhabited homes next door are shown to chart the woes of these once-grand Detroit residences. Bauman sells prints of his work, giving one-third to organizations like Habitat for Humanity and The Greening of Detroit.

©Kevin Bauman

Michigan Central Station has been an ongoing subject of Bauman’s documentation of Detroit’s direction, this time in black and white. Often shooting at the slowest film speed possible and the lowest ISO, Bauman always uses a tripod.

©Kevin Bauman

©Kevin Bauman

“PocketWizards are pretty much a must-have,” he says of his standard gear. “In the old days I’d use those radio slaves. They’d go down and you’d have to run that stupid cord again to operate the lights. Then there were those synching lights. I often shoot in industrial settings. In some factories they have blinking lights on forklifts, and it would set those things off. I’d have to run down through the factory so the pack wouldn’t blow. PocketWizards are awesome, and have changed everything.”

©Kevin Bauman

When asked about any trouble he may have encountered in some of the sketchier neighborhoods he’s drawn to, Bauman says without hesitation, “Packs of dogs. It’s a known problem in Detroit. I don’t know if they’re runaways or abandoned by their owners, but they’re out there. I was shooting one day and about eight of them starting coming toward me, and they were not coming for fun. I kept the tripod and camera in front of me and made it back to the car.”

©Kevin Bauman

Always carefully aware of his surroundings and non-canine threats, Bauman reports people are generally friendly and interested in what he’s doing while shooting. “Sometimes people ask me if I’m from the city, and am I photographing an abandoned house because it’s scheduled for demolition. Unfortunately, I can’t help them, although they’re usually very pleasant to speak to.” As of this writing, he’s never had a physical assault or theft. When given verbal warnings, he’s happy to move along and come back at another time to get the shot he wants.

©Kevin Bauman

Bauman doesn’t shirk away from photographing people when called upon to do so for clients, such as when he documented school officials ten years after the Columbine tragedy for the American School Board Journal. On that assignment, he walked a fine line incorporating documentation, personal profile, respect for families involved, and yet not overwhelmingly depressing. Bauman used Profoto Pro-7b generators to capture employees and the memorial under the ominous Colorado skies.

©Kevin Bauman

When shooting interiors for commercial work, he explains, “I light it, but light it so it’s minimal, or doesn’t look artificially lit at all.” Among these clients, he typically shoots for interior design firms, developers, and architectural firms. With his father being an architect, Bauman spent years reading architecture magazines, which helped him develop his style for this side of his photography business.

©Kevin Bauman

Along with his PocketWizards, Bauman has shot Mamiya RB67’s and RZs. To move all his gear, Bauman has relied on Tenba rolling cases and Air Cases. “I’ve shot in some pretty nasty industrial locations — plants where they do anodizing and plating of metal, one-hundred twelve degree temperatures. They have vats of acid where they dip the metal in, steaming. The smells are horrible and everything is coated with stuff. The PocketWizards never stop working.”

www.kevinbauman.com
www.themotorlesscity.com
The Motorless City Photos
Kevin Bauman on Flickr
100 Abandoned Houses
Kevin Bauman at Behance

Selected Kevin Bauman Commercial Work:
Behance
Coroflot
Coroflot 2

Other coverage:
Camera Obscura
Really Good Magazine
Squidge Magazine
The 405

The October issue of National Geographic features photographer Michael “Nick” Nichols and a team of researchers and technicians documenting the condition of America’s remaining virgin Redwood forests. Page 128 has a photo of PocketWizards in action. This page on their site features an amazing video of the rig with six PocketWizards they hoisted 90 meters into the giant trees.

©National Geographic

We know there are many anxious photographers out there waiting patiently (and a few not so patiently) for the products we’ve announced and have yet to ship. It’s been a busy summer in development and all of these projects are moving along. Here’s an update for each:

ControlTL for Nikon: What was thought to be a relatively quick leap from the Canon version to the Nikon version has taken far longer than expected. The intro of the 5D Mark II threw the whole schedule for a loop as the new Canon required a complete development process of its own for ControlTL – it was not as simple as a cut-n-paste of the ControlTL firmware already developed for the other Canon cameras.

Six months later and with the release of the 4.30 firmware in July, we finally put Canon behind us and switched over to Nikon full time. There is a bunch of work already done, especially on the hardware side, but the communications systems are entirely different. We are making great progress now and we are pushing forward as fast a possible. Our last estimate was for a “Fall 2009” intro and we just might have something by December 20th and make it on a technicality, but it is more likely to be January 2010 for the 344MHz FCC version, allowing for a solid beta test period. 433MHz CE versions would follow shortly behind by a few weeks.

AC7 Shield for Canon Speedlites: The AC7 is nearing completion. Pre-production pieces have started to arrive and we should have boxed units ready to go around October 1st.

AC9 ZoneController: Plastics for the AC9 ZoneController are being finalized now and units using prototype shells have been in testing for a couple weeks. The final product has an expected availability date of November 1st. This little product makes life a whole lot simpler when it comes to lighting control.

And to make things interesting, look for a new product announcement next week for two more ControlTL products (Nikon users – there are multiple development paths, this does not impact Nikon development in any way).

Located in Ontario, Canada, Rick Denham likes to break rules. Like many young Canadian men, Rick was once a hockey player. He now finds himself either shooting photos from the other side of the plexiglass, or away from ice rinks altogether as he builds his reputation as a wedding photographer of note.

© Rick Denham

Although photographing sports of all kinds gives him thrills, working as an in-demand wedding photographer pays the bills. Sample photos from the latter category prove there’s no lack of emotion or technique in his deeply saturated and outstandingly composed shots. Shooting primarily in a photojournalism style, Rick still delivers photos with wedding parties positioned in ways which would’ve made many Renaissance painters weep with envy. Prospective customers intrinsically know this, and are often fooled by the end result.

© Rick Denham

“When a bride and groom meet with me, I always hear, ‘We want candid photography, we want journalism photography,’” he reports. “The first thing I have to explain to them is ‘most of these shots are set-up.’ It has to be set-up. You can’t get a candid group shot of twenty people and expect it to not be set-up.” A rule-breaker at heart, Rick believes whatever feels natural is the best approach. He encourages wedding parties to behave naturally as he shoots, until it comes time for some informal positioning used in his trademark group shots.

© Rick Denham

© Rick Denham

Attracted to low-stress situations, Rick loves the digital revolution and the benefits of shooting more exposures with more cameras, including remotely-fired cameras, which continue to play a growing part in his work.

© Rick Denham

Along with composition, Rick’s saturation is one of the hallmarks of his photography. “I bump my saturation up in my cameras, especially at weddings. Weddings, to me, are colorful. People like color. They pay to have lots of flowers. Even in classic weddings, that’s what I like to see. Even in my black and whites, I like to see a lot of contrast. I like my blacks black.”

© Rick Denham

Multiple lights and cameras are part of Rick’s arsenal. He typically carries four Canon 580EX II Speedlites, three MultiMAX units, three PocketWizard Plus IIs, and a 16-35mm wide angle lens, which he always keeps on one of his two Canon Mark III’s. In addition, a softbox, Honl grids and snoots, and two light stands are at the ready on most shoots. He also brings a Magic Arm and Super Clamp. Often these are employed low to the ground, where he says, “no one thinks of using them there.”

© Rick Denham

© Rick Denham

There are a few subject areas Rick has plans to branch out into, along with corresponding business plans. Although we’re unable to divulge details at this time, we can be sure Rick will be bringing his sense of composition, rich tones, and PocketWizard gear to these new endeavors.

Rick’s blog: http://rickdenhamphoto.blogspot.com/

Rick Denham Photography: http://www.rickdenham.com/