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The Sports Portrait

Friday February 12th, 2010

Digital Photo Pro just featured Jared McMillen in print and online, detailing our our Las Vegas photographer’s process and philosophy.

jared_mcmillen_digital_photo_pro

Mcmillen began his career as a pro climber and eventually realized that he could be paid more as a photographer than an athlete (at least in his sport).

Since then, he’s stopped living out of his van and shoots portraits of athletes (and the occasional CEO) from just about every sport. He says that pro athletes “tend to be very image savvy these days. A photo shoot with a professional basketball or football player can be a lot like a celebrity shoot with an actor or musical icon, involving handlers and publicists and egos galore.” Though he finds that this challenge is what makes his job more interesting.

jared_mcmillen_las_vegas_1

Because of time constraints with his subjects, he sometimes needs to shoot composite backgrounds, like the image above of Kevin Durant. He finds that this gives him more flexibility to tell the story as he imagined it, since he sometimes only has 15 minutes to shoot an athlete in front of a white backdrop or in the locker room.

He had 30 minutes with racing phenom Danica Patrick (below), and I’m not sure about Andre Agassi (at right) but I thought the shot was nicely balanced.

jared_mcmillen_danica_patrick_andre_agassi

Jared discusses his gear in the article, too, and makes a “prediction” that in ten years every still shooter will be a “photo-videographer” because of the rapidly advancing technology. You can read more on their website.

On a side note, our Los Angeles-based photographer Caesar Lima lent his photograph to the cover of the same issue. We’ll be talking about Caesar in a future post, since he’s been featured in a few other places recently himself:

caesar_lima_digital_photo_pro_cover

-Neil Binkley

C-3PO and Danica Patrick Make the Same Blog Post

Friday August 21st, 2009

Van Ditthavong / Dallas
Portraiture / Celebrity / Fine Art
www.vanditthavong.com

Had one of our favorite names for a blog: Hey?! That’s My Cab, which he recently turned
into a book to help artists facing self-doubt in their creative and personal development.
RUNVANRUN, another evocative title, is his new blog filled with thoughts and tearsheets.

Michael Hall / Australia
Conceptual / Landscape / Kids / Travel / Portraiture
www.michaelhall.net

Grew up in the northern reaches of New Zealand. Aside from "normal" commercial work, Michael
enjoys confronting the issues of the day through personal projects. Example: his ongoing series
of landscapes. See "Climate Change" for an idea of what our man in Sydney has on his mind.

Jared McMillen / Las Vegas
Conceptual / Automotive / Sports & Fitness / Action & Adventure
www.jaredmcmillen.com

Raised on fruit roll ups, Scooby Doo, and good old midwestern values. Spent early years fishing,
hunting and water skiing on Lake Lida in Minnesota. Was a professionally-sponsored rock
climber, which allows him to shoot in locations that many photographers cannot.

Ryan Nicholson / Kansas City
Fashion / Lifestyle / Kids / Portraiture / Music / Sports & Fitness
www.ryan-nicholson.com

With a father and older brother who were commercial photographers, Ryan probably received
more support for his passion than the average artist. He says that he "literally grew up over a
darkroom." Rebelled by playing college basketball, but couldn’t keep away from his love of light.

 

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