Freeline Skates

This is Ryan Farrelly. He came to the College Times' office just before Christmas to give us a little demonstration of his invention, the Freeline Skates. It's basically skateboarding without the board. What you do is simply stand on the individual trucks and roll sideways.

This guy was pretty impressive on these things. There aren't any foot straps, velcro, tape or glue holding these to your feet and he was dropping in on a local concrete skate park like it was nothing.

Back into the Swing of Things..

The end of 2008 was very, very busy at the College Times and I simply didn't find the time or motivation to update this photo blog. For that I apologize.

But now it's 2009. I'm fresh off of a full 2-week vacation and ready to go. Here are some new photos to gawk at. I hope you enjoy them.

Thanks all.

-Ryan

Biodiesel Motorcycle

I've been shooting a number of interesting stories, but many of them are being held for upcoming issues, so I can't show them just yet.

This guy is an ASU professor who built a custom motorcycle that runs on biodiesel that he himself processes from used cooking oil... I was hoping to meet him at his home and get shots of him in his garage (for some reason I pictured him having a crazy laboratory-looking set up in a garage), but he told me he doesn't process the fuel at his home and that he preferred to meet at a Phoenix Starbucks... So I settled for the alley behind the coffee joint.

Halloween Cover

I can't believe it's been over a month since I've posted anything. I've just been so busy. Here's my latest cover. This was shot at Papago Park in Phoenix at dusk. There were five models, each with two outfits and sunlight was fading fast, so this shoot was a whirlwind. It was more a shoot for the style pages on different Halloween costumes, but I came away with a cover.



Here are a few frames from that shoot.

State Fair Cover

I shot this cover last week in Gilbert, where feed hay farms are still common. I liked the hay bails because they made a simple, clean background and still sort of communicated "State Fair." My other idea was to shoot on a carousel but I had a hard time setting that up with my time constraints.


Here are a few more shots from this shoot.

Oktoberfest & The Irish Festival

Here's a sampling of my weekend.... I had to shoot both the Way Out West Oktoberfest and the Arizona Irish Festival. Tough assignments, I know.

The Irish Festival featured bagpipes and beer...

While Oktoberfest featured polka music and beer... I'm beginning to see a pattern.

Back to Shooting Covers!!

Here is my first College Times cover since getting the new model release forms from our legal department. This was shot in Phoenix at two separate locations on September 21st... I couldn't post any of these photos until the paper had hit the stands today. I shot another cover last night, but you won't get to see that one until next week either, so hang in there.

Here are a few of my favorite alternatives. I was hoping to get a good beer splash photo, but the model was a petite little thing and had a hard time handling a full stein of beer (it took three beers to fill this thing!!). It wasn't until the stein was nearly empty that we got a good splash.