Photography Experiment
This last weekend I had a terrific opportunity. My photography saga continues along solving some problems, throwing money at others (bought a flash). But this last Sunday I had one of a good day.

For a while now I have been following a flickr group, "Marking Portland". This is an effort to capture pictures of people in PDX with tattoos. I looked through the shots with some fascination as I always have been interested in tats.

But then I was hit with an idea, another of my recent passions, roller derby, has NUMEROUS participants with a wide array of ink. I've been taking pictures for them since January, why not, instead of action shots, stretch my reach a bit and do portraits? (I am sure any experienced photogs are laughing at me right now).

So I bounced this idea of the president of the league and she LOVED it. So this past Sunday we made 2 general callouts.. one to the photographers related to derby, the other to the roller girls. We ended up with 3 distinct "studios": 1 was soft light boxes and a black back drop, the next was a hardcode strobist approach with flashes, focused flashes, etc. The last was an outside studio capitalizing on the natural sunlight. Add 5 photographers and it was an awesome learning experience.

So this week we are going to assemble the shots, put them in a restricted access area for the roller girls to all view, select the best and submit. Even though I am doubtful any of mine compare to the others, the experience and what I learned was well worth being the newb on the block for the event.

Once the pictures are cleared for public.. I'll post a link.