Not a good way to start 2011....

This year started out with a bang, and not in a good way.  While reorganizing my hard drives and incorporating a new backup system into my work flow, I deleted an entire years worth of images.  All of 2007 completely gone.  After a quick panic attack I started researching ways to recover data from hard drives and ended up downloading the StellarPheonix software.  So after 40 hrs and $100, I was able to recover all the images.   It definitely was not the way I expected to start the year but at least I learned a valuable lesson. That lesson being ALWAYS DOUBLE CHECK YOUR BACKUP!

Got a few shoots lined up for the new year that I'm pretty excited about.  I'll post more on here as I get them done.  In the mean time, here are a few shots that I had forgotten about until I recovered the images from '07.  I shot these pinups at my old studio at the Bemis.  Hope you like them.

Ben

This is Nigeria

I've recently been going through the images from my trip to Nigeria back in 2006 and wanted to share a couple that you more then likely haven't seen.  For those of you that don't know, I traveled there for a month with Eze Anamelechi and musician Norman Baker to take photos and experience life in West Africa.  From the minute we landed in Lagos, I was blown away by everything happening around me. Imagine 150 million people in a country twice the size of California.  Aside from the first and last couple days of the trip that we spent in Lagos, most of our time was spent in a village just north of the city of Owerri.  I realize the country has a bad rap with all the corruption and oil money and email scams but Nigerian hospitality is by far the best I have ever experienced in the world, even compared to the US.  Click on the images to see a larger version. Hope you enjoy them!  

25 more images after the jump....

Recent Work

Here are a couple tear sheets from a recent job I shot for WA-Magazine.  The story is about winery owners that are alumni from either Washington State or The University of Washington.  Check out the fall issue of WA-Magazine.

Manny Eats a Doughnut

This is just a spur of the moment personal I shot basically to test some lights and have a little fun.  Thanks to Manny Insixiengmay for eating a jelly doughnut even though she hates jelly doughnuts.  She started to get ready for work after the shoot and found out she had a Scorpions tee and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to shoot that.

Hope you like them!
Ben

Test Shoot with Luis

At last, here are the selects I promised you awhile back.  I got to do a test shoot with Luis Simoes while I was in Prague and had a blast. At first I wanted to just walk around the neighborhood(Mala Strana) and shoot at a couple locations I scouted the day before but the apartment I was staying at was so sublime that we ended up just shooting there.

Hope you enjoy them!
Ben

Test Shoot Teaser

I did a test shoot while in Prague with model Luis Simoes.  It was a ton of fun and overall it went really well.  I shot both film and digital and can't wait to develop the film when I get back stateside.  Here are a couple images from the shoot as well as a quick video clip.  The rest of the images will be posted as soon as I get home.

Enjoy!
Ben

Baker Lake

Heading to Baker Lake soon for another camping trip. Last years trip out there was very eventful, getting lost on the way out, intense Connect Four tourney, swimming in cold water.  Looking forward to going back out there so I thought I would post some photos from last years Baker Lake camping trip.

Enjoy the summer!