Ian Ray Photography

Build A Booter Sunday

bangor — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 03:17:19 +0000

Couple photos from the weekend before last. Snow wasn’t so great, so we built a ridiculous road gap for Adam to hit. Something like 50 feet point to point, which involved an absolutely retarded run in through a drainage ditch combined with a tow in from Canadian Chris in his Pathfinder to clear. The jump photo doesn’t do justice to how big this thing was - not a height jump, all about the distance.

We might build this one up again, I’ve got another couple angles I want to try shooting from if I can find a climbing harness and some rope.

And here’s the video Adam put together from the GoPro HD footage that he got, which turned out super sick.

Rainy Day Road Gap from Adam Newhard on Vimeo.

The Lexicography of Gnar

bangor — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 05:46:52 +0000

I love listening to VPR. I feel like I get smarter every time I do. Like tonight on the way home, listening to a story about a lexicographer who is re-designing the modern dictionary as we know it. She is working on a social dictionary, where the definition of words can be combined with metadata about the usage of words and how words interact with each other to create a real-time map of modern languages.

I felt a lot smarter after listening to the story. I in fact only understood part of it. Long story short, this is how I define gnar:

Jay Day

bangor — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 04:46:37 +0000

(There’s some color profile and size issues going on with my exported images right now, I’m going to fix this in place in the next day or two)

Adam getting after it somewhere at Jay. Nice, fluffy, deepness.

I was having camera issues all day, focus not working right, batteries crapping out on me, and then the ultimate kicker: a terrible grinding noise from the mirror box. Phone call to Canon in the morning, but it doesn’t look good…… the Mark II N is definitely down for the count with a failed shutter/mirror. And best yet my backup 30D is also down for the count! AHHHHH! I might be shooting with a picture frame made of my fingers for the next bit!

Stowe > Shower > Work > Beer = Tuesday

bangor — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 04:17:29 +0000

Fun morning, not bad for a workday AM. Out the door at 430am, hiking Stowe an hour later, sideways snowing whiteout, cars all over I-89, yeah. That’s my roommate Adam getting after it in the photos, making things look steezy as always. Super super grey morning, super noisy photo….. whatever. It was fun. Hopefully next time we get up there it’ll be sunny in the morning and I won’t have to go 1000iso, haha!

Note for 2010: expect the blog to be functional again, and to have my site done. It’s a resolution!

Learning Things.

bangor — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 18:21:53 +0000

So I’ve been busy.

Really busy. I’ve been traveling quite a bit, shooting a variety of images for my senior project, while also holding down a full college schedule (minus the art history class…… oops.) I’ve met a bunch of new friends in my travels, skiied a bunch, shot a bunch, and now it’s totally crunch time where I have to edit like a madman and finish what I started.

Anyway, we had an assignment to create a self-promotion podcast for a class I’m currently in. Not knowing anything about making video, or podcasts, or…… anything like that, I set out to learn a little bit about Final Cut. Having seen an incredible presentation by Chase Jarvis in which he rallied through thousands of images very quickly, I set out to learn enough about Final Cut to be able to imitate the concept. Although mine is nowhere near as polished, given the 15 hours (all nighter, woo!) I had to learn and complete it, I think it turned out quite well. There are a variety of things that aren’t perfect, but I learned quite a few things while making it that I’ll do quite differently next time I work in moving media.

Without further ado:

The Midwinter Report

December

bangor — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 03:11:57 +0000

December’s been nuts. I barely shook off the food coma from Thanksgiving before I was back on the road…… I think I’ve racked up over 4,000 miles this month alone.

Within the past 3 weeks, I’ve been from Rochester to: Albany > Jay Peak > Albany > Rochester for a week > Albany > Mount Snow > Albany > Jiminy Peak > Albany > Killington > Albany > Christmas with the family > Mount Snow…… and there’s a bunch of other random mini trips in there as well….. the car’s been in the shop for the past 2 days recovering!

Some work from the past couple of weeks:

Evan Grott getting deep @ Killington 12/22/08

If this photo of Steve doesn’t explain how deep it was, I don’t know what will. 12/22/08

Evan Grott levitates skis with his mind.

Evan Grott - aka “The Talent”

Same Day, different…

bangor — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 13:49:43 +0000

Not even 9am yet, but this really brightened my day.

Early Season @ Mt. Snow

bangor — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 05:19:05 +0000

Got up to Mt. Snow Last weekend to do some shooting with the boys from home. I met up with Evan Grott, Mike Konderwich, and Tom Seymour to get some shredding and some shooting done. The new all-park Carinthia looks like it’s going to shape up to be a great addition to the east coast park scene!

Evan Grott - Tail 3

We took a couple runs through the park, grabbing some shots as we went. It was a typical greybird day in VT, so the light wasn’t really on point and we resorted to the mini-strobes. Worked out pretty well, good way to get back into the shooting mindset. After a run or two of shooting we decided we were collectively totally out of shape, so we took a couple cruisers without the cameras and bonked our way around the mountain. Following the on hill debauchery, and a mean session of Shaun White Snowboarding on the new big screen TV in the lodge, we hit the road to do some portraits in the woods:

Tom Seymour, Mike Konderwich, Evan Grott

Mike Konderwich

Overall it was a pretty successful trip! The next morning I threw the Subaru back on the highway and rallied back to Rochester for classes, rounding out over 1,000 miles in 3 days for the holiday break!

Balloon Manor

bangor — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 04:44:28 +0000

I’m going to be spending the next couple of weeks working with the Balloon Manor crew, doing panoramas, some on-site journalism, and possibly a remote time-lapse rig. Looks like a pretty interesting installation, I’m excited to get out and flex my VR panorama muscles once again!

Highmount Ski Resort

bangor — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 23:06:28 +0000

I stumbled upon an abandonded ski resort yesterday called Highmount, turns out it’s a stone’s throw from Bellayre Mtn. (We’re in the western part of the Catskills, of upstate NY, for those of you who don’t know)

Here’s a map, zoom in and go to aerial image to see it.

This is an excerpt of one panorama I shot while I’m up there. Not sure if it’s the best one out of what I shot, but it was the easiest to stitch together earlier today:

I always find abandonded ski resorts fascinating. Most are relics of the heyday that skiing had in the 80’s; having not researched it much yet, I’d have to gamble Highmount closed in the early 90’s. There’s a bunch of engravings on the top station tower from ‘95 and ‘98, which I don’t think could have been made while the resort was open. If anybody knows anything about Highmount, let me know!