Wow, how exciting!  My website, www.keatleyphoto.com was just published in this years PDN Photo Annual as one of the top photography websites.  In addition to the magazine, all of the contest winners and judges can be seen in an online gallery.  When my current website went live last year, I was feeling really good about my chances of getting it into PDN thanks to the excellent work of my graphic designer Greg Lutze.  I entered it into the competition, but never heard anything back.  When I saw on Twitter the winners were being notified and I didn’t hear anything, I figured I didn’t make the cut and I put it out of my mind.

Last week I was emailing with a friend, and he said, congrats on your site in PDN.  I had no idea what he was talking about, but sure enough, my site was selected.  I just thought I would share my excitement, and take this opportunity to encourage you to take a peek at one of the best photography websites of year!

It’s almost time for my two favorite professional sports.  Lawn darts, and baseball.  Just kidding!  Soccer and baseball.  Although we may be watching lawn darts if MLS and the union don’t come to an agreement soon.  Aside from that, it is pretty exciting to be a soccer fan in the Pacific Northwest right now with how the Sounders have taken the country by storm.  The first game of the 2010 season will be played here against Philadelphia, the newest expansion team to MLS.  And don’t even get me started about next year when the Vancouver Whitecaps and the Portland Timbers will join MLS.  Those rivalries will be amazing!

This is a picture I recently took of Kasey Keller.  Kasey is the goalkeeper and captain of the Seattle Sounders FC.  From my time with him, he seems like a laid back fun loving guy who doesn’t take life too seriously.  While we were talking on set, he said “I get to play a game and catch a ball for a living.”  It was fun to see that side of him, but going into the shoot, I wanted to capture some of his competitive spirit.  One of the Sounders games I was at last season I spent some time on the grass right behind the goal.  Qwest Field is known for being a loud stadium and the fans can carry on with the best of them.  But as loud as it was in the stadium, I could hear Kasey screaming instructions to his teammates over the crowd.  With that in mind, I asked Kasey if he would yell at me for a few pictures.  I half expected to be rejected, but he said sure and started yelling.  I won’t repeat what he yelled, but it was pretty funny.

Go Sounders!

(Here) is a post with video and pictures from the Sounders billboard I shot last season.

I photographed Nicholas Kaiser of Saturna Capital for SmartMoney and this is the picture that ran in the January issue.  It also happens to be my favorite picture from the shoot.  How often does that happen!?  Nick is the fund manager for Amana Funds (AMANX).   The management of Amana is based on Islamic principals which means no pork, no alcohol and no financials, eliminating companies like Costco due to sales of wine and beer.  While these principals are limiting, Nick has managed to bring in a five-year average annual return of 8.3%.  Not bad in this economy.

The assets of Amana are $920 million and the expenses are $132 per $10,000.  That’s insane!  How can I keep my expenses that low?  Seriously.  I’m asking…

Anyway.  No big story about the shoot, but I just really like this picture.

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A guy could really get used to this whole book cover portrait thing.  It’s exciting to see your work in full bleed on the cover of a book.  No “10 Secrets to Sexy Abs” or “How to Keep The Doughnuts and Loose The Weight” tips plastered all over the cover.  This is my most recent book cover photo, and as you can see, the subject is John Perkins.  I have already written about John on my blog (here), and I have now had the opportunity to work with him on multiple occasions.  Love Is The Final Fight does not come out until August 2010, but the marketing is getting under way now.  John is a great man with an amazing story, and although I have not read this book yet, I would recommend it solely based on what I know about John.

I hope 2010 is starting out with a bang for everyone!

That’s me on the right side, down in the corner…  I’m sure Josh was standing on his tip toes.  What a kidder.  I am kind of a sports nut if you didn’t know, so I really enjoy working with athletes.  Actually, I really enjoy working with just about everyone, but a small part of me still thinks I might have a shot at the bigs.  I guess the reality of it for me is photographing professional athletes is as close as I’m going to get.  Now that I think about it, I seem to get hired quite a bit to photograph the big guys.  It’s probably because people know if an athlete goes crazy during a shoot or becomes too high maintenance, I can use my size to intimidate them and get the shots I need.  Like when I had to smack around Craig and Paul Pumphrey on the Human Wreckingballs shoot I did last year.  Just kidding Craig!  I would never think about crossing you.  I could probably take Paul though.

Josh Smith is a high school senior at Kentwood High in Washington State.  He stands at 6′ 9” and weighs in at 270 pounds.  Not bad, not bad.  As far as I can tell he is currently ranked as a top 5 college recruit in the country, but I think that changes frequently.

The day before the shoot (which was for SLAM), Josh was in New York playing in the high school basketball All Star game.  I am sure he is excited about what is going on in his life right now, but he seemed so calm and in control.  I tried to imagine what it would be like to be in high school and get this kind of national attention.  Not only that, but how crazy is it to know that there is a very good chance that you will be pro in just a few years while you are still living a somewhat normal lifestyle.  It sounds to me like he is actually a little tired of all the attention, which is understandable.  Anytime something big happens in a persons life, such as graduation, marriage, having a baby, etc., that event becomes an easy topic for discussion for everyone around you.  It’s the big easy question that allows people to engage you in conversation without having to think about what they are saying.

In addition to basketball, Josh is playing football this year.  Some might think he is insane given his potential in basketball, but he is doing what makes him happy.  Can’t argue with that.  You have to enjoy life, and live it to the fullest.  Best of luck to Josh in his final year of high school.  I am excited to see what the future holds for him, and selfishly, I would be excited if UW was in his future.  Forget UCLA, Josh!  :)

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Clouds I can handle, but it’s the rain that drives me crazy when I am supposed to be shooting outside. Thankfully I was photographing weather experts for this assignment, and it turns out they know a thing or two about predicting the weather.

As I was packing up to head out for what I knew would be a long day at “the office” I began to feel a little nervous about the dark clouds hanging over Seattle. After checking weather.com, my nervousness began to change into a good case of anxiety because they were predicting rain by 9:30am, and that was just two hours away.  Maybe I could beat the rain and get in at least one outside portrait.  The problem was I had to photograph one subject in the morning, and the second one in the afternoon.  At the very best it looked like I would only get one of the subjects outside, but the show must go on.  I headed over to the University of Washington where I would meet up with my first subject, Cliff Mass.  My assignment was to photograph Cliff and Brad Coleman in studio for the opener, and get an environmental portrait of each of them individually.  The thing that made this all really interesting was I could not get them both in studio at the same time or place.  I had to set up a studio at UW in the morning, then tear it down, and set it up again, exactly the same at NOAA to photograph Brad.  I had been planning this shoot for a couple of weeks including some minor styling and location scouting.  This was an assignment I was really looking forward to, and I would have been really bummed if the rain forced us inside for the environmental shots.

To give you a little background on the men in the photographs.  Cliff Mass was mentored by Carl Sagan while in undergrad at Cornell University.  He is the author of “The Weather of the Pacific Northwest”, he runs a very popular blog, Cliff Mass Weather Blog, he is a weekly guest on KUOW radio, and he is a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington.  To quote a UW press release, “He has published dozens of articles on Northwest weather and leads the regional development of advanced weather prediction tools.”  Many people in the Pacific Northwest plan their weekends around Cliff’s predictions.

Brad Colman is the meteorologist-in-charge of the Seattle Weather Forecast Office.  “A meteorologist-in-charge is the front line officer carrying out the National Weather Service’s mission of serving the American public by helping protect lives and property,” said Brig. Gen. David L. Johnson, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), director of NOAA’s National Weather Service.  ”NOAA’s National Weather Service is the official source of weather data, forecasts and warnings for the United States and its territories.  The National Weather Service operates the most advanced weather and flood warning and forecast systems in the world, helping to protect lives and property and enhance the national economy.”

Back at UW, it seemed like it would start raining any minute, so I asked Cliff if we could change the schedule a little and shoot the environmental portrait right away because I was nervous about the rain.  Embarrassed as I am to admit, it never occurred to me that I was working with one of the top experts in weather. When I told Cliff we should try to shoot outside while it is still dry, he promptly responded, “It’s not going to rain.” “It’s not?” I asked. “No. The cloud cover will begin to burn off at 10:30, and by 11:30 we will have clear skies.”  And he was right.  Take that weather.com!  Once we finished at UW with Cliff, it was off to NOAA to photograph Brad.  By the time we got there, the skies were opening up, and it looked quite different than just a few hours before, as you can tell in the pictures.

From this point on, I will include a weatherman on all of my bids.  First assistant, second assistant, makeup artist, stylist, and a weatherman.  Oh, and a falconer.  I recently learned about the benefits of having a falconer on set.  If nothing else it can be very entertaining, but that’s a story for another time.

A fun fact I learned on this assignment is Houston, New York, Miami and Boston all get more average annual rainfall than Seattle.   We win the prize for most cloudy days though…  Bummer.

Special thanks goes out to Robyn and Seattle North Face for the clothes.  And also to Mandy for painting some amazing clouds which were not used in the final.

This is a video of Cliff explaining some weather basics.  I like how he explains things in terms anyone can understand.  Plus he has soothing voice.

As you may already know, last November I had the privilege of photographing one of the photography greats, Annie Leibovitz.  (Here) is an earlier post about my experience photographing her.  Then just a few months ago, I found out my portrait of Annie was selected for AP25 (American Photography 25 silver-anniversary competition) which is a selection of the best photographs from 2008.  The selected photographs will be compiled in a book this coming November.  Having already written about this, I don’t want to be too repetitive, but Annie Leibovitz is in the news again.  This time, it was not because she offended someone, or got a celebrity to pose nude.  New York Magazine came out with an article this week about Annie, and the hard times that she has come into.  Not to make light of a difficult situation, but I am pleased that one of my portraits was licensed for this article.  Here is a link to “How Could This Happen to Annie Leibovitz? The $24 million question” written by Andrew Goldman for New York Magazine.  It is a fantastic story, and definitely worth reading.

With all of the news flying around about Annie, I decided to take a look at my portraits of her again.  This picture in particular has always pulled at me.  I have thought about showing it in the past, but there was something that always seemed to make me leave it alone.  Looking at it again now, in light of what is going on, it seemed to take on new life.  This was one of those moments that came and went in a split second.  I had shot several frames already, including the one I have been showing.  There was a moment where she didn’t know what to do with her hands, and maybe felt a bit self conscious about being photographed.  She quickly rubbed her eyes and pulled her hair back from her face and the moment was gone.  I can’t say I captured this image because of some magic of my own.  In all honesty, I’m sure it was an accident I caught this.  But in this portrait, I see so much honesty and vulnerability.  Something not easily captured, regardless of the subject.  A good lesson for me: a great portrait isn’t always created by controlling my subject, but rather capturing an organic moment in a controlled setting.

New York Magazine “How Could This Happen to Annie Leibovitz?” http://nymag.com/fashion/09/fall/58346/

*Side Note*  Thank you to everyone who has written me about the comments not showing up properly in Safari and Firefox.  It looks like the issue has been resolved, and I apologize if you felt that I was ignoring your questions.  I may have actually responded, but the comment just didn’t show up properly.  It turns out that white text on a white background can be hard to read.