Ginna Hoptman and Pavel Filchenkov during the senior pairs free dance of the 2013 U.S. Figure Skating Nationals at the CenturyLink Center in Omaha. A slow shutter speed of 1/10th of a second was used to create this ghostly image.

I’m not sure many other photographers raised outside cold weather climates could have successfully walked across fifty yards of glassy, slick ice without falling on their behinds. Heck, I’m not sure many would have even attempted it! Alas, there I was, on the wrong side of the rink at the 2013 U.S. Figure Skating Nationals in Omaha with only minutes to spare until the on-ice awards ceremony that I wanted to photograph began. With no time to walk back through the bowels of the arena to the correct (and carpeted) entrance onto the rink, I stepped over the wall and began my trepidatious walk towards the other photographers gathered near the center of the rink.

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Acrylic paint spreads through water during an experimental shoot, Friday, March 16, 2012.

Sometimes, when people ask what I do for a living, I respond, “I get paid to play with my toys.” And, while I’m sincere in this credo, the toys are often in use to realize a client’s vision, or to complete a client’s project. It’s not frequent that I have the time to take on a personal, just-for-fun project, even though there’s tons of ideas swimming around in my brain at any given moment. Unfortunately, many of those ideas would amount to long-term projects that my schedule just won’t accommodate.

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Internationally renown poet Nikki Giovanni performs at West Side Theatre in Gary, Indiana. A special technique was used to gel the fixtures that front-lit the podium.

When the West Side Theatre Guild booked internationally renown poet Nikki Giovanni to headline a speaking engagement, I was asked to create a classy, clean lighting design that would not overpower the artist, yet still stand on its own as a visually attractive element of the production. After kicking around some ideas with assistant director Rashaad Cherry, we quickly agreed that using the theater’s white Austrian curtain as a backdrop was the way to go (it’s kind of hard to beat the look of a well-lit Austrian curtain when you’re looking for classy).

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