They say that imitation is the best form of flattery.
Being inspired by Hood to Coast, Knowledge Universe (KU) has generated March to Beach. Beach is not the one with shimmery white sand but a North Portland Elementary School. This is the second year that KU has participated in the Schoolhouse Supplies Tools for Schools program.

Read more in Larry Bingham’s story on Oregon Live.

Click on the following links to see more of my photographic coverage of this event:

KU & Beach Video

KU & Beach Album

The theme for this year’s Portland Business Alliance Annual Meeting was their program – Value of Jobs, which is about making job creation a top priority.  The Keynote Speaker Renee James, VP & General Manager of Intel’s Software and Services Group provided scary details which could be used to support investing to boost education in Portland.  Intel is bringing 1,000 full time jobs to Hillsboro, however these jobs require highly skilled college graduates, a limited resource amongst Oregonians.

This story is well covered by Erik Siemers in the Portland Business Journal.  Yes, Erik does look like Rainn Wilson (a.k.a. Dwight Schrute of The Office), this is how he caught my eye.

Mark Bocchi of Alaska Airlines and their inflatable Alaska Airlines Airplane mascot were present to meet and greet.  A happy ending to the Annual meeting was Mark pulling the 2 winners for a drawing of tickets for 2 to any Alaska Airlines destination (including Hawaii – pretty sweet!).

Click on the following link to view a slideshow of this event:  PBA Annual Meeting

Portland Center Stage never disappoints!  This event was a GAS!  West Coast Productions brought the hip-ness with a “magic bus” bar, lava lamps, mod black and white lounges with black and white posters of The Supremes and Nancy Sinatra with her white go go boots.  Great food and drink was created by Art of Catering – check out the “Lucy in Sky with Diamonds” table holding the shrimp cocktails!  Shoshana Bean was amazing with her Barbara Streisand medley.  And the auction was lively and upbeat with moderators from Chris Murry and Courtenay Hameister and auctioneer extradionaire, Johnna Wells.

Click the following to view more:

PCS Slideshow

PCS Album

Wieden+Kennedy sponsored the Partners in Diversity (PiD) “Say Hey” event held February 10th.  These quarterly events honor new minority professionals relocating to this area and help connect them to the multicultural community.

As we say in Hawaii, the “broke da mouth” (loosely translated means “awesome”) culinary experience was provided by Mayahuel Catering and Micro Mercantes.  If you crave great authentic Mexican, you’ve got to check them out!

Chaucer Barnes (W+K) shared his experience of a Say Hey event.  Having just moved to Portland, he attended the Say Hey event and met Dan Wieden.  Not knowing Mr. Wieden’s background, Chaucer was “himself” in his conversation with this advertising titan.  Chaucer was hired by W+K and has moved up the ranks over the years.

It was an exhilirating and comforting feeling to see such a huge collection of talent and diverse color in one place.

To view more from this event, click on the following links:

PiD@W+K Video

PiD@W+K Album

Charismatic, entertaining and extremely generous – this is Patty Mills, point guard for the Portland Trailblazers.  Stealing the show at OnPoint Community Credit Union’s Celebrity Spelling Bee to benefit Schoolhouse Supplies.  Patty modestly and gracious posed with adoring fans who donated $100 to meet and have their photo taken with the NBA star.  Even danced with lucky fan, Willie Poinsette – the principal at Humboldt Elementary and former school board member.  I just read from Patty’s fan page that the Blazer Fan Shop is donating 50% of the sales of Patty’s #8 jersey to flood relief in Australia, Patty’s home country.

Here’s Patty’s participation at the Bee to give you an idea of how he helped to make this benefit for Schoolhouse Supplies a success – Patty Steals Show.

For more of the Spelling Bee, click on the following links:

Bee video

Bee album

To see all the images from that morning, click the following link:  Santa’s Visit

To save an image, right click on image and save it to your desktop.   These images are for posting on the web and not suitable for print (it might be fuzzy if you try to print a hard copy).  If you are interested in a print quality image or have an issue, email me and describe the image you would like or were trying to download. Enjoy!

Here’s an example.  The following images were taken with the exact same settings from the same angle and shot within 30 seconds of each other. The top image has a shadow across the top. The bottom image is clean – no shadow.

Care to take a guess?  Solution at end of this post. Here is some background information:

Exposure: 1/80s @ f/5.6

Focal Length: 70mm

ISO: 400

Camera Body: Nikon D200 with Pocket Wizard attached to hot shoe

Lens: Nikon 28.0-70.0mm f/2.8

Lighting: Nikon SB900 and SB800 on tri-flash bracket on light stand with shoot through umbrella.  Pocket Wizard attached to SB900.  SB800 set on “SU-4″ with sensor pointing towards SB900.  Both speedlights are connected to Quantum Turbo 3.

Think its the shutter?  One might expect to see this shadow across all the images rather than sporadically, no?  Rebekah Johnson guessed correctly – one of the speedlights is not firing in sync with the other.  I took the whole set up to Pro Photo where we tried several different set ups and found that when the speedlight was set to SU-4 it sometimes had a delayed flash following the speedlight triggered with the Pocket Wizard.  Rob at Pro Photo tried to help me find a “cheap” way to “daisy chain” the two speedlights.  Made sense since they’d be so close to each other, right?  One would think that there should be a way to connect the two speedlights through the PC connection but such a device doesn’t exist (hint: new product for a genius out there to develop?)  After trying several devices, e.g. radio poppers, we had no success.  The conclusion is to bite the bullet and get another Pocket Wizard to attach to the second speedlight to assure that they all trigger at the same time.  I guess I shouldn’t complain.  I’ll take the $170 solution to buy a Pocket Wizard anytime over spending $3-5K for a new camera body.

To see a video of the highlights of this event, click the following link:  PCS at the Bradleys

Its that time of the year again, Schoolhouse Supplies drive to provide a year’s supply of necessities for kids whose families are struggling to keep a roof over their head and food on the table.  Every year, local Portland businesses sponsors a Portland city grade school and not only donates money but also their time to pack backpacks with the year’s school supplies and distribute these packs to the children on the first day of school.

Each year these business compete as to which teams can pack their backpacks in the fastest time.  I  have had the pleasure of photographing Webtrends that past couple year’s in their quest to be top dog.  This year, they made a respectable time of under 3 minutes.  Jim vowed to bring the whole IT department next year in order to win the top spot!  Stay tuned…

Click on the following link to view the video:  Webtrends for Tools for Schools

Please visit the Joni Photo Fan Page to view the CWA in Camelot slideshow video and see stills from this event.