There's a reason why things have been so slow on the blog lately. It's because I've been in the process of setting up two new websites for Zach Ancell Photography. Now, I'm going to have one site dedicated to my blog for my photography and another site for my portfolio and all of my images. I've been thinking about doing this for a while and it's just time to move to something more professional.

In the next few weeks, I'm going to be setting up the new websites and making it seamless to work between the blog and the portfolio. The reason for the transition is just trying to put something out there that will attract more clients. Don't get me wrong, this is a great website, but I just think there are a lot of things that could be changed to make it better.

For those of you who are dedicated followers, you are going to be wanting to change over to the new blog rss feed so you can get all the updates from the new site, like you are now. I guess I'll do something that I wasn't planning on doing yet because I'm still in the process of finishing up the blog and then moving onto the portfolio site, but if you want to get a head start and get your blog rss feed for the new site, then go to www.zachancellblog.com and you can subscribe there. I'm not going to hyperlink it just to make sure those of you who are truly dedicated and actually read my posts (which probably isn't anyone) get a little advantage over the others.

Some of you may be worried that the web address wont still be zachancell.com. Don't worry. It'll be transfered over to the portfolio site in the next few weeks and everything will be taken care of. Thanks for all of your patience. Once I have all this finished, it'll be time to get back behind the camera and working hard again!

Thanks everyone, I'll post one more time when I've moved everything over to the new site!

Things are starting to slow down after completing my project with the University of Oregon's Track and Field team. My photos have started to go up around campus and town and it's a really exciting opportunity for me. I've already started getting emails from athletes asking me to do photo shoots (not sure if it's related to this project or not). And, as far as new shoots are going, I'm just trying to market myself right now in hopes of finding more jobs soon in the future. 

With that said, I wanted to post an image I took of the banners on campus (iPhone picture so it's not the best quality. The Track Office said they'd keep in touch and let me know where I'd be seeing my images next. So, if you live in Eugene and want to get the updates on where the new stuff is popping up, add me as a friend on twitter and become a fan on facebook. I'll be posting updates there as soon as I find out. 

Thanks for stopping by again!

Blog posts for the month of January have been few and far between. Besides, the obvious reason of school starting back up and having to spend time focusing on homework, I do have a pretty good reason for now posting a ton of new work recently. I managed to work out a project with the University of Oregon Track and Field team to shoot Sportraits for banners, billboards and print ads. 

I've been working out the details on what I consider my first Professional Photoshoot. It was my first opportunity really working with a client and marketing myself to them. I shot the photos last week and have been processing the last couple of days to get a quick turnaround. 

I'm sorry I don't have too much to say, I'm working on a couple of project which hopefully I can announce in the next couple of weeks but big projects come along with a bunch of planning so I'm trying not to get ahead of myself. But, stay tuned and I'll have some more great stuff for you soon. For now, I'll leave you with a couple of photos of ads that are running right now involving my photos. Hopefully you enjoy them and hopefully they catapult me to bigger and better jobs!

Take care everyone! Thanks for sticking with me during this dry patch of posting.

Best Photo of the Year:

I don't think it comes as much of a surprise that this is my image of the year. It received photo of the week on the National Association of Photoshop Professionals and was the homepage image for a couple of months. I think it really captures the essence of the athlete and gives off a dramatic mood (which is what I always try for). 

Flickr's Favorite: 

This has been the most popular flickr photo hands down. I posted this photo on October 23, 2009 and since then it has received 6,639 views, 166 favorites and been included in 4 different galleries. I think it's pretty safe to say that this is my most interesting (flickr's way of saying popular) image on flickr. The next closest image in views has 2,215 and it was posted two weeks earlier. The next image with the most amount of favorites is 83 which is half of the amount that this photo has. All I have to say is thanks Brianne for boosting my flickr stats over the past couple of months!

Best Landscape:

I took this photo during my Mile by Mile project in the summer. I love how this one image contains so many different variations of orange. But, what really makes this image stand out in my mind is the journey it took for me to get there and finally get to one of the places that I had always wanted to photograph. When I was in Vegas last week, I walked through Peter Lik's gallery and came across one of his photos at the exact same spot. He took it in vertical orientation (which I wish I did now) but I still love the coloration of my image better. It's just cool to see a photo selling for $10,000+ and I have my own version of the exact same spot. 

Best Portrait:

Ashton's image finished as the best image of the year but I still wanted to post the best Portrait of the Year. You can either think of this as the runner up Portrait of the Year, or Ashton's photo was not only the Image of the Year but also the Sportrait of the Year. Nonetheless, this was probably one of my most successful photoshoots of 2009 and I love the way it turned out. I always had a concept like this one in my mind and I'm just lucky that Cassie brought along a shirt that worked perfectly with my vision.

Best HDR Image:

Coincidentally, this was the first HDR photo that I ever did, but no matter what, it always seemed to be one of my most popular images. I had been reading a lot about HDR photography and decided to go out and try my hand at it. No matter how many HDR images that I composed, it always seemed like everyone continued commenting on this photo. I reworked it over and over but I still came back to the original version. 

Inspiration for a future Photo Series:

The more that I look at this image, the more I think that I could create a great series of photos involving U of O athletes in their given arena. But, even more than that, I like the balance between half of her face and the HDR background. I would love to come up with a series of 10-20 photos of different athletes with different backgrounds. I'm not exactly sure if I would be able to come up with that many different venues (if I just stick to Oregon Athletes) but I'm sure I could come up with an extensive series. If that tells you anything, you'll be seeing more images like this one!

Biggest Time Commitment:

It may surprise you, but I spent over 10 hours of post processing on this individual image. I took on a project for a friend of mine after we had been talking about doing some individual shots of her (Taylor). She presented the idea and wondered if I would be interested in putting together something for them for a Christmas present. School was out, and I had some time on my hands so I told them I would and here's what I came up with. If I were to do it again, I'd probably go another way with it but that's what photography is about, learning and growing. And I learned A LOT in those 10 hours of editing. 

Viewers Choice:

Here's your chance, vote for your favorite of the image of the year. To make it simple, since I don't usually post the title of the images (and half the time their titled after the model), they are arranged from top to bottom. So, go through, vote for your favorite and we can figure out which photo wins the Viewers Choice Award.