Author: boolie

Team Motorola

The Team Motorola crew works on Michael Andretti's IndyCar at the 2001 CART race in Portland

I was in graduate school when some friends got me interested in open-wheel racing, namely Formula 1 and IndyCar, and early on Michael Andretti became one of my favorite drivers. We were thrilled one year when my stepfather’s brother offered us his Indy 500 tickets, so the great race was the first race I attended. All I had at the time was a point-and-shoot as I had not yet started my photographic journey, and regardless of interest couldn’t afford to start. After interning at Motorola’s pager division a few years later, and after getting an unexpected bonus (both unexpected and unexpectedly large) from them the following January, I was able to buy my first SLR, a Canon Rebel, and the journey began. A handful of years later I bought my first digital camera, the Canon D30, and that’s what I showed up with at the 2001 CART race in Portland.

So I was particularly delighted to photograph the Team Motorola crew working on the car of their driver, Michael Andretti, the circle complete.

Tread Carefully

A snail crawls across a fern frond in the Columbia River Gorge

Walking in the Columbia River Gorge you’re likely to come across slugs and snails underfoot, such as this snail (maybe one of our lancetooth species? I know nothing about snails) near Latourell Falls. It was just crossing over the fern frond that had fallen to the forest floor, not dining on it, I think lancetooths are carnivorous and eat other snails. The little creatures of the forest are one of the reasons I value short close-focusing distances in lenses, it minimizes the need to switch to (or even carry) a dedicated macro lens when you only need to get close, but not macro close. This was taken with the Sony-Zeiss 16-70 f/4 zoom lens, a lens I wasn’t sure about initially but which I’ve really come to like.