A Tribute to Fran Crippen, Open-Water Swimmer Who Died last Weekend

Over the weekend, Fran Crippen, the 26-year-old open-water swimming star, died of a heart attack during the last leg of the Marathon Swimming World Cup in the United Arab Emirates.

Steve Bonini got the pleasure of photographing Fran Crippen before his untimely death and here are two of those shots.

A Tribute to Fran Crippen:

"I had the good fortune of photographing Fran during my 4 years shooting for TYR, and was saddened to hear he had died during a race last week. In addition to being a world class competitor and athlete, I also saw that he was kind, thoughtful, and a great guy to hang out with. No frills, no b.s, just the kind of guy this world needs more of." ~Steve Bonini

You can go to Fran Crippen's official website here.
Or read more details about the news from ESPN here.

Shoes BANNED by NBA

Rick Chou shot the shoes that just got banned by the NBA!
The shoes were banned because of a spring-like device hidden near the front of the shoe, which violates a league rule against ‘Undue Competitive Advantage’ that increases a player’s vertical leap.

Here's what Rick had to say about it: "I was very impressed by the design and the technology of the product. But even more so, I was impressed by the people who made it happen. The principals of the company are some the most inspiring clients I have ever worked with. The shoes have unique texture and colors, we experimented with different lighting, angles and background treatments aimed to give the viewers an initial impact as well as something we can carry into the future."

Read the article & video from the LA times.
Or read the story by the New York Times.
It's also on NBC, ESPN, Wired, CBS, MSNBC, Yahoo.... Everywhere!

Caterina Bernardi and the Primavera beauty

"In the famous painting 'Primavera,' the artist, Sandro Botticelli, draped the women subjects in a translucent chiffon to highlight the contour of their bodies and create a romanticized angelic feel. This was the inspiration for the underwater images I took of Aliona at her pool in LA a week before she was due to deliver her baby. She and I had brainstormed quite a bit and agreed we wanted something different than traditional portraits, and the underwater idea was definitely a winner."

"The inside of her pool has a gray/blue tone cement finish which gave a beautiful background to work with, plus perfect weather created gorgeous natural lighting conditions underwater. We experimented with different colored chiffons but the white one felt more ethereal and aesthetically compelling against the blue water, and also enhanced the shape of her belly. Aliona worked with grace despite the extra weight she was carrying, and at the end of the second day Aleksandr was kicking quite a bit (he was tired too).
Adam over at Sugar Digital sprinkled his consistent magic dust to finalize the images."

Click on either image to to view more of Caterina Bernardi's work.

Samsung Smart Phones by ALTER

The above ad, "Space Ships" is a geeks dream!

What's makes Alter stand above the rest, is how well the CGI terrain and stock terrain work together. A lot of times when you put CGI next to a photograph of something real, it will make the CGI look fake. This is not the case with Alter - they integrated the two seamlessly. The mountain tops add and intensify to the CGI created background.

The terrain is made with a mixture of CGI and stock imagery. The space ships are CGI custom built then composited together with the photographed explosions.