Here is the Humboldt River in Elko during sunset. We have a footbridge next to our house. Normally, the Humboldt doesn’t offer much of a sight since it barely has running water most of the year, but in the early spring it had enough water to give off a nice blue sheen. I’m usually not much of a landscape and scenery photographer. Those people usually have to be incredibly patient. Here I didn’t spend too much time, just snapped it while I walked past, but I think it definitely turned out well.
In the spirit of March Madness and the Final Four on Saturday, I decided to share a photo of the basketball hoop I grew up with as a farmer’s kid in Eastern Montana. I remember watching plenty of basketball games and then taking my joy or frustration out on this hoop hanging from the barn. I shot hoops on this for hours it seems like. It was a good set up, hooked up to the side of our family’s barn on our farm where my parents still farm and ranch. There was always beautiful outdoor pictures everywhere and it was a great place to grow up with seemingly endless lands to explore on foot or as in my case on a four-wheeler. I look forward to going back and visiting the place in July.
I took this photo last fall when I got an incredible opportunity to hike up the Goshute Mountain south of West Wendover, Nevada. I met up with some people involved with a Migration Project. Although it looks like this sharp-shinned hawk was out by itself in the wilderness it was actually captured and held by a member of the project. This was all about using a telephoto lens and making sure the angle left out any human hands.
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Property of the Elko Daily Free Press
Here’s a photo I took at the recent Ruby Mountain Relay. I was really excited, because the runners run all through the night and I thought I could get some really cool photos with all the different lighting situations. This one I ended up taking right at sunset in the middle of a lonely highway. This runner was stretching before his leg and I hit him with the flash and got the nice lighting on the horizon.
So I got the chance to check out the Elko Safety Olympiad a couple weekends ago. It’s a competition where all these different gold mines around Elko bring their emergency responders and compete to see who’s best at saving lives. I had out my wide angle lens and when I saw these shoes on the ground I decided to get really low. It was an added plus that the girl on the board, who was pretending to be injured, also had some fake blood on her arm. I felt like this photo had a lot of interesting elements in it.
Copyright Elko Daily Free Press
So I took this photo last week for an advertisement for Haleys in Elko. The store sells jewelry as you can see she’s wearing a bunch of jewelry. One of my coworkers brought the cowboy hat, and at the time I was thinking that it might look a little hokey with her grabbing the hat like that. But once I looked at it on camera it sure looked pretty cool especially with the clean background which is an alley on fifth street. It was a good chance for me to shoot a photo that was more fashion and modeling orientated. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to do more of these shots in the future.
I took this shot at the Trashin’ Fashion Show in Elko put on by the local roller derby girls. This derby girl had one of the most popular dresses of the night, a porn card dress. However, for obvious reasons I couldn’t put it in the paper, but still this was probably my favorite shot of the actual cat walk. For this photo I ended up blurring the dress in photoshop.
In the paper we ended up using one I shot before the show started of the girls waiting in the dressing room. With their faces painted and the crazy getups it turned out to be a pretty good photography night.
All rights reserved Matt Unrau and Big Sky Photography
I took this picture of the Elko dump on the way back from the animal shelter. I don’t think I did the actual scene justice. There was so many seagulls and the sky in Elko was actually interesting, not the usual cloudless sunny sky. The sky, in particular, was maybe the missing ingredient of what I couldn’t quite translate into the photo. The photo is still interesting though.
Property of the Elko Daily Free Press
I took this photo a couple weeks ago for Spring Creek’s first home series. Here the West Wendover catcher ends up missing a pop fly, but I didn’t have his name and I don’t think it would have made the newspaper anyway. I still think it’s a great scene though. The ball is right on top of the mit and all the opposing players are staring at the play from the dugout.