Aurora contributor Todd Bigelow encountered quite a challenge while visiting Las Vegas to cover the Major League Baseball Winter Meetings for the December 22, 2008 issue of Sports Illustrated.  Realizing that most of the meetings are conducted either in off-limit suites or in dark corners of the casinos, Todd had to get creative to get his shot.

“The challenge was to try to make creative images from people who mostly huddled in dimly lit casino hallways. I decided to check out an adjacent baseball trade show held in conjunction with the meetings. Entering the hall, I spied a couple of Vegas showgirls hired to shmooze the patrons of America’s Favorite Pastime. I followed them around for a bit in until I made this image and returned to the dimly lit hallways at the Bellagio with a bounce in my step.”

Olivier Renck captures images of rock climbing in the French Alps while negotiating some tough terrain for the December 2008/January 2009 issue of Dutch National Geographic Adventure Magazine.  The story focuses on the climbing style of via ferrata, Italian for “iron way,” which uses an established route of ascent and descent in order to minimize the risk of falling.  Climbers employ safety equipment that is permanently affixed to the rock, such as ladders and iron steps.

Olivier recalls that, “One of the difficulties for me with this story was to find the right angle to photograph, because my positions where dictated by the via ferrata since most of the time you’re clipped onto a cable that runs along the ladders or steps.”

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Olivier Renck  journeyed to the Ica Desert in southwestern Peru to explore and photograph the immensely popular sport of sandboarding.  Here, in the land of the Incas, among the worlds highest sand dunes, the sport’s popularity is booming and fans of American snowboarding magazines have been able to find their own excitement.  Olivier’s images of Peruvians carving through the sand appear in the December 2008/January 2009 issue of Dutch National Geographic Adventure Magazine.

Olivier says of the shoot, “I attached a wide-angle camera to the back of the board and used a slow shutter speed to pick up the sand flying around (just like powder snow).  To protect against the bedeviling effects of sand on the camera, I covered it in plastic wrap that I had bought at a local food store (worked very well.) I then triggered the camera with a remote control.  At the end of the ride, I didn’t know if I had gotten the shot, but for sure, we shared a very unique moment that day.”

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The December issue of Columbus Magazine, published in the Netherlands, features two images by Jonathan Kingston of the idyllic Hawaiian landscape.  After teaching an annual photography workshop on the unspoiled island of Molokai, he was able to spend some time shooting at the Kamakou Nature Preserve, which he says can only be described as “otherworldly”. Here, he witnessed the phenomenon of the “Brocken Bow”, or “mountain spectre”, in which a person’s shadow is seen as being magnified upon the clouds opposite of the peak on which they stand.

Jonathan describes the scene at the top of Kaleleolehuaula Peak. “I arrived at the overlook in a dense fog that suddenly cleared.  The sun was behind me and when I looked down the steep moss covered cliff, my shadow was visible in the rising mist and was surrounded by a Brocken Bow.  I can’t articulate the thrill of seeing this phenomenon for the first time in my life, but managed to click off a few frames before the sun fell behind the ridge and the specter disappeared. When the rainbow surrounded my shadow I thought to myself – this is it!  I’ve reached enlightenment!”

To view more work by Jonathan Kingston, please visit Aurora Photos.

Cédric Gerbehaye of Agence Vu produced the powerful visual coverage of the deplorable conditions in war torn eastern Congo which appear in a presentation for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), produced by MediaStorm.  To view the entire presentation, please visit http://www.condition-critical.org/.

Hundreds of thousands of people are on the run, fleeing a war that is raging in eastern Congo, in the provinces of North and South Kivu. They are frightened. Many are sick or wounded. Others have been harassed or raped, or have had everything they own stolen. For more than a decade, the army and several other armed groups have been fighting in the Kivus. The violence has made it impossible for people to lead normal lives.

These images are available for publication in North America through Aurora.  To view more of Cédric Gerbehaye’s work documenting the struggle of the Congolese people, please click here.

To make a donation to MSF, please go to http://www.condition-critical.org/msf-activities/.

A selection of images taken by Aurora Photographer Callie Shell during her two years following the Barack Obama campaign were printed in Tijd, a supplement of the Brussels newspaper L’Echo on December 13, 2008.  The article, which details Obama’s election campaign and ultimate success, is illustrated by Callie’s behind-the-scenes, often personal images of Obama and his family.

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Aurora contributor Boone Speed came to us with an incredible collection of images from Chris Sharma’s monumental climb of Jumbo Love on Clark Mountain in California. The climb is rated 5.15b and is the most difficult route ever completed.  Boone was there and was able to capture some fantastic images.  Currently, photographs of the climb are being used in advertisements for Sterling Rope and Sanuk Footwear and have appeared on the cover of Climbing Magazine, in Rock and Ice, Men’s Journal, Urban Climber and many other publication, including many international magazines.

Aurora President and photographer, José Azel journeyed to Norway to photograph a feature for the December 2008/January 2009 premier edition of Dutch National Geographic Adventure Magazine.  The article, entitled “Expedition Norway”, focuses on sea kayaking, hiking, glacier walking, and skydiving.  José took his camera along for a tandem skydive, allowing him to get some aerial shots of the dramatic Norwegian fjords as a backdrop to legs as he spiraled 10,000 feet in the air. Check out photograph below. He claims, “It was so cold, ice formed on my jumpsuit”.

To view more of José’s work, please visit Aurora Photos.

Images by Aurora Photographer Callie Shell of Barack Obama on the campaign trail are featured in an article, “The Ascent of Barack Obama” in the November 23, 2008 issue of The Sunday Times Magazine out of London.

To view more work by Callie Shell, visit Aurora Photos.

Aurora photographer Lucas Gilman began as a newspaper photojournalist before establishing himself as an “adventure-minded photographer”.  A lifelong lover of the outdoors, Lucas calls himself “proficient enough to at least get to the location” to photograph many of the extreme sports he shoots, such as kayaking, backcountry skiing, hiking, biking, and surfing, for magazines including National Geographic, ESPN and and Sports Illustrated.

He says, “If there’s an 80 foot cliff, I’m like, ‘Okay, you want to do that, that’s cool, I’m going to go around the cliff and ski down to the bottom.’  I’ll be there to shoot it and pick up the pieces if need be.” Recently awarded the American Photo Emerging Photographer of the Year Award for 2008, Lucas generously credits Aurora Photos with providing him valuable support and direction.

To read more about the award, and listen to an interview with Lucas, visit http://www.popphoto.com/microsite/4434/are-you-the-next-great-photographer.html

To view more work by Lucas Gilman, visit Aurora Photos.