PHOTOGRAPHER'S ROUNDTABLE: Howard Lao, Alisha Lovrich and Jeff Cohen...

paulmerca.blogspot.com is pleased to host the first photographers roundtable with a trio who I've had the honor of working with over the last several years at various meets around the world.

Portland-based Howard Lao (running alongside Ashton Eaton/photo by Paul Merca) is a frequent contributor to this site, and has been shooting professionally for the last five years, after graduating from the University of Washington, where he ran the hurdles for the Huskies.

Lao has never left his Husky roots, as he was always present at most University of Washington home meets since graduating, and did freelance work for the Huskies' web site.

While he came up to Seattle to shoot, his work for the UW web site led him to freelance gigs for several schools who hired him to shoot their team's athletes competing at either the Dempsey Indoor or outdoors at Husky Track. He's also contributed photos to the Portland Oregonian and to oregonlive.com.

Auckland-based Alisha Lovrich was a design student in New Zealand who was also competing in the pole vault. She got into photography as part of her design curriculum and started shooting track and field meets when she was injured.

Santa Monica-based Jeff Cohen has had a camera in his hands from the time he was a toddler. From his photo of Carl Lewis (above/photo by Jeff Cohen) shot with his father's Nikon film camera winning the 100 meters at the Los Angeles Olympics, many of his photos are iconic, and his work has earned him a significant following on Instagram and his social media platforms.

During the course of our talk, each of them talked about their background, the equipment they use, and then we got to the meat of the conversation, which involved each photographer talking about their shots.

To warn all of you in advance, this video is 90 minutes long, but we all had fun talking about their photos.

As always, if you have any questions, comments, concerns about the video content, please don't hesitate to click the envelope at the bottom of the post or in the comments section of the YouTube channel.

Here's the video: