Tuesday, July 21, 2009

It's not a pink Cadillac...

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It was actually a Ford, but it was still a pretty car. And the owner had quite the crowd around the car. With all the plastic and fiberglass that cars of today are made of, it makes it a lot easier to appreciate the just how beautiful the old cars of the 50's and 60's really were. I actually have come to enjoy shooting car shows, not just for the photos that can be made, but just to be able to gawk at these old cars I could never afford.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Little League, Big Emotions...

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Since the majority of the sports we cover is high school and college, the summer is pretty much the dead time of the year as far as sports coverage goes. So, to get something local we spend a lot of our time covering events that we wouldn't normally cover during the rest of the year. Little League is one of them. This isn't exactly terrible, however, since it's at least the cream of the Little League crop, the all-star tournaments.
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The big problem I have with covering little league is a lot of shooting baseball is anticipating action and where the ball is going to go. Normally, with high school and college hitters, I expect hitters to pull the ball. So, I set up to be ready for a player to pull the ball. This isn't really the case with little leaguers. They tend to spray the ball all over the place. It seemed like I spent more time missing plays because I anticipated the ball going the wrong way!
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The best part about shooting the young kids is they are still playing just for the fun of the game and the emotion they show is pure, raw emotion. They still get excited about the little things and cheer like crazy after a home run. They even tend to cry after they strike out. I've always been a fan of the reaction shots, since my job is about telling the story of what happened, reactions are the best way to tell the story , of course provided the picture does tell the story.
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Sunday, July 5, 2009

Happy 4th of July...

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Fireworks are kind of a pain in the ass to shoot. The past couple of years I've shot them I didn't get much I was too thrilled with. Normally when I shoot fireworks I go with a long exposure shot on a tripod. This allows me to let in a lot of light and get multiple explosions in the air at once. Last night I started out the same, but it wasn't working. I was getting some decent fireworks shots but they were shooting so many fireworks into the air I didn't need the long exposure, it was just over exposing and the colors were just making everything white. Plus, the kids sitting on top of the truck I was trying to frame up weren't showing up. So I scrapped everything and went hand held and did a quick flash set up with a pocket wizard to set it off. I already had the pocket wizard on the camera to set it off on the tripod, so I just plugged the other one into the flash.
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I stuck with a slow shutter since the pop of the strobe would keep the kid sharp, I wasn't too concerned about camera shake on the fireworks since it wasn't too bog of a deal. I did actually get one nice shot that I liked from the long exposures (above), but it just wasn't what I was looking for. However, my favorite shot was the top one. It had a lot of stuff going on that worked out well. All the explosions in the air coupled with the reflections on the cars and the kid watching all worked out really well. What made the photo was something I didn't even notice until I got back to the office, the little kid sitting inside the truck because he was afraid of the fireworks.
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