Thursday, April 23, 2015

Taxing season








  •         ƒ/7.1
  •  
  • 80.0 mm
  • 1/500
  •  
  • 320              
  • Flash (off, did not fire)
  • I've been practicing on the soccer fields near home.  Yes, I still want that 70-200mm f/2.8 but for outdoor sports I really don't need it.  I've started stopping down so I can get a better focus.  Soccer players move fast and it's hard to focus on them, increasing the depth of field helps a bit.  So even if my lens was 2.8 all the way through, I probably would not have tried to get this shot at f/2.8

    So this week I got a good soccer shot but then the problem was getting the cut line information. I Facebook friended some soccer players who told me they knew the names of everyone in the league and I could get all the info I needed from them after the game.  Great!  That meant I was free to just shoot and maybe get a good shot rather than miss the good shots due to having to run around and collect names.  

    Then it turned out that no one who I talked to knew the name of the team they played for.  I mean folks did not know the name of their own teams!  And I was unable to get the name of the player in red.  This was frustrating, I was able to get just barely enough cut line info for the shot to print.  I was pleasantly surprised to see my photo on the front page. I thought that any soccer picture I took would get buried back in the sports section.

    Hopefully all this hard work will get me some new friends in the local Hispanic community.  Maybe next time getting cut line information will be easier. 

    Last week one of my pictures from a school board meeting made it into the paper.  I did not think the photo was worth submitting because it was not visually exciting, but it was the news so my spouse convinced me to submit the picture.  My spouse did right.

    Next week I shoot my first wedding.  A wedding is a big  important event and I'm nervous, but the event should happen in a predictable and set order.  I think the bride will be easier to follow than a soccer ball.

    I finally got my taxes done, the AARP does taxes for free, even for the self employed.  I have so many equipment needs that it might be a few years before my income exceeds my expenses.



    Thursday, April 9, 2015

    Mad Easter Dash


    Wow, what a day this was!


    ShyAnn Stone, almost 2, gingerly collects eggs to put into her striped bee basket Saturday at the 31st Union Easter Egg hunt.  The  event sponsored by  by local area businesses took place at Union Community Park on Saturday.


    The editor asked me to send an uncropped version of this photo, I hoped that meant it was
    going to be featured on the front page.  For this photo I used my fill flash to help cancel out
    any harsh noon time shadows.  It took about six pictures for me to get this one with  her isolated from the background, facing me, basket in view and egg in hand.  I later wished I had shot it at f/2.8.
      



  • ƒ/9.0
  •  
  • 17.0 mm
  • 1/200
  •  
  • 200
  • Flash (on, fired)
  • I had two assignments on Easter Saturday and I had to do my taxes.  Once my taxes were done I headed to my first assignment in the pouring rain.  I carried an enormous heavy golf umbrella in one hand to protect my camera.  In my other hand I carried my camera with external flash attached.  I needed a third hand to wipe the water from my lens.  The rain was dripping down off of my umbrella and hitting my camera in spite of my umbrella being enormous.

    My second assignment was miles away and started just minutes after I left my first assignment.  I was really afraid that I was going to miss the second one.  I was racing down twisty dirt roads, driving way faster than I wanted to.  I could not arrive late!

     I made it with three minutes to spare.  I found a parking spot right in the front that was only blocking the street a little bit and I jumped out of my car with mere seconds to spare.  Then I had to rush back to my car to get my notepad. 

    Luckily for me the event started about five minutes late so I had enough time to briefly orient myself before the mad dash for Easter eggs began.  I decided to focus on younger kids for the second event since my focus had been on older kids during the fist event.

    I homed right in on a little girl with a bright pink coat and striped bee basket and I waited for the hunt to start.  After the egg hunts were over there was an egg toss.  I was really glad for the egg toss event as all my pictures so far had been of kids hunting for eggs and I wanted some variety to turn into the paper.

    At some point my lens image stabilization (VR) switched off but my hand was steady enough that my pictures turned out fine anyway.  I have now put a piece of tape over the VR switch so I will never accidentally move it again..  It is a problem that that  M/A switch and the VR switch are identical and right next to each other on my Sigma lens.  I tend to accidentally turn off the VR when trying to turn off the auto focus.  I wish this lens would allow me to switch to manual focus without flipping a switch.

    I used my external flash all day long, first to combat the gloom and later as a fill flash.  I did not use FP but kind of wish I had used FP at the egg toss.  My in camera flash does not support FP but my external flash supports it and my camera will support FP with an external flash.

    I mostly shoot in programmed auto.  There is no time to mess around with manual settings when things are happening all around me and I need to catch them as they happen.  For some of the egg toss photos I put my camera in "sports" mode so I could take the shots and not have to worry about the camera settings, the cost was no use of my flash.  Next time at an event like that I will shoot in shutter priority mode so I can get the shutter speed I want and have FP flash.

    I used back button focus for the egg toss pictures and regular auto-focus for all the egg hunting pictures.  I brought two D90 camera bodies with me but I ended up using only one of them.  The one I used was equipped with my Sigma 17-50mm f/2.8, the other one was equipped with my Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6.






     Earlene Shaw holds a plastic bag over her head for protection from heavy  rain while children finish hunting for eggs at Oakland Bay Jr High




  • ƒ/9.0
  •  
  • 17.0 mm
  • 1/200
  •  
  • 200
  • Flash (on, fired)



  • Soggy participants open up eggs for the candy inside and then put
    them into a recycle bin for next year at Oakland Bay Jr High
    The blue umbrella in this picture is the exactly the same as the umbrella I was using



  • ƒ/6.3
  •  
  • 17.0 mm
  • 1/160
  •  
  • 200
  • Flash (on, fired)


  • Justino Hernandez (in yellow) 8, falls to the ground and trips up Joel Hernandez (in blue) 9 while both boys rush to collect eggs on the slippery wet field at Oakland Bay Jr High on Sat.


  • ƒ/10.0
  •  
  • 17.0 mm
  • 1/200
  •  
  • 200
  • Flash (on, fired)


  • Children age 17 and under line up and take one practice toss at the start of an egg tossing competition at Union Community Park on Sat.


  • ƒ/4.5
  •  
  • 50.0 mm
  • 1/1000
  •  
  • 400
  • Flash (auto, did not fire)



  • Lacy McIntosh of Shelton reacts as her egg splatters during the egg tossing competition at Union community park


  • ƒ/13.0
  •  
  • 17.0 mm
  • 1/200
  •  
  • 200
  • Flash (on, fired)


  • Sunday, April 5, 2015

    Race cars and princesses revisited

    This may have been my most fun assignment yet.  Our local race track hosted a regional training session for race track workers and volunteers.  I got to play with the jaws of life and I got to go for a ride in a race car.
    Everyone was in a good mood and enjoyed having their pictures taken.


    My photos from Frozen were printed this week too, but my favorite photo was not selected for the paper.

    I had a technical issue that could have ruined my race track photos.  I always shoot in RAW / .NEF, so I thought that when I set my camera to "Active D lighting" at the highest level it would have no effect on my RAW files.  I set it on high so I could see what effect it had on my .jpg files.  No other settings have effects on RAW files as the RAW file is just what the camera sees with no editing.

    Well I learned the hard way that active D lighting does effect RAW files.  It changes the exposure level before the shutter opens.  My files all came out slightly under exposed.  I was able to bring the exposure up to the proper level in Adobe camera raw but at the cost of adding a small amount unwanted  noise to my photos.  The photos were still better than newspaper sharp, due to my ISO being set at only 200, but they were not quite up to my standard.  I have now turned off active D lighting and I will leave it off.    Lesson learned the hard way.