Spot news

A friend told me about a tree that impaled a house in town.  She sent me the message via face book chat.  So I put down my morning coffee and drove up the hill to take a look.

Hail was falling, so I took the outdoor pictures from inside my car.

Then I thought to ask the homeowners if I could come inside and take some pictures.  They said yes.

 I was tired, I did not have my favorite camera and  my external flash was acting up, but I got the job done with my trusty old D-90 and its built in flash.

Since the paper goes to press the same day that this happened, I took my cameras straight into the office and handed over my SD cards.

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)

Boys and Girls Club Polar Plunge

I got to shoot a polar plunge this weekend.  I felt a little bit intimidated by this assignment because the publisher of the paper that sent me to photograph this polar plunge won awards for his photography of a similar event just last year.  I set the bar for myself very high and I wondered if I could meet my own expectations.

As usual I turned to the internet for tips.  There is not a lot written about how to photograph a polar plunge.  Search on “how to photograph a car show” and you will find many helpful links.   Search on “how to photograph a polar plunge” and nothing comes up that actually matches. 

I thought about my assignment some more, what would be the best angle?  What is the most cliché angle?  It became clear to me that if I wanted to get the best shots I needed to be in the water.  I could stand on the shore and get maybe one shot of the sides of the participant’s faces and then have to shoot pictures of their backs or I could stand in the water and get close pictures of the participants faces. 

Okay, so I was going to stand in the water, but was I the first to think of this?  No, of course not.  So I searched again,  but this time for references to photographers standing in the water while shooting a polar plunge and that is when I found  Meryl Schenker's blog: http://merylschenkerphotography.com/2010/01/25/special-olympics-polar-plunge/.  I read her blog post and  I saw something that made me think twice about my idea of standing in the water. 

“This was actually my first time photographing a polar plunge and I learned a lot about where to stand and where not to stand as saltwater splashed my expensive camera gear, which thankfully appears to be fine. A couple of colleagues were apparently not as lucky as they lost their equipment to the sea.”

Uh oh!  I had no desire to lose my equipment to the sea.  Maybe it was time to rethink this.  It was late in the evening and my shoot was to be early the next morning, but I sent  the blog author Meryl Schenker  an email  in hopes that she might have the time and inclination to answer me.   I told her that I was about to shoot my first polar plunge and I asked her what she had learned about where to stand.

While waiting for an answer from her I decided that I would shoot the polar plunge with my cheapest DSLR and lens.  I would use my Nikon D40 with the 18-55mm stock lens.  I can shoot great photos with this set up in spite of it being cheap and it would not hurt as much to ruin it with salt water.

Meryl  wrote back to me.  Her instructions were to stand in the water and wear waders while trying not to get knocked over or get my camera wet.  From that I gleaned the other photographers who lost their equipment to the sea probably got knocked down.

I don't own waders, but I decided to stick with my plan to stand in the water use my D40.

The fog and low light meant that I had to bump up the ISO to shoot action

When I arrived at the shoot the next  morning the weather was overcast and foggy. I took a couple of test shots and I knew that  I was going to have to shoot with an ISO of  at least 640 if I wanted to get a good shutter speed and enough depth of field to have most of my subjects in focus.  My D40 would not be up to the task.  The D40 does not handle ISO very well above 400.  The D90 is good to about 800 and acceptable up to about 1,600.

So I went with my D90 and my 17-50mm 2.8 lens.  In other words, my best gear.   I decided to minimize splashing by only going out knee deep and I went so far as to ask the organizers to ask the participants not to knock me over or splash me on purpose.  Of course I was going to get splashed a bit, but I did not want to get caught in the middle of a splash war with people purposefully splashing me.

Twice last year while on assignment, people splashed me and my camera on purpose.  I had water squirted at me at both the Tahuya Days Parade and at Oysterfest.  Both times it was done on purpose by people trying to have fun with me, but not realizing that there is nothing funny about  getting water on an expensive camera.

When it was time for the plunge the events happened quite fast.  I did not have time to get into the water before the countdown started.  Thankfully the organizer, who had forgotten about me, paused the count at 5 to ask the participants not to knock me down and then the count resumed from 5.  I did not like being the center of attention but I was glad that the participants were warned of my presence.

 I had been hoping that it would be done quietly and I never imagined that it would be done in the middle of the countdown.  At least the pause gave me time to get into position!  I was not happy to have my presence interrupt the event and I hoped that it did not constitute some sort if ethical breech.  Another newspaper had a reporter/photographer there.  What was she going to think?

I had planned on standing where I could focus on the participant who was dressed as a leprechaun, but I was lucky to even make it into the water on time, so I just stood right in the middle of the oncoming line and took pictures of everything that caught my eye.  

Oh girl, here they come rushing straight towards me.

By the 6^th picture I had water on my lens, I reached for the lens cloth that I had kept handy in anticipation of a wet lens, only to find that the pocket I was keeping it in was wet.   The cloth was too small for me to quickly dig out of  my now wet and sticky pocket.  I grabbed a larger washcloth I had and I used it instead.

 The washcloth was not perfect and it smeared water on my lens but I had to keep shooting as the event was going to be over fast.  With water smeared on my lens, my camera had a little bit of trouble focusing so I did not get as many shots as I wanted as quickly as I wanted them.  I fired away as quickly as I could and I hoped for the best.

Then while I was still in the water photographing the last folks who were coming out of the water, I realized that some of the participants were already leaving in their cars.  That meant I would not be able to get their names for the cutlines. 

However, through the magic of facebook I was able to at least get the names to go with my favorite shots before the deadline.

L-R:   Christy Garner,  Mary Gonzales and Katie Hopkins splash into the frigid waters
of Allyn's North Bay  together.  

This picture might be "newspaper sharp" but with no name for a cut line it probably won't publish.

I got a few drops of water on my camera body and on the outside of my lens, but my camera is just fine.  I used a UV filter over the front of my glass to protect it from any splashes.

Shooting this event was a rush and I want to shoot more of them now.  There is another plunge next weekend, but that job has been given to a staff reporter.

Autumn Rain

I went for a walk and then got caught in the rain with my camera,
so I ducked under an overhang and took these pictures while I waited
for the deluge to end.

Note to self: buy an umbrella.