Odds and Ends

Work is picking up a bit for the next couple of weeks anyway.  Some of my pictures have been entered into a regional newspaper contest.  From now on I will post all of my printed pictures here with the date and page they were printed on so I can keep track of them.

I feel inspired to go out and try to get the best soccer shot I can get now that my photos are starting to be entered into contests.

Lucky shot as this was my first photo of the day and my camera was still set to manual focus.  Next time
I will attempt to use a more shallow depth of field in the soccer field.  For this shot accidentally set to manual focus
it was good that I had the lens stopped down a bit!  Such an ugly background though    May 26th A13

This one was interesting because it blocked the major highway that runs through downtown.  Also this shot
was taken with a new camera and is the first shot from this camera that has been printed.  I took this
with a Ricoh GRII, it was just a short detour for me to take this shot while I was on my way to the post office.
It is easy to take my GRII everywhere and in day light the photos are plenty good enough for print.
May 26 A8

This new to me  room, had a white ceiling of the perfect height for using my bounce flash with the card up.  I shot in manual all night long and I had to change my settings as I moved to and from different areas.  I handled this so much better than the last event of this type a couple of years ago.  My technical skills have greatly improved since then.
May 26th A15

One that I did not submit.  The head chef insisted on posing for a picture, so I set him up in front of a mirror.
 I never submit posed photos to the newspaper.

Fire Destroys a House

I found a huge fireball on Boundary street at 11pm. I've learned to park far away from fires so I don't get blocked in by fire hoses. After I parked and walked towards the glow and then I saw these huge flames and I ran to them and I hoped that my cameras were ready to go.  It was dark and hard for me to see the dials.  Huge flames like this don't last for long, the fire department knocks them down quick.

By the time I got to the scene and started taking pictures my legs were shaking from adrenaline.  It took every bit of technical skill that I have and pushed my cameras and lenses to their limits to get these. 


I took these on a Tuesday night and the paper goes to the printers in another county on Wednesday at about noon.  These just barley made it into the paper and did not make the front page.  They were printed on page A2.

I got a couple of good pictures at ISO 3,200 but then the flames died back and took the light with them.  I had to mostly shoot at 6,400 but they turned out well for the paper even at that ISO.

May 12 A-2

My second year in a row shooting the Mother's Day Dash on Mother's Day.  This was my first mother's day since my own Mother died.  Personally it was a rough day for me, but having a job to do helped.

May 12 A-18

Some sports action, Baseball and Soccer and a Single

A-21 April 28th

A-15 April 28

A-14 April 7

House Fire on Deegan Road and a Bus Hits a Car

April 21 A-1

I drove to a car fire this week.  Normally I only go to fire if I can walk or ride my bike to it.  If it's that close I can get there at the same time as the fire fighters and maybe get some pictures of flames.  Also if I walk or bike I'm only out some of my time if my pictures don't sell.

The scanner said this was a "fully involved structure fire", so I drove to it.

A Firefighter suffered from the heat and he went down fast.  The fire chief yelled at me for taking pictures but later he apologized.

April 21 A-1

April 21 A-6

April 21 A-20

Baseball, Tennis and Softball

It was 86 degrees, I thought there would be vendors selling drinks, but no.  The tennis coach gave me a cold bottle of water when another photographer asked for it for me.

I had both rigs but only used the 70-200 for 99% of the shots.  I'll leave the wide angle rig at home the next time I shoot any of these sports.

I stood in the dugout for baseball pictures and in the court for some of the tennis.  For softball I mostly shot over the fence on the third base line, the other fence was too high and the dugouts were behind a fence.

Since I was working for Olympic League I did not need to write cut lines or hunt down the rosters.

Easter again

Two Easter egg hunts in one day kept me busy and got me the front page and a big center spread this week.  I really like the way it was laid out.

My sports work informed me on how to capture folks catching eggs.  My 70-200mm lens, that I did not own at this time last year, helped as well.

Some Spot News

It's the slow season but I have managed to find some spot news:

March 3 A-2 Truck slips off the road 

March 10 A-17

Bits and Pieces

April 7 A-19

Wrestling

edited to show less underwear

Back to the same high school gym for wrestling.  I went to the match with my camera set for basketball.  I was dreaming.  They turned down the lights for wrestling.  I had to turn my ISO all the way to the maximum for my cameras 6,400 for one and 3,400 for the other and I still had to use my flash just to get a shutter speed of 1/320.

I'm glad that my basketball experience taught me to crank the ISO up.  All of my best shots were towards the end of the match.  Unfortunately my camera reset to .jpg for all of my best images.  I had hit reset a couple of times and that caused my camera to go back to .jpg.  I prefer to shoot in .nef or raw.  What tripped me up was my custom user settings, they will shoot in what ever format they are set to even after a reset and I forgot to check them.  It's a case of getting used to my new camera.

I got a few shots that I am happy with.  I noticed that wrestling uniforms leave very little to the imagination and underwear can show right through them.  For sale to the parents and students I can fix that in post, but I don't dare try that for publication in the newspaper.

All of these were shot at 1/320th f/ 2.8 ISO 6,400 and about 125mm

More Basketball

I've learned to turn the ISO all the way up so I can get the highest shutter speed possible.

1/800th f/ 2.8 ISO 3200 125mm Nikon D7100 with 70-200 VR1 lens

Before I started my venture into sports photography I was loath to ever turn up the ISO over 800 due to grain issues.  Now I've learned to turn it all the way up if need be.  My new camera is 24MP so that helps a bit.  I'm shooting with on D7100 and one D90.  The D90 is 12MP and it does show the grain more, also it does not focus at fast.  I have a second D7100 coming in the mail and then I should be done with camera upgrades for a least a year or two.  I still would like to get a high end mirror-less camera for street photography.

The native ISO for my D90 is 3,200 and for my D7100 is 6,400