Valentines Day at the Senior Center

Jan Balmelli and Al Walp of Shelton do the Boot Scootin' Boogie at the Valentines Eve dance and  fundraiser sponsored by the Mason County Senior activities  Center held at the Pavilion in Sentry park in Shelton, Washington on Friday February 13th, 2015

I decided to go to the senior center to photograph their Valentines Eve dance and fundraiser. 

Bill Hillstead and Betty Berry dance at the Valentines Eve dance

 and  fundraiser sponsored by the Mason County Senior activities Center

held at the Pavilion in Sentry park in Shelton, Washington on 

Friday February 13th, 2015

Shanna Cox and Ted Little stand at the bar during their "romantic Valentines Eve" at the Valentines

 Eve dance  and  fundraiser sponsored by the Mason County Senior activities Center

held at the Pavilion in Sentry park in Shelton, Washington on Friday February 13th, 2015

Robert and Michelle Kurtz on the dance floor at the Valentines Eve dance

 and  fundraiser sponsored by the Mason County Senior activities Center

held at the Pavilion in Sentry park in Shelton, Washington on 

Friday February 13th, 2015

This venue is very dark so I was happy to have my new fast wide angle zoom.  This was the first time I got to use my new lens in this room.  I can say that the lens helped a lot.  It was nice to be able to shoot at 2.8 from 17-50mm!  

 David and Kathleen Hopkins tear up on the dance floor at the Valentines Eve dance  and  fundraiser sponsored by the Mason County Senior activities Center held at the Pavilion in Sentry park in Shelton, Washington on Friday February 13th, 2015

Famine

Ah well the feast is over.  Two of my varsity photos have run since the end of the feast, but no more sports assignments for me now that more help has been hired.  I can say that I know how to shoot basketball now.

Jan 19th B-4

Jan 26, B-4

A nice wrestling photo essay, wrestling under the spotlight

Slam Dunk.  My editor said that as far as he knew this was the first time he had
ever run a photo of a high school boy dunking the ball.  Yelm at Shelton Boys Basketball

Jan 12 B12-13

Wrestling under the spot light.  This is tricky stuff and my new camera really helped.  Most of the shots that were printed were taken with my D500 with my f/2.8 70-200 Lens.  There are a few wide angle shots taken with my D7100 f/2.8 17-50 Sigma lens and external flash.  The flash photos with the d7100 were poorer quality, but the wide lens let me get in closer.  I'd love to have two D500's, but that's just not happening.

Jan 12 B-1

Jan 12 B-1

Jan 12 B-5

This bowling meet was in Port Orchard and Kitsap Sun photographer Larry Steagall was there.  You can bet that I watched him so I could learn.  He tended to hold his camera over his head a lot, so I did the same for the high five shot.  Ron Quin was there as well.

Jan 12 B-6

Jan 12 B-12

Jan 12, b-13

Happy New Year!

Jan 5 A-1 and A-12-13 Center Spread

I had my second camera set up on the beach to get a photograph of the swimmers from behind, while I stood in the water to get a photo of the swimmers from the front.  I had my beach camera set to interval shooting.  My beach camera took on picture per second until the memory card was full.  This is a good technique for covering all the angles at and event that is over in a flash.

B-1

B-3

Varsity page

Basketball

Dec 29 A-1

These past few weeks I have learned that our home school's stadium and gym are among the darkest around.  So I guess I got thrown in off the deep end by learning to photograph sports in our local venues.

My "holiday run" is about to end, the new sports reporter starts Jan. 9th.   My paper has never sent me to photo a sporting that they have also sent a reporter too.   I'm trying to let my photos speak for themselves and hoping they will see the value in sending both a reporter and a photographer.

My 50mm f/1.9 is now my favorite basketball lens.  I like to sit near the baseline and to my right of the back of the backboard to get most of the shots.  I've also started to experiment with shooting from the stands to get a clean background and to get away from the referees who often block my views.

Dec29 B-1  

Nikon D500

50.0 mm f/1.8

ƒ/1.8

 

50.0 mm

1/1250

 

3200

Flash (off, did not fire)

 

Dec 29 B-3

Dec 22 B-1

Dec 22 B-4

Dec 22 B-5

My Holiday Sports run Continues!

Still a couple of weeks left in my Holiday Run.  December can be a great month for a stringer.  Loving my D500 camera.  Love the low light capablity of it, love the frame per second, love the anti-flicker technology.  Love that the focus point can be set to move when you change from horizontal to vertical shooting.  Love that it came with a name brand battery grip.

My only real compliant about the D500 it so far is the way it eats up batteries.  I have a lot of extra batterie and using a battery grip help.

More sports photos and some wild art

Learned that its okay to shoot basketball and wider apertures than imagined.  My 50mm prime lens set at f/ 2.0 did a fine job.  I'm very tempted to leave my 17-50mm  f/ 2.8 zoom at home for basketball, but it can be nice for wide horizontal shots.  More on that next week when the shots get printed.

Dec 1 B-22

Dec 1 A-24

Dec 1 B-4

Sports and Salmon

Keeping busy for now.  I went ahead and ordered a D500 camera, this will insure no profit for the year, but it is needed for sports.  I hope to have it later this week.  I wish it could come today since swimming and bowling are on the schedule for tomorrow.

Nov 24th A-7

Nov 24th B-1

Nov 24 B-4

One last football game

This is the darkest stadium in the county and it has flickering lights.  This team had a game to make up, so there was one last game to shoot.

Kick placeholder sacked by the home team.  Same stadium, different game.
 This one turned out red but it was fixable in Adobe camera raw

Silverdale Stadium has much nicer lighting.

Final Football Games

I'm the sports photographer for now, so I've been keeping busy.  Got to shoot my first daylight football game,  really enjoyed being able to shoot at a decent shutter speed.  Got some condensation inside of my camera during the game, so went to my car and grabbed my other camera body and put my long lens on it to finish the job.

Nov. 3 B-1

Nov 3 B-1

I Photographed two night games 22 miles apart that started at the same time.  I covered the first game for one quarter and finally got to meet Kitsap Sun photographer Steve Zugschwerdt.  I was surprised that he mistook me for the team photographer with my double camera photojournalist set up.  He was using a zoom lens on a monopod and standing up.  I got to the second game just before the start of half time.  The hometeam got clobbered at both games.

It turned out to be homecoming night at the first game and I had the wrong lens out for the job, so I rushed back to my car get my other camera.  I can photo half time stuff with a flash and a long lens, but I get terrible red eye doing that.  It's better to have the flash off of the camera or at least above it.  There was a lot of red eye in one of the shots I turned in, the paper fixed up the red eyes before printing.

Nov 3 B-5

Nov 3 B-7 shot with long lens

Nov 3 A-26 shot with long lens and flash, lots of red eye was removed for printing

Varsity photo for the advertising department

And finally a soccer photo essay in the pouring rain Nov 3 B-9