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Sports Action Photos: The thrill of victory…and the agony of defeat!
Published by July 10th, 2009 in Digital Pictures. 0 CommentsI have always felt that some of the greatest sports photos of our time were not necessarily the stop action NFL leaping grabs you see in Sports Illustrated (though they are awesome). I personally like the close up, gritty photos that show the faces of winners and losers. I think maybe ABC’s Wide World of Sports said it best in their classic theme line, “The thrill of victory…and the agony of defeat!”
The Saturday morning soccer pitches and T-ball fields across America offer drama; maybe of a different sort, but drama nonetheless. Below are a few photos I have chosen from recent trips to those hallowed fields of sport — T-ball and soccer.
Sometimes the best photos from children’s sports are actually kind of funny. Below, this young T-Ball player totally obliterated the “T” while missing the ball - leaving the sphere perfectly suspended in air. I love this child’s expression.
The action on the soccer pitch in the photo below is great stuff, but I love the facial expression on the kid in gray. He’s probably thinking, “Whooa . . . that ball is coming fast.”
The photo below tells a story: the life of a first base coach (in this case a parent snagged for Saturday morning duty). Do you suppose this coach is advising his player on a grand-strategy for stealing second base or is it a grain of sand that got in the runner’s eye? Either way, this is the stuff of real drama on the diamond.
You think the player below adjusting his hat, but not really. Check out those stealy eyes. Naw! He’s actually sending the catcher a secret signal that the coach is offering free ice cream to the whole team after the game.
Here are some quick tips for your Saturday morning trips to the world of kids-league-sports:
Tip 1: Set your camera’s quality level to the highest possible resolution (super-fine or something similar)
Tip 2: Set your camera’s ISO to 400 (it will allow you to shoot at a faster shutter speed)
Tip 3: Set your camera’s shutter speed (Time-Value) at 500 of a second or faster
Tip 4: Use your flash (even in the morning sun) - it’s probably a setting called “Daylight-Fill Mode” or something similar
Tip 5: Use your camera’s telephoto zoom function to “zoom-in” on the action
Tip 6: Take lots of pictures (for action photos your “yield” will be lower; maybe even as low as 20% really good photos)
Tip 7: At home, online, or a photo-store digital-kiosk like MotoPhoto in Tyler, crop-in on your photos to emphasize your young player on the soccer pitch.
Tip 8: Take advantage of your sports-action photos and make photo-gifts. Order one on a coffee mug for Dad. Make a photo tie for grandpa. Put one on a mouse-pad for your own office. At MotoPhoto in Tyler we have all of these gifts and many more available at great prices.
Until next time, live well and take lots of pictures!
Photo TIPS: raindrops keep falling . . . from the water hose
Published by July 4th, 2009 in Digital Pictures. 1 Comment
I have discovered a simple truth about photography: some of the best picture opportunities are right under your nose if you just look for them.
Take the above photo. Around sunset today I was walking in our backyard admiring my wife’s garden. Her Knockout Roses are just awesome this year. She had the water sprinkler going and I noticed the droplets from the sprinkler really created an awesome visual effect when set against the late afternoon sun.
Sensing a good photo-opportunity, I quickly gathered my camera (Canon 50D), slapped on a telephoto zoom lens and dug out my tripod. I set up my gear shooting directly into the roses with the sun behind them, streaming through the water droplets from the sprinkler.
Then, to exaggerate the effect of moving water droplets flying through the air, I used my camera’s “Time Value” setting and moved the shutter speed dial to a very slow shutter speed (1/10th of a second). You really need a tripod to do this successfully. I also positioned my camera so I had a dark background behind the streaming water droplets and the colorful roses.
The picture above is the result. I also ran a Photoshop filter to add a little artsy effect.
I like taking photos of flowers more than just about anything. 
I photographed this Star Gazer (Lily) with the sunlight backlighting the pedals. When photographed that way, together with a dark background, flowers really stand out, as opposed to photographing them with the sun on the face of the pedals.
Below, I made this picture in Limuru, Kenya, and utilized the same technique - dark background, backlighted sunlight.
The photo below uses another photo technique, but one that requires a digital imaging program like Photoshop Elements. I masked the flower and kept its native color while I changed everything else in the photo to black and white. This effect brings all the focus to the one flower.
You could use the same technique with a backyard portrait of your child. Create the portrait in color as normal, mask a bow in her hair or maybe some other subject element, then convert the rest of the picture to black and white. This is a popular duo-tone technique used in many professional studios. In our studios we offer it to our clients as “spot-of-color.”
Until next time, remember your back yard. It is a great place to take awesome pictures.
Want to delete your photos from a media card? Here’s how
Published by June 26th, 2009 in Digital Pictures. 0 CommentsWhen I am not blogging, I am in the retail photo imaging business (MotoPhoto – Tyler, Texas). Most days in our imaging center we receive a variety of consumer questions about their digital pictures and cameras. Digital photography is not well understood by many people, but it seems to be getting better.
By far the number one question concerns how and when to delete your pictures. This blog will hopefully take some of the mystery out of deleting photos and explain how and when to delete, including that dreaded process that few people seem to understand “formatting your media card.”
Let’s start out with the basics: media cards. Inside your camera is a small, removable “chip” (that term seems to be what many people call them). The proper name though is a media card. In many point-and-shoot cameras the media card is located inside the battery compartment, next to the battery. To get the media card out, you simply press on it with your finger (any finger will do) and it pops up and you pull it out.
The media card is to a digital camera what film is to a film camera. The media card temporarily stores your digital photos until you are ready to make prints, copy images to a CD, e-mail your photos, upload them to Facebook, put them on photo-gifts (there are literally thousands of things you can do with your digital photos).
Some people permanently store their photos on media cards and keep buying new cards when the old one is full. That’s okay I guess, if Uncle Harry endowed you with a fortune and money is no problem. But media cards are really made to be reused, over and over.
I usually advise my customers to copy their images often from their media card to another medium, more permanent form of storage like photographic prints, CDs, DVDs, or especially popular these days, online albums and backup services.
MotoPhoto offers an online album. An online backup service that I personally use is called Mozy. For a small monthly fee (less than $5), Mozy will backup your photos (and other types of files) to their storage vaults (probably located under the Nevada desert somewhere – just kidding!). The online backup uses your Internet connection. Often, that happens at night while you sleep.
Okay! Back to deleting. When should you delete your photos off your media card and reuse the card to take more pictures? Only delete your pictures when you are 100% satisfied that you have made a backup of your precious photos with some other form of media – like real photographic prints, a CD or DVD or an online backup service. Once you are sure you are backed up, you can feel comfortable deleting your photos from your media card and starting over taking more pictures on that same card.
How do you delete pictures? With your media card still inside your camera, go the camera’s main menu and find “delete” or find the “trash can” icon (often a button on the back of the camera). The camera will warn you before deleting that you are permanently removing (deleting) the photos. You can delete one photo at a time or all of your photos with a single press of the button. I always warn people that “delete all” is kind of like saying “I do” at your wedding. There’s no turning back at that point.
What is “formatting?” Formatting your media card is a process of “conditioning” the card and removing all data (photos) from it so it will be ready to use again. Your media card likes to be formatted occasionally. How often? I don’t know; how long is a string? Pretty often though.
Actually, in our own studio (www.cafeportraits.com) we format our media cards before every portrait session. That might be overkill for most people using a digital camera for personal use. For sure, I would format your card before going on a vacation or attending a big event where your pictures are important to keep. Formatting keeps your media card in tip-top working condition and often will prevent dreaded card failures (malfunctions) right when you don’t need one, on vacation or at little Suzy’s school play.
How and where do you format a media card? I am a big believer in formatting your card inside your camera. You can technically do it using your computer, but I discourage that in favor of using the camera’s formatting function. You can find this feature on the main camera menu and it is called, FORMAT. Isn’t that handy? The icon looks like this one below.
WARNING: formatting your media card is almost always permanently removing your digital pictures. Don’t be shy. Do it and do it often. But, ALWAYS back up your digital pictures to another media first. Or better yet, make prints. Prints will be around for years to come.
What do you do if you accidently delete your photos and you want them back? Do you live near a tall cliff? Ha! Just kidding! Take them to a photo lab that offers media recovery services; like our lab at MotoPhoto in Tyler, Texas (903-509-3311). You’ll pay for the service but it is normally well worth preserving your memories. See my blog on media card recovery.
Until next time . . . take lots of pictures; and always backup to preserve your photo memories.
I was on the playing field photographing a kids soccer camp one morning recently when something in the bleachers caught my eye. Most of the kids were quiet and even a bit contemplative; after all, it was early morning. Who’s got time to get too excited on a hot summer morning sitting in the Texas sun? But right there in the middle of this group of calm children sat the most enthusiastic and pumped future Texas Aggie I have ever seen. He was anything but calm.
In photography, a group of subjects in a picture can create patterns or repititions. Breaking the pattern makes for the most interesting photographs. In this photo for example, ten of the eleven children are very quite and controlled, forming a pattern of sorts. Our future Aggie interrupts the pattern.
You almost have to be from Texas, and maybe even from Texas A&M University, to fully comprehend this thing called Aggie Spirit. Actually, come to think of it, Aggie Spirit is pretty much indescribable. Can you imagine this little guy ten years from now at an A&M/UT game? Watch out Longhorns! Gig ‘em Aggies!
Story Behind The Photo: Geneva, Switzerland - Zooming Through The Night
Published by June 18th, 2009 in Digital Pictures. 0 Comments
I love to try out new camera techniques. One wintry night in Geneva, Switzerland (Lynda and I were living there at the time) I walked from our apartment to one of Geneva’s most incredible views; on a bridge overlooking Lake Geneve’. I wanted to capture a nighttime image of the city skyline that was different from the normal night exposure. The image above was the result.
I set up my camera on a tripod (an absolute necessity for this type of photo), then began experimenting with various long exposures while the camera shutter setting (”T-Value” was on “B” (bulb). I set my f-stop on a fairly high number (f-11 as I remember) then I slowly zoomed my lens in and out while the shutter was open. It is easy to do, but it requires a steady hand and lots of experimentation to get just the shot you want.
By the way, as a bit of trivia, did you ever wonder why camera manufacturers use the letter “B” for the ”shutter open” setting. It is a throwback to the first box cameras that used a long air-tube and a hand-squeezed bulb to trigger the shutter. When you squeezed the bulb, the shutter stayed open as long as you did not release it. Thus, the term “Bulb” or “B” is used on many modern cameras.
The below photo is another night scene, this time of the moon peaking through tree limbs. This photo created its own challenges; keeping the moon from blowing out the photo with its brightness and yet keeping some detail in the tree limbs. I took it many years ago on Ektachrome slide film and a Canon T-90 camera, so a reliable ”digital” preview was not possible at that time. I had to guess at the exposure. As I remember, I shot the photo as a 30 second time exposure with the lens stopped down to about f/11.
Until next time . . . live well and take lots of pictures.
Photographs: the story of life at the end of life
Published by June 18th, 2009 in Digital Pictures. 0 CommentsThe past week has witnessed two sets of grieving parents in our MotoPhoto image center requesting enlargements of their deceased children. In one case I personally had taken portraits of a graduating high school senior who was tragically killed in a weekend car wreck. The other involved parents who needed our help in making enlargements and a slide show for the funeral of their pre-teen son.
These difficult encounters reminded me once again of the importance that photography plays in our lives. As I looked on, one family gathered around a large screen in our lobby area. They grieved and rejoiced together watching a DVD we had just created of their family’s (and son’s) life in photos. It was a sad occassion to be sure, but in another sense they rejoiced at their son’s life in photographs. What if those photos had not existed?
As I thought about the high school senior I had not so long ago photographed for his graduation announcements, I remembered this young man, his face, his vitality, his enthusiasm for life. Little did I know at the time that each press of the shutter that bright, spring day was capturing and preserving forever a moment in time, and that those moments, stitched together, would be some of the last images that would ever be recorded of a young man who would die way too soon.
Often (several times a month), I assist guests in our store with a familiar story: grandpa (or grandma) just passed away and the family cannot find a recent picture of him (her). The only solution, too many times, is a very dated family-reunion snapshot where Uncle Joe was standing on the back row of a family photo and we are tasked to try and pull off a “Photoshop” miracle by extracting a decent image of Joe to use as an enlargement for the reception.
I am grateful we can often pull off that miracle, but my encouragement for my readers: take lots of photos and always keep them safe. If you are taking digital photos, back them up on CDs or even better make prints, which are the safest and longest lasting way to preserve precious memories. If you have prints, have them scanned by an imaging professional or scan them yourself and preserve the digital files (on a CD or DVD) in a safe place.
Finally, love life and capture every memory you can.
Story Behind The Photo: “Farmer’s Markets - African Style”
Published by June 14th, 2009 in Digital Pictures. 0 Comments
I have never really understood why people feel the need to clown in front of a camera. It must be a multi-cultural trait though. People do it all over the world.
Above, I was visiting a rural Shinyanga, Tanzania vegetable market one morning years ago. While my wife shopped for produce, I was taking pictures of one thing and then another when suddenly, out of nowhere, up popped this crazy vegetable vendor in a halloween mask. I was flabergasted, but photograher’s instinct took over and I grabbed the shot.
Below is a more serene vegetable market on Zanzibar. Lynda and I were on the island learning the Swahili language and each day we would go to the market to buy vegetables. I took my camera along hoping to catch an interesting image or two. African vegetable markets are so colorful with countless aromas and a cacophony of sounds.
Note that I used the “rule-of-thirds” in composing both pictures. The “rule-of-thirds” draws an imaginary set of lines dividing the image into thirds both horizontally and vertically. You place important elements of your composition where these lines intersect. Below is the same image with rule of thirds superimposed on the photo. Photographers employ this basic concept to make their images more interesting.
So remember the rule of thirds when you want to improve your snapshots. Avoid composing your subject in the middle of the picture frame. I know, I know. It’s scary; all the camera manufacturers put that bulls-eye dot right in the middle of the framing screen for some reason, hugh? Oh go ahead! Live on the edge! Move your subject to the side. It won’t hurt a thing and it might acutally improve your pictures.
Until next time enjoy this quote from one of my favorite photographers, Ansel Adams: “There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.”
Story behind the photo: “What’s inside that black box?”
Published by June 13th, 2009 in Digital Pictures and Story Behind The Photo. 1 Comment
I had been photograhing Massai herdsmen in Kenya with a friend. We were well off the beaten path, far back in the bush. Actually, we were inside a Massai boma, enjoying a cup of boiled chai (tea) with a tribal elder. I noticed that these Massai women were watching us closely the whole time we were there. Maybe they had observed other camera-toting visitors in the past. When they approached us smiling, I knew they wanted something interesting.
Pointing to my friend’s 35mm camera and communicating in their native Kimassai language, one woman asked, “What is that thing with the shiny glass? Why do wazungu (white people) keep looking inside that black box and pointing it at us? What is inside that box?”
My friend handed the first woman his camera so she could take a peek. The resulting image is priceless.
Story Behind The Photo: “Baptizing in the Bush — Dunk’n New Believers The African Way”
Published by June 13th, 2009 in Story Behind The Photo and "How To" Tips. 1 Comment
Several years ago I was visiting in one of the Massai tribal areas of Kenya, near the small village of Matapato. I had been invited to a Massai cattle grazing area to watch and photograph new Massai Christians being baptized by a Baptist Massai pastor. Water was scarce in this arid region of Kenya so new Christian believers were being baptized in the only water deep enough, a cattle trough.
This old woman was blind and apparently had been for many years. The best I could tell, she had severe cataracts. But, her smile was infectious.
Before being baptized, I asked her through a translator what she was thinking at this important moment in her life. I’m not sure what deep spiritual insight I was expecting from this new Christian, but her next words took me by surprise.
“I am thinking how this will be the first time in my life that my head will go all the way under water,” she said with a broad smile. “I wonder what that is going to feel like.”
As I later learned, the only water available in this area of Kenya are in small streams; enough to dip gourds and buckets but certainly not enough water to actually submerge a whole person. It never occured to me that someone her age would have lived their entire life and never experienced the sensation of being completely under water.
She was emersed a few moments later and came out of the make-shift baptismal tank dripping wet and as happy as anyone I have seen.
I took the photo using a Canon T-90 camera and Ektachrome film. To achieve the “selective-focus” look and blurry background, I created a shallow depth-of-field (see my blog on “Depth of Field”) by shooting with a 200mm telephoto lens and exposing the image at a fast shutter speed (probably around 1/500th of a second) and I used a large aperture opening (probably around f-5.6). It is one of my favorite photos.
Below are a few more images from the same session. I manipulated the photo (below left) using Photoshop to create the diffused light glow and sepia-tone look mixed with color. The image is a bit artsy, but it is an example of the creativity you can express in the digital darkroom years after the actual photo is taken. I photographed the image (below right) coincidentally of another blind person being baptized. Eye disease is common in many African countries. I love the expression on this man’s face as he comes out of the water.
If you are in the neighborhood, come see me at MotoPhoto in Tyler, Texas. I love to talk photogrpahy. We are located on South Broadway Avenue right in front of the Holiday Inn Select and across from Lowe’s/Outback and the Olive Garden. We have knowledgeable and friendly staff who want to assit you. We have user-friendly digital camera kiosks and a helpful attitude that will meet and exceed all of your imaging needs.
Until next time . . . . keep taking great pictures!
Ron
