Monthly Archives: October 2009

Volleyball Portraits

Posted on by

(Update 10/21/10: Check out Volleyball Portraits, Take 2)

(Update 12/09/09: I actually got to do the team portrait.)

Yesterday, I prepared to do team portraits for my daughter’s volleyball team. Today, I actually did the shoot.

The moment I got there, I acted like I was the official team photographer. The coaches knew I was there to take portraits, but I also assumed that I could shoot the game.  I conferred with the referee as to where I would like to be positioned (he was fine with it) and he made sure I understood there was to be no flash. Understood. As a result, I was allowed access on court and on the near sidelines that other parents were not allowed. I shot the whole time without a flash, and I now understand that our camera really doesn’t handle ISO800 very well–it has more grain than I would like. I also understand now why professional sports photographers have multiple cameras strapped to them–they don’t have time to change lenses.

I spent a fair bit of time trying to get decent shots during warm ups. Not many of them turned out terribly well. But here is my favorite.

During the first game, I used my long zoom lens and quickly discovered that was great for capturing the serves, but too difficult to capture game volley. As such I got a number of decent service shots, and turned a lot of them into triptychs, like this one.

I switched lenses to my 18-55mm for the second game to see how it would work. It turned out to be not so great for the serves, but a bit better for the play action.

Unfortunately my daughter’s team lost an early 10+ point lead and ended up losing by 2 points, ending their season on a real downer. There were a few tears among the players, and I wasn’t sure anyone was going to be in the mood for portraits. Alas, goodie bags and pizza cheered every one up, and the coach said I was a “go” for individual portraits.

Being very worried about my timing (not having enough of it), and not wanting to move the referee’s stand to do portraits like this, I set up in the more traditional style. I took about 5 test shots of my daughter to get the settings right and then started photographing the team.

Some of the girls were obviously comfortable with me taking their pictures. I spent very little time with many of them–I shot the first 5 in just over 2 minutes. I tried to spend a little more time with the ones who were clearly a little bit uncomfortable, trying to loosen them up. I’m pretty sure I failed on every one of them, which reminds me of a conversation I had about photography at work today**. So, next on my skills development is camera-side-manner.

Of course, my daughter’s portrait is the best.

After I finished the regular portraits, I realized it was probably best that I didn’t try to replicate the more complicated portrait with all the girls. Many of them were uncomfortable with a basic pose–anything more complicated might have been frightening. As the crowed thinned out, I asked my daughter if she wanted to do the overhead shot again in her uniform, and she declined. Even she had had enough.

After the portraits were done, I noted that I had 15 minutes before the bus took some kids home. I asked the coach if she wanted me to do a group shot. She wanted to wait until a later date (DONE!) since a couple of kids had already gone home, and the team captain was out of town. I explained the concept of the “emergency shot” to her–take a shot as soon as you come upon a scene in case it changes before you get the “ideal” shot. I wanted to take a group photo, even if it was incomplete, given the risk that we might not be able to get everyone back together again. She was unmoved, so I didn’t take a group shot.

As for my fear of volleyballs knocking over my light stands, nothing bad happened. However I had a minor heart attack after the end of the game: the visiting team was jubilantly making their way out of the gym through a narrow passage not intended for regular traffic RIGHT OVER MY CAMERA BAG. I had thought my gear was safely tucked away, but no. Four or five girls had safely stepped over the bag before I had an internal conniption fit (maybe I muttered “Holy Crap” under my breath) and moved it out of the way.

So lessons learned: acting (with professionalism) like you have authority is enough for most people to grant you that authority; when batteries are weak, flashes don’t fire consistently even if they indicate they are ready; sports photography is tough, and off-camera flashes do you no good; keep poses simple for folks not ready for anything more.

So, overall, I consider the experience a success for me. In fact, there wasn’t anything negative about it. I’ll be giving a CD (or a bunch of them) with the pictures to the coaches so they can distribute to the rest of the kids. I hope the other parents will appreciate the photos.

**I mused for a brief time today that it would be interesting to work in a “big box” photo studio for 6 months. Since the technical details and gear would be taken care of, it would be an ideal time to work on people skills. The best photographers in those situations are the ones who can make their 20th family of the day feel at ease and coax great shots out of the 3 year old who hasn’t napped all afternoon. Those would be some valuable lessons for a budding professional photographer.

Preparing for Volleyball Portraits

Posted on by

Tomorrow I’ve got my first big gig. OK, big for me. (Update: Results!) I’m doing portraits for my daughter’s volleyball team tomorrow since the coaches hadn’t arranged for a professional, and I’m using the opportunity to really push my skills. I’ve got my own gear, and after reading about shooting a team in a gym, I decided I needed some more. So I asked my friend Tony if I could borrow some of his lighting gear, and he was happy to oblige.

Yesterday I had presented my daughter with a number of possible poses to work with. She really liked this one, so I spent the bulk of my time tonight trying to duplicate the shot. Here’s the best result that I’ll try to emulate with the rest of the team.

Right: Vivitar 285HV @ 1/2 shoot through; Left LumoPro LP120 @ 1/2 shoot through; 1/125 f/10 iso 400

Here’s what the setup for the shot looks like. Looking back at the original photo I was trying to mimic, I did a reasonable job shooting it from memory. Some of the differences I’ll try to adjust for: body should be more square to the camera, and the camera was a little too high. Some differences I won’t be able to adjust for: uniform background, lights on the floor, background lighting. I really wanted to make the background go dark, but evidently there are issues with turning the lights out in the gym. I don’t understand, but I respected the sign advising no one to turn out the lights under pain of death (kidding). Unfortunately, that meant there was way too much ambient light. Oh well.

Next I decided to try a simpler shot, against the white cinder block of the gym wall.

Left: Vivitar 285HV @ 1/4 shoot through; Right LumoPro LP120 @ 1/4 shoot through; 1/125 f/10 iso 200

Here’s how it was set up. I’m reasonably pleased with this shot, but I don’t like how the conduit crosses behind her hips. Without investing in a backdrop, I’m not sure I can do much better. I might try to light the wall with a third strobe if we take this shot.

Finally, I set up my flashes on their stands fully extended in the auditorium, pointing at the stage, to see how a team shot might work. I think this will work out fine. I might include a third strobe near the camera to help eliminate the shadows.

The part that scares me most about this shoot: volleyballs. We had the gym all to ourselves, and I had to remind my daughter several times to hold onto the ball, rather than messing with it and risking the lighting gear. If I’ve got another 15 girls roaming about, its going to be darn tough to a) keep the balls away from the equipment and b) keep people out of the reflections in the wood floor.

Going Strobist

Posted on by

I’ve finally taken the plunge into off-camera lighting. This past week, I bought a nice manual flash, the LumoPro 120, a light stand, umbrella, and Cactus radio triggers. Why did I do these crazy things? Because I think it will improve shots like family portraits, (most especially like this), and other fun an interesting stuff. I’m also committed to taking pictures of Emily’s volleyball team in a professional style in order to hone my skills. So here are some results, playing with my gear.

First, dinner and homework, with the flash behind the umbrella, camera right.

Second, Nathan holding the new flash, triggering in optical slave mode-the built-in flash fired, causing the flash he was holding to fire.

Next is a still life with flash behind the umbrella, camera left, medium height.

By the way, I’ve intentionally not cropped any of the back ground material out of the still life shots so that I can see the effects shutter (none) and aperture (smaller = darker background) have.

Now the still life without the umbrella.

Next I put the light up high, around 7 feet, no umbrella, and pulled the zoom out all the way (85mm)

And for comparison, flash at wide angle (28mm).

Finally, just to see what it would look like, flash high but toward the back left.

It was trigger with the built-in flash, manually set to 1/32 power.

I didn’t make anything particularly great. These are just some experiments with the off camera flash angles to help me understand the impact.

He’s important

Posted on by

As a young teenager, one of my greatest fears for my future self was that I wouldn’t be “important” or special, or something like that. I vaguely remember trying to explain this fear to my mother one afternoon as we cruised along I-270. I didn’t want to be average, in an average house, with an average job, living an average life. I wanted to be “important”. How a non-average house would therefore make me important, I’m not sure. I was a teen. Forgive me.

Probably 25 years have passed, and I have, by all accounts, a slightly above average life: my home’s value is just above average for our neighborhood, my income is a bit above average, I have 2.3 kids (if you round down).

I’m a husband, which makes me very important in one person’s life.

I’m a father, which makes me very important in two more people’s lives.

I’m a son, son-in-law, grandson, nephew, cousin, etc, which makes me varying degrees of important to about 4 dozen more people.

I work at a job where I’m one of a few subject matter experts for software that diretly impacts the lives of 1000 of our employees. When that software doesn’t work, I’m incredibly important.

I’m a soccer coach for my son’s YMCA team, and for 2 hours each week, I’m important to 11 kids, aged 7-9.

But what really got me thinking back on this teenage angst memory, was a comment from a boy in my Cub Scout pack. This year, I volunteered to be Cubmaster for my son’s pack, and soon after taking the reins, the pack grew from 16 scouts to 45. My son and I were recently at a Scout Night with the Crew with about 40 other parents and scouts from the pack. A mother of another scout told me that when her son, a first grader, saw me sitting in the stands two rows above them, he leaned into her and said “Theres our leader. He’s important!”.

At first I was amused by his impression of me. “Bah, me, important? Seriously? I’m just the guy who was suckered into leading a cub scout pack.” But it kept coming back to me, “He’s important”. I told the anecdote to my father-in-law, and with his typical wisdom he commented “Yes, and those who are important generally don’t realize it.” Did I not realize that I was important?

Well, I did volunteer to lead the pack. I did help to organize the first several events for the year. I did the recruiting that mostly led to the growth in the pack. I stand in front of the pack every week with announcements of plans and activities, taking responsibility for answering every question, and resolving every problem. No, I don’t do EVERYTHING, but I make sure it gets done. My efforts directly led that boy into the pack and for him to have the opportunity to be at the soccer game with his parents. At that moment, to that boy and a number of others, I was important.

I was also reminded of a painful memory from my early twenties. When I was in college or grad school, I learned that my favorite Scoutmaster from my youth had committed suicide. I felt terrible for his son, whom I had admired greatly in a “rebel without a cause” sort of way. But mostly I remember my shock upon hearing the news. How could he possibly commit suicide–didn’t he know how important he was to me? He was such an awesome Scoutmaster, why would he kill himself? Of course I realized that life was way more complicated than that, but those were my first reactions–he was important to me, and now he was gone.

Bricks, ton of them, hit my forehead. Well done, father-in-law, well done.

Through the mouth of a first grader, and the wisdom of one of my elders, I’ve now realized that I have in fact fulfilled my teenage wish–I am important. It wasn’t quite the way I had envisioned at the time. Back then, “important” was someone of celebrity status, perhaps with followers, or a possee, or …um… something. Fortunately, my understanding has deepend a bit. I’ve become important in the ways that are meaningful to me: family and youth leadership development. I think I’ve become important in ways that really are important–people count of me in ways that I can fulfill. I make a difference in many people’s lives. Don’t get me wrong–this really isn’t an ego trip. Maybe its a confidence trip–I understand now that I am capable of making a difference for the better in small ways, and I’ve pretty consistently done that over the years. The label of “importance” didn’t just happen to me. I’ve worked toward making myself important. I’m not sure my teen self would be proud, but I understand now that isn’t important.