The best part about this game was the comeuppance three of the members of the other team received. These guys are brothers that had played on my kids’ teams in the past, but this year they’ve decided to participate at a different YMCA. When we entered the gym 20 minutes prior to the game, they started talking smack non-stop about a) how our team was going down, b) how they made the team last year when they were on it, and c) how we were just going to be crushed.
I love the celebration in the background of the second shot
At the end of the first period, they were losing 4-0. Mid-way through the second period (6-0), I walked by one of them who was still keeping up the bravado claiming that we were “going down” just as soon as he could get back on the court. To which I added “and scoring 7 goals.” The final, by my tally, (the Y doesn’t officially keep score, but all the parents and players try to) was 8-1. Boy was their celebration long and boisterous when they scored that one point. For the rest of their team, I was happy for them. For the sake of the three brothers, I really hoped for a shutout. No, not terribly sportsman like of me, but I think their egos needed a bit of a smack-down. That smack-down came when the final point of the game was scored by our team directly from the face off at center court–the oldest of the brothers was the goalie and had no idea it had gone through. I was too busy talking with the other spectator-parents to notice the mood of the three brothers at the end of the game.
Photographically, the biggest challenge is that with the open aperture, the depth of field is so narrow that it looks like most of the pictures are blurry. They aren’t–its just that the net (or the glove, or the spot on the floor 3 feet to the left of the player) are sharp, but the DOF is so narrow that everything else goes bokeh.
So, maybe next game I’ll try to compromise and shoot at ISO 800 and f/4. That’s still better than I could have gotten with my kit lens at 35mm (f/5.3) but it should render more of the photo in focus. And of course shooting kids moving at broken-neck speed makes keeping the focus point on a face challenging. Fortunately we’ve entered the digital “spray and pray” era, and I can shoot 100+ shots only to post nine.
I was able to spend a little bit of time to work on one shot a couple of weeks ago, but hesitated writing about it in hopes that I would be able to get back to it. Alas, once I posted it to Flickr, my brain was convinced it was done.
The primary idea was to use our knowledge of photography and lighting to elevate a cooking utensil to “High Art”.
Well, perhaps not High Art, but maybe medium artsy.
I spread some dried black beans in a flat black dish, then arranged the butter knives on top. I slid the dish into a light box, and pointed the flash toward the dish at a low angle from camera right. The low angle helped to add shadow and dimension to the beans, but the box helped bounce light all over the place to light it reasonably evenly.
I then converted the pic to black and white (black beans aren’t completely black). I’m reasonably pleased with the result, but might have revisited it to help hide the reflection of the camera in the left handle. I might have also softened the flash a bit so that the shadows at the top aren’t as noticeable. Alas, life got a wee bit busy, and I wasn’t able to think about it again.
I was recently informed by my wife that I failed in my attempt at humor in the beginning of the Necessity Gig post. I meant the introductory paragraph tongue-in-cheek. I fully understand that portrait photography is a highly developed skill, and is not easy by any means. I was attempting to be playful by pointing out that adding in darkness, mirrors and pool cues makes the task a bit more challenging. If you, kind reader, thought I was being arrogant, I apologize–I’m clearly better at photography than humor.
OK, now that was arrogant! Ha! Now I’ll have to write a post titled “Humility Fail”.
Not long ago, I switched the D60 to a hand strap, rather than neck strap, because I frequently felt like the neck strap was getting in the way. I’ve rather liked my DIY hand strap for the control and security it gives me while shooting. However, there have been two limitations for the hand strap that have vexed me just slightly: a) one hand is always taken up with the camera, so you can’t do anything that requires two hands such as b) changing lenses without putting the camera down.
Along came an ad for the $50 camera belt clip. I really like the design, but figured I could do a DIY version for next to nothing.
So, I took an extra angle bracket from a recent Ikea project (any angle bracket will do), and a 1/4-20 knob from a crappy tripod head like this one (previously hacked apart for the clamp-pod). I removed the knob from the tripod head, being sure to save the retaining clip. I put the nut end through a hole in the bracket, and attached the retaining clip on the other side. Then I bent the angle bracket into a lopsided U, with the knob on the inside.
I then attached the belt clip to the tripod mount on the bottom of the camera (holding one end of the hand strap) and slid the long end under my belt.
With a little bit of practice, I was able to change lenses while the camera was attached to my belt.
I was able to use the belt clip at the Necessity Gig the other night, and it worked perfectly. I didn’t have to find a place to put the camera down (though I did sometimes, out of habit) in order to adjust the flashes. And it felt perfectly secure (though perhaps a bit dorky looking) as I walked around the bar scouting a portrait location.
