Play off game- Locker Room

ISO: 1250  f/2.8  shutter speed: 1/160

ISO: 1250  f/2.8  shutter speed: 1/200

ISO: 2000  f/2.8  shutter speed: 1/125

ISO: 2000 f/2.8 shutter speed: 1/125

           Tuesday I went to the varsity girl's basketball playoff game in Lindale, TX. To be honest, I wasn't very excited about going at first. Not because of shooting the game, but simply because I was having to leave school so early and ride the bus with the team without another photographer. Originally Woodsies was going to go with me, but she couldn't which was why I was not excited. Despite my lack of excitement, I am so glad I went and ended up having a great time. The girls on the team were super nice and included me in everything. Before the game started they were warming up and then they went to the locker room, so I asked Coach Martin (Alli advised me which one to talk to) if I could go back there with them and he agreed. When I walked back there, they had just finished stretching and were about to start dancing. They had their own dance party which was hilarious and so cool to see them just having fun in the locker room before the game. I was super glad to get to shoot it. The first two pictures are of their dance party. The first one I like because it's spontaneous and fun, and they are all doing different things. One girl is looking at the camera and I can't decide if I like that or not. I like the second one because they are all uniform and together with their arm in the air and Cathy and Alli are watching.

         The second two pictures are during the team prayer.  I was trying so hard to get to the other side of the circle to easilier avoid the men's restroom sign and some other stuff, but they were all backed against the wall and I wasn't about to interrupt their prayer, so this is what I was able to get. In the first of the 2 prayer pics, I had to crop it down to get rid of the word Men which is still partially there, but if you don't know that that is what it says, then i don't think it is too noticeable. Or at least I hope not. But I can't ask you now since I've already pointed it out. Woops. These pictures were a little dark and I could've brought the shutter speed down a little lower and I don't know why I didn't. I wasn't using flash so I wouldn't interrupt or be a part of the story (I want to not be white sweater girl). In teh last picture, the thing that really bothers me is two girls pinkies are'nt connected like everybody elses. Really? It would be the two that are in my picture. Dang flab it.

Fashion Time Exposure

ISO: 1000  f/6.3  shutter speed: 10 seconds

          This was my picture for ATPI school portfolio team, and I like it. This was the first picture we took and I had 3 flashes going off. I cross lit her for her back lighting using Rush and Casey as my human light stands. To the left of her at about a 45 degree angle was my fill light for the front of her. We started off using a 6 second exposure, but we needed longer since there weren't many cars so we could get a better trail in the background. Sydney had to stay super still, and she did a marvelous job. She also froze for us (it got rather chilly and we were out til 4 in the morning). The thing that really bothers me about this image is the fact that you can't see her shoes. They were some cute shoes too. Some nice high heels and pretty high-fashion. They need to be seen to complete the outfit and picture. We kept having trouble with light poles sticking out of her head and stuff, but we just kept moving and got it without it finally. I was using the 5D and the 24-105mm lens with a tripod (you would have to be UBER still to pull off a 10 second exposure with no tripod [I don't think it's humanly possible]). 

           I really enjoyed taking this picture and am pretty happy with it, but was rather upset that it only got an honorable mention :( Oh well, it is what it is. It was a sad car ride home Sunday because our awards were not what we had expected or hoped. Especially for the video team. So, when I got home I was reading from the best book on planet earth, the Bible, and read the verse 1 Thessalonians 5:18 "give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." This immediately changed my attitude towards everything and made me realize that it doesn't matter that we didn't get first, we had the opportunity to go and we have good gear to be thankful for. There is so much more, but I am glad I came across that verse because I normally read it when I'm in a good mood. Thank you Jesus for being awesome and doing cool stuff like that.

Rosebuds service project

ISO: 800  f/2.8  shutter speed: 1/160

ISO: 800  f/2.8  shutter speed: 1/160

ISO: 800  f/2.8  shutter speed: 1/160

          So I had to shoot the Rosebuds meeting the other day, and I was asked to get non-publications people because a lot of our other Rosebuds pictures are all people in publications. This was a lot more difficult than I expected it to be. Like everyone there was in publications. I mean, basically all the officers are and the president too. So, these are some of the only ones I got that are non-publications people. AND, I got some diversity! Yayyyy. In the second picture Paige's bright, yellow sweatshirt bothers me. You're eye goes to the brightest part of the picture, and my eye goes to her sweatshirt first which is definitely NOT the important part of this picture. I was using a 17-50mm lens with a 7D. On the first two pictures I was zoomed at 44mm and the last 34mm. I did not have a flash, and therefore, did not use one.

Agh...not what I wanted

ISO: 1000  f/4.0  shutter speed: 1/250

ISO: 1250  f/4.0  shutter speed: 1/250

ISO: 1250  f/4.0  shutter speed: 1/250

          So we have shot a lot of basketball this year. Like a butt ton. And we have lots and lots of good pictures, so we aren't exactly in great need of freshman girls basketball pictures. I mean, varsity is what the people are most concerned about anyways. I wasn't really looking forward to shooting the game  because I didn't see the point in it since we had no need. So, I decided to try something different at the game. I took a flash and stuck it on a light stand at the opposite end of the court from where I was shooting. I put the zoom at 35mm and the power around 1/4 I believe. For the first half of the game, the pocket wizards decided to be stupid and wouldn't ever go off. I had to run back and forth and back and forth a million times, and after getting my work out in they decided to start working. Thank goodness. However, none of my pictures turned out. The light stand needs to be up higher which you can really tell in the first picture. It highlights their feet too much and not their whole body. The first one grasps the concept the most but she was too far away from the light or the power needs to be turned. The middle one could be cool since she is shooting a layup and she's up in the air and all, but there is too much ambient light so you don't get the cool effect and the light stand is in the picture, which I don't really know how to avoid that for a shot like this. Do you have any ideas how I could pull that off? And then the last picture I wish soooo badly either I was scooted over to the right or the girl was to the left a little more. AGH. If only if only. I enjoyed trying something different and it was inspiring to continue to try different stuff (great timing now that basketball is over, just my luck) but it still showed me that sports can always be exciting and different and you just have to look for new things to try.

Modeling Practice by Summerhill

ISO: 100  f/8.0  shutter speed: 4 seconds

ISO: 100  f/11.0  shutter speed: 4 seconds

ISO: 100  f/11.0  shutter speed: 4 seconds

          This is what we plan to do for ATPI school portfolio team. Since I had never done this before, we decided we needed to practice before we go, because when we are there Smith is not allowed to help us. This is a series to show how they slowly got better. In the first picture, it is still not dark enough outside and Rush was not still enough. We also changed the aperture to f/11 to get rid of more ambient light. The middle picture is better, but still not great; Rush moved making her blurry. The last is the best, still not competition worthy, but this was a practice; it was never meant to be competition worthy. Rush did a very good job at staying still in this one, you wouldn't be know that the exposure was 4 seconds long by just looking at her. There also are some nice streaks from the cars behind her.

          In all, we were using 4 flashes, but one of those was just being used to set others off and wasn't part of the exposure. We were using a 580 for the main light which was in front of her. For the other 2 lights we used Alien Bees, the 400 watt ones. In the first picture you can see where the alien bees were placed. They were being used as rim lights so Rush wouldn't disappear into the dark, black sky. The 580 was so we can see the front of her. In the last picture you can see the other 430 that was being used to set off the alien bees. Yes, the actual flash was going off, but the power was so low that it didn't affect the picture. To set up the power on all the flashes, we used a light meter. We set the meter at ISO: 100 and shutter speed 1/250. We did 1/250 because we were just worried about getting Rush exposed and the actual 4 second exposure was going to be for the background. Rush then held the meter and we did one flash at a time. The flash in front we wanted metered at f/8.0 so we kept moving it up and down until we got that. We wanted the rim lights to be a higher power, like around f/9.0 so they would show up. If they were the same power, you wouldn't be able to see them, they had to be higher so she wouldn't blend in with the background. We kept having to move them closer and ended up having to turn them on full power to get f/9.0 when we had the grids on them. The battery we were using though was starting to run low, so we had to take the grids off so we could turn the power down. Taking the grids off changes how much light is coming out by a lot.

          We started off using the MiniMa, and then switched to a 17-50mm and moved a lot closer when we switched lenses. We turned it horizontal so the car streaks would show up more, and I definitely like how it looks a lot better horizontal vs. vertical.

         For our actual competition at ATPI, we haven't made a final decision on what we are going to do, but we are going to use this technique. We are going to maybe use Sydney as our model, but we haven't figured out what we want her wearing yet or how we are going to make her look different in each picture. We will come up with something really neat eventually though. Well at least I sure hope so. I am very excited about ATPI, and we better execute this plan extremely well.

Soccer- oh how I am not talented at soccer

ISO: 1250  f/4.0  shutter speed: 1/200

ISO: 1250  f/4.0  shutter speed: 1/250

          I have realized something recently. Soccer is not my sport. I am not good at shooting it. They are constantly on different sides of the field, and I don't know where to go, but I keep trying because I want to be good. At this game, I was trying to get pictures that hadn't been taken yet. Like these. (Well, at least I haven't seen either of these this year.) The first one is after half time when the girls were walking to the locker room. I saw Lauren jump on this girl's back so I walked over to get a picture of this. I like Lauren's face expression a lot and am pleased with this image.

        The second image is the varsity team warming up while the jv team was still playing. I went over there to try to get some different shots. I ended up with a lot of butt shots, especially when they were stretching. I liked this one cause the girls are laughing and having a good time. It is something different. I was using a 70-200mm and used a flash as well.

A different approach with basketball

ISO: 800  f/4.5  shutter speed: 1/250

ISO: 800  f/4.5 shutter speed: 1/250

           I was shooting jv girls basketball last Friday, and the flashes were set up on the other side of the gym. The first half of the game we could only get defense pictures, and the strobes were not set up correctly so I kept changing them trying to get it to look right, so while all this was going on I wan't getting very many defense pictures. When they called a time out I decided to try and get the coach talking to them since I had never done that before. I like the second picture, and I don't know if it is just because I have never gotten a picture of this or yea. This is with no flash, and I had to bring up the exposure a little bit in Lightroom. I could've slowed my shutter speed, I think I didn't because I was switching from flash to no flash a lot and really fast. I also don't know why my aperture is 4.5. Oh well, it worked, haha. I was using a 17-50mm lens for these with the 7D.