SETTLING FOR A SQUIRREL

Blue Jays are beautiful as I posted back on April 29. The different blue hues combined with splashes of white and black make an interesting patchwork of colors. So you can imagine by joy the other day when I saw a Blue Jay perched on the arm of a chair on my deck no more than 10 feet away. As it quickly flew away, a second one flew by going in the other direction. 

Of course, my camera was in another room.  I got it and put out some sunflower seeds on the deck rail hoping that it would attract them back.  No such luck. But a squirrel sure enjoyed them! So, I settled for taking pictures of the little ham.

Parachute

Three Navy Seals parachuted into RFK Stadium before the DC United soccer game at sunset. This was the best shot I got.  Not my best, but nice to look at anyway.  

A Navy Seal parachuting into RFK Stadium in Washington DC for Military Appreciation Day.

MORE FOOTBALL PICTURES

Time slips by so quickly.  A couple weeks ago I had this post ready but never got around to finishing it. Well, here it is - finally.

Another Friday evening, another football game to practice sports photography with my new lens.  The game began at 5:30 instead of 7:00 because lightning had blown out the lights on one side of the stadium early in the week. They were fixed in time for the game but it was already rescheduled so it could be played in daylight. What a blessing for photographers!  The greater flexibility in settings (lower ISO, higher f stops, faster shutter speed) resulted in better photos.  My photos were much sharper during the daylight hours than later in the game when the sun went down.

Luck and the better lighting enabled me to get some good shots of the action.  But one thing I learned is that a great shot of action is not always what is interesting to newspaper editors.  Two points:

First, Michelle helped me pick out some top shots to send to the Loudoun Times Mirror. She has a better eye for which images have the most media appeal and rejected several that I thought were good.  She said the one below was my “money shot” – the quarterback fighting for yardage as a player tries to pull him down.  Sure enough, the Mirror used it in their online article about the game. 

Second, one of my favorites was a touchdown catch. I sent to the Alexandria Gazette Packet newspaper along with one of the quarterback scrambling and another one. My guess was that they might use the touchdown photo and post the others online. Wrong. They used the quarterback scrambling in their print edition. Hmmm. 

This one was printed in the paper.

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Lens Envy – Revisited

My second post in early March discussed my “lens envy” for those with professional-level lenses. A friend let me borrow his Canon EF 70-200/2.8L IS II USM lens to shoot a basketball game. Being able to go down to f2.8 and the higher quality glass made a big improvement over my commercial zoom lens.  I have coveted this high-quality lens ever since - putting it on my wish list for ‘someday.’  That someday has finally arrived! We decided it was time to get it after getting a gallery of my football photos posted by the newspaper.  Last Thursday it arrived and my lens envy is gone!! (Although I am sure at some point in the future I will want additional lenses. But that is for years ahead.)

  

The initial shakedown of the new lens was at the Tuscarora v Broad Run High School football game on Friday September 1^st. It lived up to all my expectations. The quality of the images was much better than my other lenses, especially in the stadium lighting.  Shooting at 200mm, as opposed to 300mm with my old lens, yielded better images of distant action that could be cropped and used. 

Something funny happened late in the game.  A couple parents were on the sideline taking photos.  One I knew and another was usually nearby.  We were comparing images off and on to see if anyone captured a key play. I was helping the one I knew with getting her settings right for the conditions, when the other woman walked by an muttered, “Now I have lens envy!”  All I could do is smile and think, “I’ve been there!”  

Seeing Your Photos in the Newspaper

It is always a thrill to see one of your photos published in a newspaper or online by a media outlet. My first time was the winter before last when I sent a photo of the star of the girls’ basketball team driving for a layup to our local weekly newspaper.  They used it in their online article about the game. It was a big thrill and gave me some confidence to try it again. 

Fast forward to this past winter and the girls’ basketball coach asked me to be the team photographer.  The result was several photos being used in online articles and photo galleries as well as several being published in the print edition of the paper. The largest displayed were about 4”x4”.  It was very rewarding to see, and much welcomed by the girls.

The Tuscarora High School football season kicked off on August 25^th with a home game against King George.  The Huskies won 35-0 and I got some great photos. I sent some to the Loudoun Times Mirror and they used one of the photos to illustrate their Week 1 review of the football games in their online version. They also published it in the print edition on Thursday in an article about the upcoming game of the week.  The best part for me was the photo was printed in 5x7 format under one of the same size by their pro.  This was by far the best recognition of my photos.

My photo on the bottom

The photo the paper selected was not my favorite from that night.   I was lucky to get it between players and referees running down the sideline. I liked it, but felt there were several more with better action.  But, after seeing the paper use it to illustrate their article I started to realize the context of the photo in use is as important as the quality of the photo itself.  

The image they used was cropped from what I sent to them. This also taught me a lesson about what I should do before sending the pictures – crop to focus on the action.  I have been looking at my action photos with a different eye since then.  There is a lot of action to come this season!

Coming in for a Landing

The birds have flocked to our feeder this summer. It took a while for them to find it.  But once they did - they have been quite active. So have the squirrels!  There were 3 on the deck yesterday.  Earlier this summer we had a family of cardinals - Mom, Dad, and at least two young ones.  They seem to have moved on. Now it is purple finches and sparrows.  
 
 

I grabbed my camera to see if I could catch a few of the birds flying around the feeder. I set the shutter to rapid burst – 7 frames a second and played around with my settings.  I used a polarizing filter and a -1/3^rd stop exposure compensation.  My initial settings were f16 (aperture priority) at ISO 1000 because it was a bright sunny day.  The shutter speeds ranged from 1/125 sec to 1/160 sec, which was too long to freeze the birds in flight. 

My second set was done at f5.0 at ISO 2000.  The results were better – shutter speeds changed to 1/2500 sec.  Still some blur on the wings, but some came out okay.  Finally, I changed to f5.0 at ISO 4000 and had much better success. The noise increased, but at least the images captured the birds without blur on the wings.  More experiments to come!

The Beautiful Glory of Morning Glories

Purple Morning Glory on our deck

Morning glories greet the day with their blue hued petals facing the rising sun. They survive until afternoon when they curl up and begin developing seeds that will replenish the flower bed in the next year.  

My Mother grew blue Morning Glories when I was young. She still grows some, but not as many. I grew some off our back deck for several years. Most were blue ones. But I also planted some red and purple ones as well. The blue and red varieties were behind the main part of the deck and created a green and blue curtain that partially shielded us from the outside world.  Eventually I stopped planting them every year. The blue and red ones kept returning every year but the color deteriorated in each generation until they eventually only displayed a reduced number of small white flowers.

Backlit Morning Glory

Purple Morning Glories are another story. They were planted around the gazebo and climbed up the lattice below and intertwined in the deck railing. Each year, several of the plants come up and continue to present the same deep purple as they always did.

One thing about Morning Glories is the different color patterns you see depending on how you look at them.  Looking straight on like the one in the upper left gives you the reflected color. But a whole different color pattern emerges when it is backlit by the bright sunlight as the other pictures show. Backlighting helps bring out the structure of the flower and gives a different color entirely.