TIGER LILIES IN THE SUN

My Mother had several tiger lilies next to her deck that provided a colorful accent in her flower bed. She gave me some seed from them a dozen years or more ago. I dropped them in a flower pot along with some lavender plants my son had from school. Every year the lavender and the lilies would spring up and give some some nice colors. They were in an out of the way part of the yard that we didn't see very often and we rarely watered them or took care of them. They were ignored. After a strong storm this summer, I noticed that the pot had blown over and the lilies, now about six feet high, were on their side. The pot was disintegrating and ready to be thrown out. Rather than throw it out, I decided to replant them (not something I do regularly since I'm not much of a gardener). How the lilies had survived amazes me. After re-potting them, the lilies found a new home on our deck where the bright sun lights them up every morning. The shadows our the nearby trees provides a nice backdrop to highlight their beauty. 

THIS IS FOR THE BIRDS!

Spring sports are cancelled this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic began surging in the US just as the high schools were doing their scrimmages for the season. I was three days away from getting to photograph the XFL professional football game at Audi field. Then everything went crazy as the number of cases surged. The high schools postponed the start of their season. The XFL and Major League Soccer postponed their games. All were hopeful that the pandemic would wane. But that never happened. Eventually all sports went on hiatus and we were all put on lockdown and told to stay home to reduce the spread of the virus. Here we are months later and places are starting to reopen and teams are about to start playing again but to empty stands. More than 100,000 of our people have died so far and more will pass before it is all over. In the grand scheme of things, not having sports to photograph is nothing. Still, the itch to take photos is strong. Fortunately, there are plenty of birds to shoot. Well, with a camera that is! My Mother's feeders and our gazebo attract a lot of different birds. The disruption of the pandemic is for the birds, and so is this post!

Catching the Catch!

Why is it so hard to get a good shot of a football player making a catch? The average National Football League game includes an average of about 37 passes per team. Completion rates average around 70% or lower. That means there should be about 50 catches that you could photograph. College football has some teams that pass much more, some much less. High school football is similarly variable depending on the team and their quarterback. Still, there are a good number of chances if you are in the right place at the right time on the sidelines. But catching a player making a catch has not been easy. At least not where it is clear that he just caught it or is in the act of catching. They drop the ball. The ball is not quite in his hands. It looks like he already caught it and is making a move.

Over the past 3-4 years I have been shooting a lot of high school football. This season, my shooting included a college game (Penn State at Maryland – Go Lions!!), an NFL game (Jets at Redskins), and the Virginia State Championship high school game. These games have produced a few shots of catches along the way, but the State Championship game was my big score as shown below. The Lake Taylor Titans beat the Tuscarora Huskies thanks to some great catches and an interception. I was fortunate to get these shots. 

Lake Taylor's Malik Newton intercepts a pass to prevent a touchdown in the Virginia Class 4 State Championship Game.

Lake Taylor's Malik Newton makes a diving catch for a touchdown in the Virginia Class 4 State Championship Game.

Darious Spreight of Lake Taylor catches a TD pass over the arms of Tuscarora's Mikey Marquez in the Virginia Class 4 State Championship Game

MY FIRST BIG 10 COLLEGE FOOTBALL GAME

High school football has been a great training ground to practice my sports photography. I've been prowling the sidelines for a few years getting action shots. At the same time, I have been working on my Adobe Lightroom post processing techniques. I cringe at some of the earlier shots that at the time were considered good. They could have been so much better, but it is a constant learning process.

Viva Loudoun (https://www.vivaloudoun.com/)
, a sports photo site covering all sports in the Northern Virginia area approached me about shooting with them early in the season. Now, I know the quality of work some of their photographers put out and I wasn't sure I was up to that level. But they talked me into it and I'm glad they did. It opened up opportunities to shoot at higher levels - college and professional.

QB Sean Clifford handoffs to Journey Brown

Back in September, I had a dream opportunity for a Penn State football fan - a chance to shoot the Penn State at Maryland football game!! (Okay, I know that is 2 months ago, but I've been busy.) It was an interesting experience picking up credentials, working in the media room, and working around all the other media and equipment around the field. It was a night game and I expected the Capital One Field stadium lights to be a little brighter that they were. Other photographers told me that this stadium isn't as well lit as other college stadiums. I had to bump up the ISO. But my photos came out okay.

Maryland Terrapins mascot

Wide Receiver KJ Hamler on the run

Running Back Journey Brown headed to the end zone

WHO NEEDS GPS ANYWAY?

We all know where we took those pictures, don’t we? GPS is only needed by those travelling photographers that globe trot or are documenting something, right? Wrong! We all should be using our GPS settings as I found out recently.

My previous post talked about how too many unnecessary photos were slowing down my computer. Actually, we all do. My Lightroom cataloge had more than 100,000 photos that had accumulated over the past 15+ years and dumped into an external hard drive.  They were added to the catalog without thinking through my file management strategy and purging bad shots and duplicates as it grew.  Time to clean out some files and make room!

Whaleback Lighthouse, Kittery Point, Maine

Okay, Bill. What’s that have to do with GPS settings on your camera? My memories, like old prints, faded with time. I came across a file folder with these seaside photos and could not remember where they were taken.  It led me on a quest to figure out where it was. I knew it was somewhere along the New England coast. But where? Hmmm. It had to be near where I travelled for business. The lighthouse was a big clue so I searched for photos of lighthouses in each of the candidate states to no avail. None of them had that building attached.  More frustration.

Finally, I blew up one of the photos and saw a town name of Kittery Point, Maine on one of the boats. Eureka! Or so I thought. But the lighthouse in the photo didn’t match the lighthouse photos I found on the internet. After looking at Google Maps, I discovered the reason. The building wasn’t next to the lighthouse. It was on an island between where I shot from and the lighthouse!

My point? I could have saved myself a lot of effort and frustration if the metadata for the files included the GPS coordinates! And you could too. Lesson learned.

MY COMPUTER TOLD ME SOMETHING!

Spring was a busy time with multiple sports to photograph. Unlike the Fall season with only one or two games at a time, Spring has as many as three or four games at the same time. It is way too easy to get overwhelmed with the sheer number of photos to choose from and edit. You have to complete each game photo set in a timely manner or you get behind and some sets never get finished. You have to get in a rhythm of finishing the game, get home, start importing into Lightroom (or whatever software you use), wait for the process to complete and then start selecting and editing.  The quicker to the editing process the better. A key factor is the importing time, which is affected by how many shots to import and other factors.

The Blue Circle of Dread When Importing

Well, my computer decided that I take too many shots and went on strike.  I started noticing that it was taking longer and longer for the importing process. Then, it would “stop responding” to commands for minutes at a time before resuming. Looking at my computer memory and files showed that I had way too much memory taken up by the file folders and the buffering capacity was being restricted. Cleaning it up helped a little.  The underlying cause wasn’t the full folders. It was me! My shooting style captured too many images. My bursts for action started too early and ended too late. Also, I was being selective enough of when to shoot. Now, I need to put these lessons into practice so my computer doesn’t have so much work to import photos. Thank you computer for the lesson!

HALF MOON OVERHEAD

Last week I was at the soccer field waiting for the game when someone commented on the moon. Looking up I saw this beautiful sight peeking through the clouds.