Freezing the ball

-Click on the image to see it larger-
 People really like this shot and I have had quite a few ask how to do it? Truth is that it is quite easy:
 1. Shoot from behind the fence and get a good position. This will depend on your access and the batters stance in the box. The more straight on the better.

 2. Set your aperture to wide open. This shot was at F3.2 so almost wide open. The goal is to throw everything but the ball out of focus.

 3. Make sure that your shutter speed is as fast as possible. I shot this at 1/3200..Ideally you want 1/4000 but you can get away with less if the pitch is slower.

4. shoot when the light is right. A low angled sun is great and it needs to hit the ball as it travels to the plate.

5. Manually focus about 2/3 of the way to the plate. You can also AF on the pitcher and then drag focus closer to you manually

 6. Wait for the pitch and try to time your shot. I captured this one on my first try with a three shot burst. I got lucky. It may take several tries. My camera shoots at 10fps so I get a an advantage but even at 10fps only one frame will be in focus.

 7. In post you can add some contrast and sharpening to the ball to make it pop more... That's all there is to it. Good Luck!

Another Poster Image

CLICK TO SEE A LARGER IMAGE . Above is the latest image I shot for a series of motivational posters being used at the local high school. This one was tough because the team practices at the University but I have been unable to secure track time to set up a shot. What I ended up doing was shooting in the gym of the high school and then getting rid of the background and adding some tweaks in post. The image was shot with a Paul Buff Einstein in a gridded softbox in front of the runner, aimed directly at him. I used another Einstein in a giant softbox behind him to create the cross lighting that you see. I didn't use any diffusers for the shot because I wanted the bare bulb look. Using the softboxes allowed me to control the light spill enough that I could eliminate the background quite easily in post. The strobes were triggered with Elinchrom Skyports and I used a Canon 1D Mark IV with a 50mm 1.4 lens. The runner started right in front of the rear softbox from a sprinter's start and had room for about two steps before he had to veer to avoid the front light. I had the front light about a stop higher than the rear one due to the distance difference from each to the subject. Post Processing: Two curve layers to darken the background and to lighten some areas of the runner. Another layer used in overlay to add some yellow to the floor. Last layer was used to add in some motion blur and then I selectively masked it out to taste. That's it!

Sometimes it really is the gear...

One of my pet peeves used to be when someone would say' "Wow! Your camera takes great pictures!" My canned reply was, "gee, your mouth says interesting things." Obviously the camera is a part of the puzzle, but most often those comments come from a person sitting next to me at a game and they have their camera set to the "green arrow". When I ask what ISO they are using, they look at me like I asked for the solution to Fermat's theorem. That being said, there are times when the gear really does make the difference. I just shot a game in the "Pit" of UMaine. This is a great venue for the audience with lots of history (and it is about to undergo a multi-million dollar renovation) but it stinks for a photographer. There were three photographers covering the game. One was shooting with a Canon 40D (school newspaper issue) with a 70-200 2.8 lens and the other had a Nikon entry level camera with a normal length zoom..maybe a 24-70 equivalent. Her longer zoom was slow (F5.6 at the long end) I was shooting with the Mark IV and the lenses I brought were the 85 F1.8, 135 F2, 70-200 F2.8, and the 300 F2.8 My settings ended up being ISO 10,000 F2.8 and 1/640 or a variation of that. I used to own the 40D and ISO 3200 was really ugly. Without the mark IV and some fast glass, I think I would have left the venue. If I was on assignment, I guess I would have stayed but I would not have been happy. Here are a couple of shots: This one is ISO 10,000 (click on the image to see it larger)

Another: Still ISO 10,000 (click on the image to see it larger)

and the last is ISO 6400 1/400 and F2.5 (click on the image to see it larger)

So now when someone says, "Man, your camera takes nice pictures!" I nod and say, "yeah, it does." Keep shooting. Peter

Quick Family Portrait in a 8x12 space

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So a friend of mine asks me to take a shot of him and his two kids as a surprise for Mom...whose birthday is the next day. I didn't have a lot of time so I told him that I would meet him in his gym at 3pm (he is a phys. ed. teacher). Now the gym is huge but due to the size of my background fabric (6'x8') I couldn't use much of it.
There aren't any decent backgrounds in there and I wanted a clean and simple image for him to present. The small background that I used is really designed for individual portraits but that was what I had in my car. A little photoshop fixed the problem after (see the post processing section later).
I set an Einstein 640 into a 63" umbrella on axis with the camera for the main light. I then added another Einstein 640 into a softbox to camera left and 1 stop higher than the main for a key light.
I put two speedlights on stands to camera left and right aimed at the background to blow out the background (I didn't have enough power in them but again...easy fix in PS. One speedlight had a barndoor on it and the other a simple flag to avoid spill onto the subjects. The background material was so small that I didn't have much room to work with. If I had a larger BG, then I could simply have created more space from the subject to the background and not had to worry about spill.
Everything was triggered with skyports. The lens was a 50 1.4 and the camera a 1D mark IV.
another image here (Click to see larger)

Post Processing:
First I had to clone in some background on the edges as it was a bit too narrow for the frame. Simple to do: create another layer, select the clone stamp, alt click an adjacent section of background, then click and drag the stamp along the border..takes about 5 seconds.
Second, the background was a dull gray rather than white. Again,very simple solution. Create another layer, in the blending drop down menu, select screen. The result was close enough to white on the background to suit me. Then I add a mask to the layer, select a black brush and go over the subjects quickly to bring them back to proper exposure...takes about 30 seconds once you know how.

set up shot

To the left you can see the umbrella that was the main light that metered at F5.6 and the softbox next to it which metered at F8 (I later upped that to F9 for more DOF). To the right you can see the two speedlights on stands used to blow out the background.
The clients were standing just to the background side of the white line on the floor. As you can see, not a lot of room. And finally the small backdrop that I rarely use...but when I do use it..I love it.


Cheers,

Strobist sports shooting

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The above shot is from a series I am doing for the high school which will become motivational posters. For this shot, I used an Einstein 640 into a large softbox just to the camera left. I was using a sync cord to fire that. Another 640 was back and camera right of the subject to add a rim light.
The location is important for this shot. The sun you see in the background was intense. We had to find a shady spot so that I could control the light. We found a little trail that had decent shade. To set the actual shot up, I simply took a reading of the ambient using my in camera meter. I wanted to be around F5.6-8 to get decent DOF and still blur the distant background. I also had to keep it within the sync speed of my camera (about 1/250). I then adjusted the main light to match the ambient by having the runner stand in place as I shot and chimped. Once that was set, I dialed the rim light in two stops under that softbox setting (still a bit too high as you can see). The rim light was triggered with a skyport radio trigger. After that it was simply try a few different angles with the subject running at me. I think that they came out nicely.

Seth Campbell and Kristin Schild Wedding

Jon Reece Link to Jon's site and I Link to my site shot a wedding this weekend at the beautiful Ducktrap Resort in Maine. Seth and Kristin brought two amazing families together and we were honored to document the day.

It was an incredibly difficult wedding to shoot. Most challenging was intense midday sunlight. Here is one shot of the Groom and his groomsmen after the wedding. Fun stuff but the light was difficult. It was about 4:30 but the contrast was still too much for the camera. The shadows and highlights were blowing out simultaneously which means that the dynamic range of the scene was beyond the capabilities of the sensor. In that case all I could do was split the difference and hope to recover most of it in post processing. Thankfully the important details of this series was salvageable. As you can see, the shadow's on Seth's (groom in front) have gone to black. In print this will not have detail. A minor nitpick but one that you need to be aware of as you shoot.

click the image to see it larger

And a stunning image taken by Jon while I held a reflector. The sun was incredibly intense that day (F11 1/250 at ISO 100).

Back to Sports Shooting!

Back at UMaine for the year. First off was some field hockey. Maine lost in a tough game 3-2.

A couple of the images break some sports shooting rules but for me they still work

Rule 1: shoot tight-crop tighter.
You hear this a lot from sports shooters but sometimes a wider angle holds up. With the following image I like that it is backlit. The water drops around her feet add to the image. I like the dead space around her. The out of focus player in the foreground gives the image some context.

Rule 2: get the ball in the shot
You can't see the ball in this shot but the two women together create some tension and the sun setting made for some great light.

Finally one a bit more typical. Good action, the ball is there and you have some context for the shot too. I could crop it a bit tighter but I have left it so that my client can have more options with it.