Tag: Photography

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Night Football Photo Challenges

I think this was a Central High School football game, but I can’t swear to it. I have a few Missourian clips of high school sports, but none of these photos were in the ones I could find.

Shooting night football was full of challenges.

  • The fields were too dark and the film was too slow to shoot available light, so you had to use flash.
  • Electronic flash was better than flashbulbs because you could shoot as quickly as the strobe would recycle. Unfortunately, the more you shot, the more the battery discharged and the slower the recycle time.
  • Electronic flash duration was very short, so it stopped action very well. Unfortunately, the shutter had to be completely open when the flash went off, so the shutter speed had to be set at 1/60 or 1/90 of a second. The flash would stop the action, but there would be enough ambient light that “ghosting” would occur. You can see it on some of these shots where there is a blurry line around a helmet or arm.
  • The flash was limited to about 30 feet, so plays down the middle and on the other side of the field were out of range.
  • You had to guess where the play was going to be so you could set the exposure correctly. You could follow focus as the action moved, but you were pretty much stuck with your exposure.
  • You had to judge where the action was going to be, give or take 30 feet. Do you stand slightly ahead of the line of scrimmage and hope they run toward you? Do you go down the field and gamble that a pass that will be on your side of the field? When you get close to the end zone, do you stand under the goal posts and hope for a play coming at you or do you drop back behind the line of scrimmage? By the time the game was over, you probably covered as much of the field as the players did.
  • The goal was to drop off one to three prints at the paper before deadline. Usually there was only room for one in the paper. So, you spent a couple of hours shooting the game; an hour processing and printing it; a drive to the game and to and from the office; film, chemical and photo paper that cost about $1.50. For all of that, you got $5. Oh, I forgot to mention that you had to buy all your own equipment, too. Maybe I should have paid more attention in math class, because something doesn’t add up here.

Football photo gallery

If anybody knows the teams or anything about the game, chime in. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the gallery.

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Cinco de Mayo Super Moon

Riding partners Anne and Osa thought the night of the Super Moon would be a good time for me to take my first bike ride since my crash on February 19. We had planned it earlier, but weather hadn’t cooperated. We were going to watch the moonrise from the Lake Worth Beach, but there’s a tall drawbridge to go over, so they suggested we check out a new park with boardwalks going out into the Intracoastal Waterway north of the Lake Worth Bridge. I guess they didn’t want to risk having to tow me over the bridge if I hadn’t gotten my legs back. Click on any image to make it larger.

Boardwalk puts you out over water

It’s a beautiful place to sit. The mangroves behind you muffle the city sounds. The breeze off the water was actually a little on the chilly side. We got there a little early, so my partners talked me into riding back into Lake Worth for a sinfully good ice cream cone.

Traffic was pretty heavy and I heard a car with a bunch of guys in it hootin’ and hollerin’ in the next lane coming up behind me. This sounds like trouble, I thought. When they got closer, I could see if was a bunch of young Hispanic guys wishing everybody within earshot a happy Cinco de Mayo. Dial the Threat-o-Meter back to green again.

Super Moon over Lake Worth Beach

We got back to the boardwalk from our ice cream run with a couple minutes to spare before Osa spotted the big orange ball coming out of the haze above Lake Worth Beach. It was huge, but indistinct until it got a little above the horizon. We’ll go a little photo geeky on the rest of the pix. If you don’t care for technical details, just skip over them like I do names in a Russian novel.

Light turned blue

With the sun going down, the sky picked up a bluish cast. The exposure here is 1/30 of a second @ f/5.6. The camera boosted the ISO to 500 from my normal 200. I was underexposing the photo by as much as four stops to keep the moon from becoming a white blob. I was zoomed to the max at 55mm on my 18-55mm zoom lens. It would be nice to have a longer lens, but I like to travel light on the bike.

Boat adds movement

Several boats went by, but this one showed up best. I zoomed out for a bit wider shot than the previous one. This was zoomed to 34mm. The exposure was 1/30 @ f/5.0 and the ISO was 400.

I love digital photography for the ability to change the film “speed” with every shot. With film, you were committed to one type of film and speed for the whole roll. That’s one reason why I carried three cameras: each one might be loaded with a different type of film to cover every contingency.

Switched to video camera for big moon shot

Since I didn’t have a longer lens for my Nikon D3100, I switched to my Canon FS100 video camera video camera in still mode for a tight shot of the Super Moon. I didn’t expect it to be tack-sharp because I was zoomed way in and using a 1/25 second shutter speed. I was braced against the boardwalk, but the water pounding the pilings caused some movement.

Street lights shift everything orange

Just before we left, I started experimenting with other than moon photos. This shot of the Lake Worth draw bridge was taken when pretty much all of the light was gone from the sky except for the moon. The camera bumped the ISO up to 3200 and dropped the shutter speed down to half a second @f/5.6.

Here’s what the big bridge looks like in the daylight, plus a little history of the original bridge built in 1919.

 

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Mount St. Helens

When Wife Lila and I traveled to Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument last summer, I complained that I couldn’t see the forest for the sneeze. I had a killer cold that made me so miserable I’d have welcomed a Second Coming of  Mt. Helens to put me out of my misery.

On top of that, we got a late start and it was a longer drive than we had anticipated. By the time we got there, it was late in the day and the cloud cover was heavy. It didn’t provide the best opportunities for shooting.

Hoffstadt Creek Bridge

A lot of money flowed into the area to restore infrastructure. This bridge over Hoffstadt was built as quickly as possible to help loggers salvage what trees could be salvaged.

View into the crater

We expected to see what we remembered from news photos of the aftermath of the eruption: trees laid over, stripped landscapes and mud flows. (One of my former staffers won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the event.)

Nature is much more resilient than anyone had expected. Many of the trees have been replanted, wildflowers and wildlife are returning. This view down into the crater shows a lot of green.

Fragile ecosystem

Many areas of the mountain are closed to the public to give scientists a unique opportunity to study the progression of life in an area that had been effectively stripped clean of anything living.

Other Seattle area stories

Photo Gallery of Mount St. Helens

I shot these photos when I was dog-sick with a cold, so it’s appropriate that I edited them when I’m (hopefully) getting over one. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery.

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Second Glance Stuff

From time to time, I meander through old photos to see if something catches my eye that I might have missed. I was telling a friend the other day that there’s almost always a reason WHY you shot a picture, you just may not realize it the first time you look at it, particularly if you have a particular story in mind. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

The first couple of these shots fit into the “What am I seeing in that window?” category. The shot above was on the north side of Broadway just east of Annie Laurie’s Antiques. The dummies, if that’s what they are, just popped out at me as I was walking down the street. When I looked at the frame later, I liked the cool cast the bluish colors give the overall image, then there’s that incongruous splatter of fluorescent orange around what appears to be a gas line.

Another dummy in the window

This is the building at the southwest corner of Main Street and Broadway that housed the St. Charles Drug Store after the St. Charles Hotel was torn down. It had once been used by the Singer Company. You can see the Singer sign if you look closely at the photos of the teen dance held in the First National Bank parking lot. Some of  Main Street Midnight Madness pictures may have been taken inside the drug store.

Stag Beer

No telling how many times this Stag beer sign has been painted over. It’s on the side of a building being restored on the southwest corner of Independence and Frederick.

Building on Water Street

I thought it was curious how the stacked pallets mimic the windows in this Water Street building, down to the colors.

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