Photography Archives

September 22, 2011

Number, Ball, Face, Action

That’s the basic formula for a good sports photo: you should have the player’s number, his face, the ball and the action. Some of these photos from an unknown baseball game at Capaha park sometime in March 1966 (maybe) have at least some of the pieces of the puzzle. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

That’s easier said than done. Some shooters are better at it than others. I hired a kid named Allen Eyestone fresh out of Kansas who was one of the best sports photographers I’ve ever worked with. He had an uncanny ability to be just where the action was and to shoot images that were tack-sharp. Some of the guys went to sneaking up behind him and touching him with magnets to see if he was some form of robot.

How do you call what you can’t see?

There were nights in Southern Ohio when the fog would come rolling down into the valleys so thick you couldn’t see from one side of the football field to the other. I don’t know how the officials could call a game they couldn’t see. You couldn’t use flash because the light would bounce off the fog and all you’d have would be a bright blob. When the game was over, you’d drive back home with the door open so you could guide yourself by the line painted down the center of the road. Those were the nights you were happy to bring back ANYTHING.

Push, push, push that film

Shooting on fields so dark that the players should have had candles stuck on their helmets got me to experimenting with “pushing” film – using exotic films that I developed in the photographic equivalent of jet fuel to eke out as much speed as possible. In a day when the fastest normal film was 400 ASA, I would push mine to 3,600. Sometimes it would be grainy or contrasty, but it was the difference between a technically flawed photo or none. Sometimes it was pretty darned good.

This last shot has the ball (stuck deep in his mitt), the player’s face, the action (caught in mid-air) and almost his number. I like the line of cars parked in the background and the kid running along the fence with what look like a tire in his hand.

July 4, 2011November 24, 2011

How to Shoot Fireworks

It’s either the 4th of July or Cape is being invaded. The economy might be shaky, but you wouldn’t know it by the amount of money being blasted into the sky all around us.

I spent most of Monday in Cairo with a production company that is doing a documentary on the town. They had seen my photos of Cairo, wanted to use some of them and wanted to interview me roaming around town shooting more pictures. Nice folks. I’ll post some stuff later, but I don’t have time to do it tonight. This is the last Fourth of July photo I’m going to run until next year, I promise.

Photo tips for shooting fireworks

My fancy Nikon strobe needed new batteries and I was too lazy to go in the house to get new ones, so I put the Nikon D40 in full auto mode so it would use its built-in flash for this photo. The little flash did a pretty good job of lighting Mother. The color balance isn’t bad and the short blast of light stopped the action and produced a reasonably sharp photo.

DULL and sharp

And, that’s the problem. It’s DULL and sharp.

The photo at the top of page is technically flawed because I wasn’t using a flash that offered more controls, but it’s a good start. Here’s how I shot it and why.

I turned the dial from Full Auto to a Shutter Priority. I wanted the shutter to stay open for a longer time so it would capture the sparks, flames and streaks made while she was waving the No. 36 Morning Glory around in the air.
I set the shutter for five seconds. That was long enough to record the light trails, but not so long that Mother would go too blurry, so long as I
Allowed the flash to go off as soon as the shutter opened. That provided the light to illuminate her and it “froze” most of her movement. The Morning Glories gave enough light that you can see some slight ghosting around her hands.
I dropped the color saturation just a bit to take some of the redness out. With a little more work in Photoshop, the color balance could have been improved, but it’s been a long day with lots of walking in either rain or a under a hot sun..

She SAID it was an accident

I was standing in the front yard wearing a pair of sandals when Mother gave her Morning Glory a particularly vigorous shake, more like a whip. The flaming, sparking, cracking tip went flying off, aimed directly at my bare toes. Only quick reflexes and dance steps I never did before saved me from having toasty toes and a trip to the emergency room.

She says it was an accident, but I’m wondering if that’s not a subtle hint that it’s time for me to think about heading back to Florida.

July 1, 2011September 22, 2011

Photo Tip: The Illusion of Speed

Many photographers think that faster shutter speeds are better. It’s true that a fast shutter speed will minimize camera shake on your end and subject movement on the far end. That’s usually a good thing. It can also be a formula for a dull photo. I was walking around Franklin School shooting an update now that construction of the new building is under way. (I’ll publish those photos in a day or so. I figure everybody is busy blowing things up this weekend, so I may hold off posting until there is someone around to see it.)

This cute little bunny rabbit was chowing down on the clover along the terrace in front of the school. I shot a quick frame and kept walking to go up the stairs to photograph the main entrance and flag pole. The bunny is reasonably sharp and relatively well exposed. It’s also not very interesting, unless, of course, you care more about bunnies than I do. (You might have a better idea what I’m talking about if you click on the image to make it larger.)

How to capture a feeling of speed

First off, I’m going to confess that this photo of the rabbit blasting out is an example of instinct and luck. I didn’t plan it. HAD I planned it, here are some things I would have done:

I would have picked a relatively show shutter speed.
I would have put the moving subject in the middle of the frame.
I would have opened the shutter when the subject was slightly less than 90 degrees from me.
I would have panned (followed) the subject at the same speed it was moving.
I would have continued the pan until I heard the shutter close.

What does panning do?

What does that accomplish? It keeps the subject recognizably sharp, but makes the background a blur. We’re used to looking out the car window and watching the scenery go by so quickly that it’s a blur. That’s how we know that we’re moving and how fast. This isn’t a great shot, but it has some interesting things helping it out.

The back ground light coming from behind the rabbit is mottled. That pattern of light and dark accentuates the feeling of blur and speed.
The backlight coming through the rabbit’s ears makes them stand out and look pink.
He’s caught in mid-hop, so the bulk of his body is stationary. You can clearly read “rabbit” from the ears and cottontail.

Why did I say it was instinct and luck? I had set the basic exposure, but left the camera on automatic. Because it was getting late in the day and I was in the shadows, the camera opted for a slow shutter speed serendipitously. When I saw the rabbit start to move, I followed the movement out of habit and practice.

I’m not a hunter, but I was a decent shot and was pretty good for an amateur the couple of times I tried shooting skeet. There’s not a whole lot of difference between shooting with a camera and with a gun. (Except that the rabbit gets to run away to eat clover another day.)

What a difference a millisecond makes

The time stamp on the photo is exactly the same as the shot above. That means they were both shot less than a second apart. It’s less successful (in my opinion). You can see the rabbit is in a different point in his hop. His hind legs are rotating down, which causes a blur within the blur of his body. His front legs must be moving back, because his fur is also a blur in a different direction. He’s moved out of the nice backlighting, so his ears aren’t as nicely defined. His head has moved to an angle where he could almost pass for a cat were it not for the cottontail. He’s also quite a way off 90 degrees from the camera, so the blur doesn’t work quite as well.

This is a technique that you don’t use often, but it’s very effective when it works and it’s not hard to do with a little practice. In the old silver film days, it cost money to practice if you actually pushed the button and exposed the film, so we’d sit on the side of the road and practice following cars as the drove by. It’s critical that you do your pan in a smooth, level movement. With digital cameras, it doesn’t cost you anything to actually press the release. Do it.

I’ve never used it, but my strobe and camera have the ability to add another dimension to this technique. You select a slow shutter speed and start your pan. When the shutter is open and you’re following the subject, you get the nice movement blur behind subject. Just before the shutter closes, the strobe will go off, freezing the subject cold. You get the best of both worlds: the illusion of speed, PLUS a tack-sharp subject at the end.

June 21, 2011September 22, 2011

What’s Happening in this Photo?

Most pictures and assignments are pretty straight-forward: you are going somewhere where something is happening and you’re going to try to capture the essence of it. Joe is going to throw the football to Sam. You are going to try to photograph what happens. Easy enough, right?

Sometimes when you look at your film, though, you have to ask yourself some combination of the questions:

What in the world is REALLY going on here?
What was I thinking when I pushed the button?
Why are those people looking at me like that?

The assignment above was to cover Cape Central’s Class of 1965 Senior Party. While Cherie Pind is obviously making an enthusiastic point, Sally Wright and Jim Stone, in the background, are totally tuned out to their surroundings. I think that’s Dale Williams in the background with the bemused expression.

Outside Democratic Headquarters

I have a single frame of these gentlemen standing outside the Democratic headquarters in 1964.I was probably there for some kind of political feature.

There’s no context on the roll for why I happened to notice them. I like the guy puffing away on the cigar and the body language of the guy on the left. It would be fun to know what they were discussing.

Different angle or did I trip?

This is obviously a parade of some kind with the Jackson High School Band marching by. I was either trying a different angle; tripped and dropped my camera, accidentally firing the shutter, or was trying to appeal to the shoe fetish element of our subscribers. Today’s newspapers probably hired a focus group to calculate just how many of the latter there are. That’s why our local paper runs so many stories about shoes.

What prompted THIS reaction?

I think this is Marilyn Knehans. I know Jon Knehans is on the left. I recognize his deputy’s patch.

What’s going on?

It COULD have been her reaction if I had asked her for a date. Since I’m sure I didn’t have the nerve to do that, it’s up to you to speculate about what’s going on.

I’m THIS old

This looks like it might have been taken on a Missourian food feature. I have no idea why the kid is holding up the three fingers or who he’s showing them to. He’s pretty serious about it.

Since I wasn’t good at studio work, I tried to avoid shooting food and other products. I was geeky enough to come up with some ideas of how to make food look more appealing for the guys who DID shoot it. I found some chemicals, for example, that would produce fake smoke that I could pipe into the food to make it look steaming.

Before I found the fake smoke, we used REAL smoke. Real smoke enough to set off the building smoke alarms, which caused a whole bunch of guys with hoses and big trucks to show up. This was NOT a good thing.

Is that a come-hither look?

I think this was shot when I was at The Jackson Pioneer. When I looked at the film the other night, I was wondering if the blonde was giving me a come-hither look. Then I analyzed the photo and realized that was unlikely for a couple of technical reasons:

It was taken in the dark, so she probably couldn’t see me BEFORE the photo was taken.
After the photo was taken, she would have been blinded by the flash.

If it truly was a come-hither look, I’m sorry that I didn’t catch it for about 45 years. I was always a little slow on the up-take.

Like an animal at the zoo

Why these kids are looking at me like some kind of zoo animal, I don’t know. That’s my Buick station wagon they are peering into, but I don’t know what caught their interest. I do note that the door is locked.

See all of those scratches and spots on the lower left side of the photo. I got tired of spotting the flaws and started to pitch it, but then I thought I’d post it as an example of a Before and After shot (see below for the Before).

I decided, instead on writing about the Bald Knob Cross photos because they were better examples of how both cropping AND technical magic could make something out of nothing. This shot, while an interesting spot removal exercise, would never be much more than a record shot.

Scratches and flaws supreme

Here’s the original photo after I had adjusted the lightness and darkness of the main subjects, but before I started spotting out the scratches and flaws. If you click on the image to make it larger, you’ll see a big white spot on the chin of the girl on the right and a spidery dust speck on her lips. Click on the left and ride sides and you can rock back and forth to compare them.

In the final version, I had made the headliner at the top of the door darker to keep your eye on the faces and darkened the door frame to try to hide (unsuccessfully) some of the scratches. I managed to eliminate or minimize all of the scratches on various body parts.

At some point, you cut your losses and decide that you’d rather spend more time on pictures that have more significance. (No offense meant, if any of the trio are readers.)