That's a Quote!

In the current issue of Sports Illustrated there is an article by their long time photographer Walter Iooss Jr. He talks about his background and his experiences with formal photograph sessions with athletes and photographing at games. I was just kind of skimming it, and then there was this bit, a remembering of a conversation he had with the great Yankee reliever Mariano Rivera:

Then one time I asked him [Rivera], "Who taught you that cutter?"

He said, "God."

I said, "God did?" Being an atheist, I said, "God never taught me anything."

Mariano said, "Oh, yes, he did, Walter." He was very calm. He said, "He gave you your great talent. You should be thankful."

That humbled me. The truth is, I see photos everywhere. I look at someone sitting next to me at lunch, and instantly I'm putting up a background in my mind. That's just churning all the time. If the beauty's there, I want to take a picture of it. I could be anywhere. I take hundreds of iPhone photos, and I compose those too, as much as I can. What I really am is lucky to be doing what I do.

I am glad to know there is at least one other nutjob out there who is composing photos in their head all the time, and takes pictures of stuff with their iPhone. He is lucky he gets to do it for a living.

First iPhone Pics

My neighbor was having tree work done. Definitely a photo opportunity! (Yes, there's a guy up in the tree.)

My neighbor had to cut down this 40 year old evergreen, alas.

Cats! Always great subjects for photos--especially sleeping cats...

Leawood police car outside Leawood City Hall looks like a recruiting brochure for the force.

I have always wanted to photograph this art near the Leawood City Hall. Note the moon up in the twilight sky, and the slightly reddish tint to the sky.

Pitfalls--yes. Holding it steady is a little harder, as this shot of my neighbor's organized wreaths in his garage shows. Other pitfalls have included poor focus and getting my fingers in the lens, which is in a very different spot than I am used to!

Showers of Blessings

68 photos went to Facebook from the NWLC so I could post a link for them. It is a bounty of the good, bad and ugly.

This photo, taken Tuesday night during Matt Redman's set features the wrap around visual they started using--it wrapped around the platform and on to the walls. This photo shows a tiny bit of the band, praise hands and the graphic, with the lyrics. It was amazing looking, without being so overpowering that it became about the graphic.

The photo was taken in color, but I pulled the color out in the "dark" room.

Watercolor

When I was young I drew a lot from photographs. Usually, I used colored pencils to add color to my pictures. This is one of the few that survived, mainly because I made off with it. (Parents just have no idea what they throw out!) It is nice that it is one of my favorites. It is unique in that the color is from watercolor paints.

I have to say that this is one of the best drawings I ever did.

1976: High School Hoops

This is one of my favorite photographs from my days photographing sports in high school. I love how you can see all 10 players on the floor, and how the break is developing. This was the year that our boys were playing in away jerseys all year, except in this game the opponent, another blue team, was not reminded to bring their white jerseys. We scratched together enough stuff for the boys to wear for this game.

Need To Visit This Site...

At one time, I lived in a neighborhood full of these wonderful stately three story homes. I lived in the one with the "A" on it in this Google Street View shot, on the third floor. I included the neighbor's house to one side, because it has that wonderful turret thing. The other neighbor's house had a large porch with columns--big round columns. Out the back was a great view of the nearby lake.

Hyperblogal has photos of wonderful Kansas City homes dressed up for the holidays, including houses like these. Please check them out as they are wonderful...

http://hyperblogal.blogspot.com/2010/11/pendleton-heights-holiday-homes-tour.html

Deliberate Blurring

Actually the title of the post is misleading in this: I didn't do this deliberately. I wanted to shoot the Ruskin team running out onto the field with a little bit of pan, and I did. But I forgot that I had turned off the flash on the camera, thus slowing the "shutter speed" considerably. Thus a little extra blur, a little flourish on the old time technique known as "panning"--following a moving object in the viewfinder of the camera. Done right, it produces an image with the moving object fairly well focused and the background blurry, thus giving the viewer the impression of the movement of the object.

Cool, huh?

Football!

It was the first week of high school football action on the Missouri side. This is the best action shot I got during the game. Truman breaks up a Ruskin pass attempt. Ruskin ended up thumping Truman 45-6.

I got fooled several times by play action and other ball fakery in the Ruskin backfield, and missed a great shot of Ruskin defensive pressure when I wasn't paying attention. But it was fun. I wonder what it would take to get permission to be on the sidelines. That would be awesome, even without the zoom lens.

Managing the Cell Phone Camera

I love having a camera with me at all times--that's my cell phone camera, a three megapixel camera in my BlackBerry Pearl Flip phone. It's my second camera phone--I had an LG before. A question came up in a comment as to how pictures from the cell phone are transferred and stored. So this a very quick entry on that topic--and not all that complete. I am going to work on the assumption that there is already in place a photo management program such as Windows Photo Gallery. So not all the questions will be answered completely. If you have a question, pose it in the comments and I'll see if I can at least point you in the right direction.

As you can see from the picture, the BB has a slot for a media or storage card (upper right hand side of the phone in this picture). It's a tiny little thing, but comes in capacities as large as 4 MB. The phone itself can hold a few pictures, but capacity on the phone is limited. I use the card exclusively now, and set the phone so that pictures are automatically stored on the media card.

When I want to move the pictures from the card to my computer, an adapter is required. The tiny microSD card is put in the adapter which is the same size as a standard SD card. The second photo shows the card out of the phone, with the adapter. A standard SD card, the one my point-and-shoot uses, is in the photo for illustration purposes.

After the microSD is securely in the adapter, it can be used as any standard SD card is used. I have printed off pictures at Kinko's using it. The next step for computer down load is to open up your photo managing program and use the down load function. Slip the adapter with the micro into the appropriate slot on your computer and away you go. Now, I'll admit that if you have stored your photos on your phone's memory, I really wouldn't know how to proceed. I would just put them on a memory card and move them from there! My guess is that you would need a cable to connect the phone to your computer. The other option if you have a smart phone like a BlackBerry, iPhone, or Droid is to email the photos to yourself. That just seems complicated to me.

Your computer will offer the option of deleting the photos from the memory card when you are done moving them onto the hard drive. I have never done this. The full memory card is a good back up in case of computer failure. They're little though, so put them someplace safe.

Now, there are phones that use other types of memory cards. Consult your owner's manual, or the manufacturer's website for information. These new highfalutin' phones like the iPhone et al might be different altogether. Never be too proud to read the directions!

And that is a short lesson on managing the photos from your cell phone camera.

Oh, In My Dreams...

The newest site in the cheezburger empire, http://overkill9000.com/ which specializes in "Everything in Excess, Including Excess" recently ran this photograph of a photographer. Commenters related she was probably at a conference and was snapping group shots for everyone, or more simply, was just holding cameras as a gag.

I wanted to mug her and take all her cameras, especially her Nikon.

The Observer, trying to remember that thing about coveting. Does it cover photographic equipment? I've got my Bible out and I'm looking for the loophole!

Has It Really Been Two Weeks?

So sorry to have no posts here for two weeks. It's not that I haven't been taking pictures--in fact it's an embarrassment of riches. I get to rummaging around in the digital pile looking for just the right one. All I come up with sometimes is reasons why I should not post this one or that one. In the end, I end up like this Wayside Waifs kitty; just watching. So, no more of that...

On Photographing Basketball

Practice makes perfect--and not just for this Ruskin High player.

It had been a long time since I had taken photos at a basketball game. Yesterday, I decided to take in a high school game, and brought along my camera. I had some successes and failures, and learned the limits of my equipment. Here are some things I learned and relearned.

1. Take lots of shots. Two things will happen: one is that you will get a feel for the flow of the game and what it takes to get good shots; the second is that you will get some good shots.

2. Be a student of the game. Know whether or not a team is playing zone defense or man to man. Watch picks and cutters. See where players set up. Because basketball is such a fast game (and the higher level you are watching, the faster it gets) the photographer has to have some anticipation as to where the action will be.

3. Recognize the limits of your equipment. If you have the best of the best, great. But if you have only a normal lens (50 mm, for example), know that your best shots are going to be of action closer to you on the court. With my point and shoot digital camera last night, I found that if I went to the setting that eliminated blur, it made pictures darker and the range of the flash shorter. I adapted by shooting closer action mainly.

4. There is a delay between you seeing the picture and the camera recording it. If you have a 35 mm classic film SLR, this is a very small delay. With my digital camera, it's quite significant, possibly as much as three quarters of a second. Take a peak at the photo on the sports blog entry: if this shot is 0.75 seconds sooner, you will see the player who put the ball in the hoop in the picture. I started trying to build this into my technique; when the teams came out for second half warm ups, I shot pictures of the players shooting jumpers, to see when I needed to be pushing the shutter button to get the shooter near when he was releasing the shot. I was rewarded with one almost perfect picture of a jump shooter.

5. Experience is a great teacher, but on the way to improving, you will shoot a lot of crappy pictures. Take it in stride. If you come out of a basketball game with two or three terrific shots, 15 or 20 reasonable ones, and the rest are eminently forgettable, you have done well.