Monday Photo Roundup - April 8

Terrell Tribune Sports/Managing Editor Todd Jorgenson spends his free time as a youth basketball coach.  When his team comes to the Forney Sports Complex for a tournament each year, it is fun to experiment a little and give his kids some unique photos.  These shots were taken in the middle of the day with a single Alien Bees Einstein flash unit at the FSC loading dock.  Just adding a single light and some quick editing in Lightroom can give some fun results.





Picking a location that adds to the images you want to create is important of course...  Here is an article about location-picking for natural light portraits at Digital Photo School (via @resourcemag)

I am anticipating the day that someone calls me for food photography.  How about fancy ice cream sundaes? (via @fstoppers)

How do you show the population density of Hong Kong in photos?  Like This. (via @bhphotovideo)

Weather is warming up... Here is a bit of back-to-the-basics, but thorough post on photographing spring.

Working on your photoshop skills?  This post is a good place to start - 34 techniques to try.

If we needed any more evidence of the decline of basic family portrait studios, the operator of studios in  Sears and Walmart stores is going out of business. (via @ibarionex).   I would also opine that the print-sales based business model and minimal choices compared to even basic "location" photographers.

In case you missed out on last week's April Fools fun.. here is a compilation of photo-related foolin'

Have a great week.

Before and after - Post processing sports in Lightroom

Here is a quick look at a few images from high school basketball and how I adjust them for newspaper, as well as how far you can take them with a quick edit in Lightroom.

Terrell played hard but lost to Carrollton Newman Smith Tuesday night... It was not a great night shooting for me as much of the best action took place on the opposite end of the court, regardless of where I went.

However, when looking through the images, I was pleasantly pleased to find that the players were very expressive.  When players are really hustling, it shows on their faces.  That, in turn, makes much better pictures even when you don't get the best action shots.

OK... here is a quick 1-2-3.

Camera setup was Canon 1D mkIV, 50mm, ISO2000, 1/1250, f2.  That turns out slightly underexposed.


Same picture, as sent it in to the newspaper...  Bumped up the exposure a bit, sharpened and with some noise reduction.  It makes a big difference for the newspaper press, which tends to print dark on most days.  If the images will run in black and white, I bump the exposure even more because anything dark gray prints black, and white is the color of the paper itself.


I do more than 90% of my normal processing in Lightroom, and really 100% of the work for newspaper.  But even in Lightroom, you can go pretty far into the realm of 'edgy magazine feature' with just a few clicks.  Oh the drama.


Here are a few more with a basic edit and an over-the-top version based on Matt Kloskowski's "Game Day" Lightroom presets.

This one is with the 70-200mm lens, iso3200, f2.8, 1/1000






Another boring shot but with nice expression in the eyes.

Quick Pic - Blocked out

Some days the best shot seems like it will never happen.

We had a rare Monday night basketball game in a week that will be full of makeup games from last week's snow-and-ice festival.

The shot after this one, for instance, would have been nice.

Some of the others made me happier.. not bad for shooting only one quarter.

When not strobing, my new favorite basketball lens is the EF 85mm f1.8 by the way. Gets close enough to shoot from the corners, but under the basket is still workable.

Quick Pic - Basketball with Strobes

Finally dragged out the big lights for some basketball this evening. I still need to work on placement and whatnot, but it definitely makes for more interesting photos. Not every game, but there will be more of this.

There are downsides too, but I will do a better blog on the experience soon.

Don J.

Remotely functional

I have used Pocket Wizard remotes with some success in the past, generally at stage events where I can prefocus and know pretty much what I will get.

After seeing this photo I decided to go ahead and break out the remote for basketball.

The fun thing is having two perspectives of almost the same moment of the game...

Here is the view from my handheld camera with the 70-200..


And the remote set up under the basket..


That is all fine and good, but setting up is a real hassle, so you have to be prepared for that. I was using a big gorillapod with no tripod head, so getting the camera pointed where I wanted it was somewhat time consuming.

You must pre-focus the camera and settle for what you can get. And if you leave it on autofocus (which I did after changing lenses above) the camera may or may not focus where the action is. In this case, It was happily focused on the back wall for the last quarter of the game. Details Details....

Finally, with the remote set and firing, you also have to be careful not to ruin your own backgrounds.... Like this.

Have a great week, and Merry Christmas all around,

Don J.

Fun Photo Stuff from the Web

Point and Shooters... tips on getting the most for portraits here...

I have mentioned before how much thought and effort pro photographers put into their work... a great illustration of this is the level of critique they give to students trying to get into the field. Read the pros' comments below each shot in the gallery and you will see what I mean.

My favorite quote from that is "What do you consider your responsibility to society? Your subject? You are responsible to your subject when you take a photo." I suppose that is not as important when taking snapshots, but a photograph can certainly tell a story, and it should be a truthful one.

I hope to make it out to a HS powerlifting meet this weekend... I wonder if I can put up a remote camera for something like this?!

Shooting motorsports events is high on my "want to do" list... Mark Rebilas is a master of this, Even on days as miserable as last Sunday in Daytona...

Of course, he pulls off great shots at most any kind of sport... (Is UFC a sport or some other category of competition? Just checking)

Ok, one from me too, even after seeing how the pros do it! The challenge in basketball is to catch unique moments, like a player going up and hitting the bottom of the backboard instead of getting in front to the basket...

Canon 40D, 85mm, f2.2, 1/400, iso1250

Basketball - KHS vs Venus 2/13

I was happy to make it out to the last regular-season home-game for the Lions vs. Venus Bulldogs match-up. (Boys)

With a 77-37 home win, you can certainly expect plenty of highlights, which is good for photographers! I am a bit saddened that the season is ending right when I feel like I am finally getting some nice shots.

One thing I have been playing with at previous games was slow-shutter panning type shots... these turned out nicely I thought...

Canon 40D, 50mm, f2.8, 1/60, iso800


Canon 40D, 50mm, f7.1, 1/30, iso800


Canon 40D, 50mm, f4.5, 1/30, iso800

The game action was fast and furious all evening, with lots of photo opportunities.

Canon 40D, 70-200, f2.8, 1/500, iso3200


Canon 40D, 70-200, f2.8, 1/500, iso3200


Canon 40D, 70-200, f2.8, 1/500, iso3200

Lucky catch... a Venus player using his face to block a pass down the court..

Canon 40D, 70-200, f2.8, 1/500, iso3200

As I was leaving, the KHS vs. Royse City varsity soccer game had 10 minutes remaining... got a few shots in..

Canon 40D, 85mm, f2.2, 1/500, iso3200


Canon 40D, 85mm, f2, 1/500, iso3200

Time for some new lights at the stadium, you know, for better photos.

Happy Valentines and have a great weekend!

Don J.

Lady Lions vs. Lady Dawgs

Occasionally I will use the blog to post the results of a shoot of some sort. This is certainly a learning process, so I will share what I am discovering as we go along...

After a long and fairly productive HS football season, I was pretty eager to get indoors out of the cold and try my hand at basketball. The last basketball games I shot were in 1995, when I was still a student, so my timing is still pretty bad. The Kaufman holiday tournament was a good warm-up and I was back to see the Lady Lions face the Lady Dawgs of Venus last Friday.

Canon 40D, ef85mm, f2.0, 1/800, iso1600, no flash

When I arrived, the JV game was in full swing, with the Lions enjoying a comfortable lead. Kaufman dominated throughout with a final score of 50-22.

Canon 5D, 24-70mm, f2.8, 1/400, iso 1600, no flash

It was the more of the same for the varsity squad with a final of 41-18. I did not take notes, so you will have to pick up a paper for the details...

With any sport photography, one of the main concerns is having enough light to get a fast enough shutter speed to stop action. The KHS gym is pretty good in this regard, but you do have to have a camera that can take advantage of it by pushing the ISO up to at least 1600.

My Challenge then? Bring a 3 year old Point and Shoot camera to see what I could get. The answer... not much, but I do want to play with settings and try again.

Kodak v530, f4.5, 1/8, iso 160, no flash

As you can see, the shutter (which cannot be manually set) was too slow to stop any action. Panning to get a cool effect is difficult as well because of the lag time of the lcd screen on the camera.

My best results came from forcing the camera to underexpose, then bumping it up a lot in Adobe Lightroom after the fact. Color looked horrible, so I move it to black and white. It looks a lot like shooting B&W Film back in high school!

Kodak v530, f4.8, 1/100, iso160, no flash

Fun as that experiment was, it got old really quickly. Back to the DSLRs.

Shooting basketball can be fun because of the constant action. Unfortunately, it requires players to spend a great deal of time with their arms in the air, defending, shooting or passing.
Canon 5D, 85mm, f2.0, 1/640, iso1600, no flash

Players are crossing between the camera and the ball often, which can really mess with the autofocus. If I manage to keep the right player in focus, it can make unique looking shots.

Canon 40D, 85mm, f2.0, 1/800, iso1600, no flash

In the end, it all comes down to timing, and staying ready to shoot. Taking a second to see how the last shot looked on the LCD is almost a guarantee that something dramatic is going to happen and I get no picture of it. This seems to happen most on defense, so I decided to stay on it and caught this nice steal by #10 Sammatha Offord.

Canon 40D, 70-200mm, f2.8, 1/400, iso1600, no flash

She is very quick, and the Lady Dawgs did not handle that very well. Which resulted in a lot of variations of this picture.


Canon 40D, 70-200mm, f2.8, 1/400, iso1600, no flash

Shooting from the top of the home bleachers gives an interesting perspective and often the court floor makes a clean background for the action. Bleachers are ugly.

I like to try to time the free throw and catch the ball in the basket... nothing spectacular yet, but a fun exercise nonetheless.

Canon 5D, 70-200mm, f2.8, 1/320, iso1600, no flash

Since I am trying to sell prints of these photos to parents (available here), I try to get some fairly close shots. Sometimes it works, sometimes not, but you are guaranteed to capture some fun expressions and hair flying around...

Canon 40D, 85mm, f2.0, 1/800, iso1600, no flash

A thought on showing context in a photo....

The cheerleaders were doing their thing, and during a timeout did some sort of pyramid. Zooming in on the top cheerleader was a nice shot with a clean background... but no context of the fact that she was standing 7' in the air on the hands of her squadmates...


Canon 5D, 70-200mm, f2.8, 1/320, iso1600, no flash

Giving the whole picture meant cluttering the background, but without seeing the whole picture, the drama of the moment is lost.

Canon 5D, 70-200mm, f2.8, 1/320, iso1600, no flash

Here are a few more shots from Friday. The full set of keepers is here.

Canon 5D, 85mm, f2.0, 1/640, iso1600, no flash

Canon 40D, 85mm, f2.0, 1/800, iso1600, no flash

Canon 40D, 85mm, f2.0, 1/800, iso1600, no flash

Canon 5D, 85mm, f2.0, 1/640, iso1600, no flash

Have a great Monday,

don j.