Basketball Season

The season is in full swing now and I've already shot a few games for the Ladycats and the Bearcats. My favorite shot so far is of my son (surprise), Aaron. He plays on the Freshman B-team as a guard and is one of the team's leading scorers.



I shoot basketball with my Canon 1D Mark III and a 70-200mm f/2.8L lens. Occasionally I substitute a 24-70mm f/2.8L for wide shots below the goal or a 300mm f/2.8L for a different look from up in the rafters. I use a pair of Alien Bees (800s) located on the top row of the gymnasium that I trigger with a radio control from the hotshoe on my camera. It's a great setup. I use apertures of f/6.3 and f/7.1 with the shutterspeed set to 1/250 and the ISO around 1000. The strength of the flash units and the short duration of the flash event help me ensure the sharpness I want.

One thing about shooting with a flash is that you have to understand and anticipate the action. It's not like football where you can just hold the button down in machine gun mode. You get one chance for a shot and then the flash has to recharge. My Alien Bees are fast but they can't handle the 10 frames per second that the 1DM3 can dish out. Not long ago I got a great shot of a player on the baseline right before he went up for a slamdunk. I hadn't seen this kid play before and I wasn't expecting him to explode to the goal that way. Now, whenever I see him with the ball, I try to hold out for the explosion. Of course, I've already got him on the baseline. I don't need another one of those.

I generally sit along the baseline under the home team goal about halfway in from the corner. This allows me to get good views of the ball as it is advanced across midcourt. The shots I like the most are the wide shots looking up at the players as they approach the opposite side of the goal from my position. I always shoot from as low as possible in order to make the players look taller. Many times I've stood up during a timeout only to discover that my butt was completely asleep, but that's okay. The view from down low is the best one.

I think basketball is my favorite sport to shoot. The action is close and it is fast. Unlike football, you get to see the players eyes and the eyes add a lot of emotion to the photographs.

A Few Thoughts to Begin 2010

I guess if you are reading this and you have ever read any of my posts before then you know that I am not very good at this. Good bloggers post their thoughts every day or at least every week. I don't really think that much. That's the problem. And when I do think, it's not really that interesting outside of my own head - plane geometry, constant acceleration equations, differential calculus - stuff like that.

Last year was a very good year. Jill and I are enjoying life and the kids are doing great. We spent four weeks in Idaho as a family last summer and then I spent three more weeks out west - one in the summer with Jill to Yellowstone, another week in Utah with a friend, and a week in the fall in Idaho with another good friend. We stayed home at Christmas but that's what you do when your kids' high school soccer and basketball take over your life.

I've done a lot of photography in the last year. The travel photography out west was my favorite but I did a lot of other shooting too. I followed the successful run of the Aledo Bearcats all the way to the 4A State Championship in football. Along the way I shot on the sidelines at the new Dallas Cowboy Stadium and at Darrell K. Royal Stadium at the University of Texas. I did a lot of portraits in the spring and and I shot volleyball, soccer, baseball, basketball and church in between.

I'll try to be better about posting in 2010. Think of it as a New Year's Resolution guaranteed to be good for at least a couple of posts anyway. I'll be keeping my posts pretty short this year focusing on a few favorite photos and the stories behind them.

Here's the first one:



This is one of my favorite spots in Grand Teton National Park, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It's the Snake River Overlook and Ansel Adams made it famous back in the 40's in black and white. My version is from June 2009 and was done with multiple exposures. This is an example of High Dyamic Range processing where a range of exposures are combined into one photograph. It's a way of pulling detail out of the shadows without blowing out the highlights. It seems to be more dramatic to me.

The week we spent in Wyoming and Idaho was great but the clouds never quite gave up their hold on the mountaintops. This shot was one of my best from the week. I like the way the clouds pull back to reveal part of the treasure of Grand Teton without completely revealing the tips of the peaks.

I'm Baaaaaaaaack!

ATTENTION Blog Readers!

I am still alive.

It's been almost six months since my last blog entry. Part of that is because I have been incredibly busy with new jobs and part of it is because I just haven't had much to say. The more I've thought about what photography lesson should come next, the more I have realized that THERE JUST ISN'T THAT MUCH TO IT!

Learn how to use your equipment; learn what shutterspeed, aperture, and ISO do for you; and then get out there and shoot. Think about the suggestions I've given on composition and then go try them. It's really that simple.

Now a little about what's been happening in my world:

We spent seven weeks in Idaho and got back to Texas about the 10th of August. I made a trip to Utah in October to hunt muledeer with my dad and then I took the family back to Idaho for Christmas. Now it's January and we're back in the swing of things with life as normal as it ever gets for us.

Last August I took a job with the local newspaper in Aledo, The Community-News. I became their official sideline photographer for high school football and volleyball season. Things went so well that we've extended our agreement for basketball and soccer seasons. I shoot at least one game per week - but usually five or six if I can make it. I still sell prints to parents while making all my shots available for use by the newspaper. It's been a lot of fun. If you like sports photos, you should probably check out my favorite sports shots on my Smugmug website (www.SaltForkImages.com)

In November, I started another new job as a teacher at Aledo Christian School. I teach Geometry, Pre-Calculus, and Calculus two days per week and I love it. Aledo Christian is a small private school; the kids are great and, well, who wouldn't love getting to teach Calculus!

Besides all the sports photography, I've also started doing some High Dynamic Range Imaging. HDR Imaging is a great way to capture the broadest range of light possible in your photographs. I've attached one below that might look familiar to you. Last July I posted about "getting in a rut," and shooting the same places over and over. I talked about how fruitful that can be when you factor in potential changes in lighting due to time of day and/or weather. It turns out that in that last session at sunset in Grand Teton National Park, I shot several shots with different exposures without moving my tripod. THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT YOU NEED FOR HDR! WHAT AMAZING LUCK! I hope you like the result. It now qualifies as my official all-time favorite photograph.



I hope 2009 is off to a good start for you. I'll try to post some more photos and some more photo-thoughts very soon.

-James

It's okay to get in a rut!

Hmmm. Seems like an odd title doesn't it? I've always thought that it was bad to get in a rut. This week, however, it really paid off.

I'm in the middle of my fifth week in Idaho and I've posted about 250 photos to my website so far. (Click on the link on my main page at www.SaltForkImages.com to check out the fun.) If you were to look through my newest gallery and the other galleries that I've posted in the past from my visits to Idaho and Wyoming, you would notice a lot of the same locations - over and over, again. Some people might think that would get boring. I'm learning to LOVE IT! Every time I visit Grand Teton National Park to shoot the barns on Mormon Row or the reflection at Schwabacher's Landing, I get something different.

The Tetons are an incredible mountain range. Take a shot before 9am and you're almost certain to get something good. The difference between "good" and "spectacular," however, usually depends on the weather. And since the weather changes all the time, it becomes an adventure every time you go back to that same old place.

We have lots of "bluebird" days up here. Some folks even call it "severe clear." Here's Schwabacher's on a day like that:



Then sometimes you get some clouds in the morning:



Mormon row is the same way. Bluebird morning:



Overcast morning:



I shot that last one above in 2005 and I haven't managed to catch a sunrise like that since. However, now that I've failed a few times, I know a little more about what it takes. It takes weather! Nowadays, I check the sky the evening before to see what might be happening the next morning. I even check early in the afternoon to try to anticipate what the sunset will look like. That brings me back to this week.....

This week I decided to mix things up and try some sunset photography in GTNP, expecting the mountains to silhouette against the evening sky. What I got was a great surprise. I watched the afternoon weather in Teton Valley, Idaho, just west of the Tetons and noticed some really interesting clouds headed toward the peaks. I raced across Teton Pass and found myself sitting at Schwabacher's Landing an hour later. Schwabacher's is the perfect "poster shot" with the reflection in the beaver pond and the beautiful trees along the shoreline. I've shot it so many times you might say I've gotten in a rut! But this time the weather cooperated and gave me a gorgeous sky.

I hope you like it. It's one of my new favorites.... all because I went back to the same old place.



Keep shooting the same things over and over and you will begin to discover that it can be different every time. Look up! Check the sky. Let the weather help your landscape photographs.

Happy shooting!

James

Something Different.... for me!

It's been a while since I last posted. I'm sure all of my fans out there - you both know who you are - have missed me..... right?

This spring has been busy. I've done a few portrait sessions and I've done something new: Architectural Photography. I was hired by a friend who builds custom homes to take photos for his new promotional brochure. It's been a unique challenge that has helped to reinforce all those lessons about good photography - remember shutterspeed, aperture, and ISO?  All the tradeoffs come into play just like I taught back in our early lessons together.

Here a few of my favorite shots:









I shot the indoor shots with low ISO to eliminate graininess, small aperture for sharpness and greater depth of field, and long shutterspeed to ensure proper exposure. And of course, with long shutterspeeds I used a tripod to hold the camera steady.

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The other "something different" from the last few weeks is that I did my first Bridal Portrait Shoot. Emily is such a beautiful young lady. Here are a couple of my favorites from her shoot.





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And now for the best news of all...

We're headed back to Teton Valley, Idaho, for a few weeks of cool mountain weather! Watch my galleries at www.SaltForkImages.com for additions to the Travel and Nature section. I'll be getting up close and personal with the very best that our National Parks have to offer. Grand Teton, Yellowstone, and (hopefully) Glacier are all on the agenda for this summer. I'll update the blog a few times and I'll shoot about 10,000 photos while we are out west. Hopefully there will be a few keepers.

As always, feel free to e-mail me if you have any photography questions or just want to keep up with our adventures.

- James (jalbritton@mesh.net)

The Theatre is my Life!

Okay, maybe the title was an exaggeration but I have discovered that it is a lot of fun to photograph theatrical performances.

I told you about the fun I had back in February shooting the winter musical production at Aledo High School. This time I got to shoot a serious one-act play entitled, "The Diary of Anne Frank" and a series of short, one-act comedies that included, "Variations on the Death of Trotsky." These were two very different kinds of plays but the photographic challenges were the same. High ISO, wide open apertures, and a monopod to hold the camera are the only way to have a chance at sharp photos. Even then, about one-third of the shots I took were blurry. That's why I love digital! Just keep shootin' - you're bound to hit SOMETHING!

Here's a shot from, "The Diary of Anne Frank."



And, here's a shot from "Variations on the Death of Trotsky."



I'll be back soon with another lesson so keep checking in.

James

Cool Desert Shots...

In early April I made a trip to Las Vegas for a little business with the Nevada Department of Transportation. Those of you that know me well know that a place like Vegas doesn't really interest me. So what did I do? I took the scenic route! We finished with NDOT early and headed for Hoover Dam and the Nevada desert. The tour at Hoover Dam took us down to the generator facility which was very cool. But the real spectacular stuff was the view from the top.

Here's a shot of the generator room.



And this is the view of the back of the dam and an old crane used for transporting men and materials across the canyon.




On the way back to Las Vegas we spotted some cacti blooming in the desert. The sun was high overhead but I think I managed to salvage some pretty good shots.





Thanks for visiting!

- James