Stealing

In keeping with the whole "cheating" theme, I "stole' an idea from a fellow over at Fred Miranda.com. He turned me onto to a photoshop plug-in and said it was jump-starting some action sales. Some folks won't like the look, but I think it is pretty cool. Here are a couple of variations of the tool in action.


If it can jump start some sales, I am all in. Oh, the plug-in can be found here. It's from the folks over at LucisArt.

Oh, here is the original image that the above variations came from:

Cheating A Bit

Ok, so you need/want to get some good shots of all the players on a team, but we all know that all the players don't always play and those that do play may not see any action and if they do see some action, you might not get it any shots of them. What to do? Cheat-- a bit.

Get to the game a early and get images of the pre-game practice or warmp-ups. You can almost be assured all the players will be doing something and its a great chance to get everyone covered. Especially those requests we all get from parents. "Hey Photo Guy, get a shot of #44 tonight!" Well, maybe #44 is the second string long snapper.

Baseball: What, maybe 20 kids on a team. With 9 kids on the field at a time it is obvious that not all will see game time or action if they are on the field.

Here is something I strive for in these type of situations.


Here you can see the player, good eye contact and its not blatantly obvious that this is during warm-ups. For baseball, as really all sports, try to make sure you have clean background. Make sure somebody in the background, fan or player, is not watching some other activity, for this might be a clue that the game has not yet started. For baseball, sometimes the games balls are sparkling white and the practice ones are dirty, very dirty. Try to minimize that if possible.

Another reason to cheat. Lighting. At the high school football games around here, it's almost dark by kick-off and later in the season, it will be dark at kick-off. Yet, just before game time, the lighting can be really nice. So, why not make some images with the good lighting. Now, with the image below, there is no defender in sight, so either the coverage got really blown, or this guy is smoking fast. Notice in the background, I've got some fans feet. In this case, you can't see much of them and can't really tell they are not watching the "action" on the field.

Also, I don't think it is all that terrible to get images of the warm-ups and it is blatantly obvious that it is warm-ups as that can be part of the game too.

How often can you get a clean image of a center in football. With my luck, his head is down and he is trying not to get creamed by the nose guard. Either that or the side judge or back judge has their rear end between me and the center.

Also, one last reason to cheat. Sometimes the kids are a bit looser before the game starts and you can catch them smiling, or maybe better yet, with their game face on.

Either way, you might have better access to the kids before a game starts and therefore, a chance to get in nice and tight on their handsome mugs.

The Canon 5DMKII--the new kid from Canon

Canon had a great full-frame camera in the 5D and the images that came from it were stunning. It's a small body, but has a large full-frame sensor like the 1DsMKIII camera, but in a smaller package. I had the 5D for a while and used it on a trip to Disney. The images are fantastic and at 12mp, I had lots of data to work with. The specs on the mkII look very interesting and mouth watering:

21 megapixels. Wow. You'll need a fancy computer to process these with speed.

Full 1080 HD Video. Just check out what this means here: Vincent's Blog.

3.9 fps is not going to be a working pro's sport camera, but not bad and more than adequate for the portrait and wedding shooters.

3.0" VGA LCD sweet!

ISO 50-25,600. Are you kidding me. This is pretty slick. I can shoot in a cave.

9 AF points. Sure, wish there were more like Nikon has done with their D700, but that's about the only thing where most folks would have liked to seen an bigger improvement.

Looks like the street price on this one will be about $2800, but from some of what I am seeing and reading, the waiting lists will be long on this one. Put your deposits down now and get on a list. Put your name right behind mine.

Hatpix Blogs!

Here is the 1st post for the new Hatpix Blog.  Hatpix stands roughly for Halls Action and Team Sports Photography.  I shoot mostly youth sporting events in the Knoxville, TN area.  I'll shoot other stuff too, but really enjoy the kids sports stuff.  

Who knows what I'll post here.  Perhaps some of my best (and worst) images of the week. Maybe some interesting (to me) photography news.  Maybe some tips on what is working and what is not working for me.  

So, what's on tap photograpically for me this week?  I'll be shooting my daughter's softball game tonight at 6:30.  Hopefully, there will be some good lighting tonight and then Thursday, I've got my son's football game.  It has an 8pm start time and the field lights suck so I'll get a chance to practice my flash photography.   Friday night I'll be covering Sevier County vs Seymour high school football for the big school photo company and Saturday I'll be covering my son's bowl

football game.  

Last Friday, Halls lost to West High School and it seems Halls just could not make the big play when they needed to.  Here, the Halls defender breaks up the pass, but can't make the tough interception.  

Here the Halls QB rolls to his right.  West's football field has pretty decent lighting and here I am making do with ISO 6400 on the MKIII.    A bit of noise removal (remove 1/2 the noise setting) in Neat Image and it looks pretty decent.  

Are they still making tear-away jerseys?   I don't think so, but this one gets shredded pretty good.  

And lastly, the stiff-arm.  A classic running back ploy to shed a defender.   Here, the Halls running back uses it pretty effectively.