SPPL Michigan Wrap Up & Pictures

It was another fun weekend shooting paintball pictures for the SPPL's Michigan Qualifier at Hell Survivors located in Pickney, MI (right next to Hell, MI, thus the name). I thought the picture below was pretty funny.



We had a cloud burst Friday night as we were setting up that had small rivers running everywhere, then Saturday the sun was out and hot. Sunday was great weather and the ability to get in the games to shoot was one of the most enjoyable to date.

The transition from the Nikon D40x to the D300 has been pretty smooth; however, the help I have received from Ken Rockwell's site on the fine tuning of the settings was noticeable to me in this last set of photographs. I would highly recommend his site, http://www.kenrockwell.com/.

I have posted all the pictures on my website, http://www.haslamphotography.com/. There you can see about 400 from the Michigan event, really the first 150 are the best.

Runner-up

I was called today by Kirkham's Outdoors and was told that my submitted photograph was a runner-up in their outdoor adventure contest. It was taken atop of Sundance last fall. The people are my family and our friends.

The photograph was taken with my Nikon D40x sitting on the camera bag and trigger by the self timer. The lens was my 18-55 (set at 18) and a polarizer. There was no intention to submit this photo for anything at the time I took it, but looking back on it I am glad I didn't zoom in to the faces which would of lost the sense of place.

Great Sports Shooter's Journal

I have not shot much this week as I have been watching the Olympics every night. Below is a link to the Chicago Tribune's sports photographer, Scott Strazzante:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/chi-080804-olympics-strazzante-photogallery,0,3391161.photogallery

It is good insight into his working schedule and thoughts in capturing the Olympics. The first picture is the most recent post, with the last being before the games started.

I am off to Michigan this weekend for another SPPL qualifier and inidivdual/team shots for the new Grag Hastings paintball video game. New posts will follow.

Dream Assignment

Surfing the Shutterstock forums I found a post with the following link:

http://www.vincentlaforet.com/Gear/index.html

It is Vincent LaForet's webpage showing the equipment he is packing to cover the Olympics. Each picture has a caption under it talking about his trip and how to pack so much equipment.

It amazes me the amount coverage the Olympics get. Read his captions to each picture then think about the thousands of photographers. The logistics of the photography is only a small portion of the games. Image the planning and logistics for the games themselves.

The views of the photographers during Olympic coverage shows the inroads Nikon is making into to sports photography with the release of their D3. This market was dominated by Canon (all the big white lenses).