Help-Portrait - Wrap-up

Saturday turned out to a great day of helping 40 individuals/families get their picture taken.   Processing was finished last night and now off to the printer.  Thanks to Pixels Photo for the printing.   While we hoped for more participants, all the counselors from the Housing Authority said we had a great turn out.  Everyone measures success differently.   The counselors expect more to come out next year.  

This morning the organizers of Help Portrait released some numbers:

36,000 portraits given by 3,002 photographers and 4,422 volunteers in 511 locations in 41 countries.

Help-Portrait - CBS Evening News

The organizers of Help-Portrait posted on their twitter account today that the CBS Evening News will show a story about them Sunday, December 13.  Check out their website at http://www.help-portrait.com/. 

Pictureline is also sponsoring our group.  If you have never visited their stores, do so.  They are a great local company with two locations, one downtown and the other in Draper.

Help-Portrait - Dec 12, 2009

I am going to take part in the world wide Help-Portrait on December 12.   The group of photographers I am working with are teaming up with the Housing Authority of Salt Lake City.   We have a few sponsors, including Pixel's Photo and Frame who will provide the printing.  Hopefully we will be able to provide a photograph to over 60 families and individuals.  I'll definity post more after the event.

Family Photos

I had the chance to do a family shoot for some long time family friends.   The weather could of been better so we moved indoors for the group photograph.

Xtreme Combat Weekend

This past weekend was Randy Couture's (UFC Champion) Xtreme Combat Weekend fundraiser for his Xtreme Couture GI Foundation.   I went down with some friends who played in the paintball games while I shot for the event.  On Saturday night there was an amateur MMA (mixed martial arts) event of fifteen bouts.  We were late to the fights due to being at the paintball field; however, I was able to shoot five bouts.  This was the first time I had shot any MMA and found it quite interesting.  Getting to stand and lean on the ring was great to get up close up.  The emotions were great on all the fighters' faces.  It took a little while to dial in my settings as it was held in a dark temporary arena with some odd lighting.  The new digital cameras of today are amazing in low light.  Check out the photos from the event at:

Paintball: http://www.haslamphotography.com/Paintball/Xtreme-Combat-Weekend

MMA:  http://www.haslamphotography.com/Sports/MMA

7 Beginners Tips for Shooting Sports and Action

I read an article today at Photography Bay containing 7 Beginners Tips for Shooting Sports and Action and found it somewhat useful, but not really beginner tips. When shooting my kids' events other parents will ask me about their own camera and what is needed to capture their kids in the moment.


Here is my list of 7 beginners tips geared towards DSLR’s as point and shoot cameras will not capture much, if any action:

1. On your camera change your dial to sports, usually the running man icon. Why? It opens the aperture and increases the shutter speed. Start here. It should work with any lens you have in daylight and still get pretty good results when it is overcast.

Slightly more advanced tip: You can increase your ISO to get a faster shutter speed, but be careful as you increase the ISO grain and noise are likely.

Why do pros use huge lenses? These lenses have a lot of glass to provide a large aperture which means a lot more light coming into the lens. More light means faster shutter speed. When you pay a ton of money for “fast” glass, the quality of the glass is normally better too. Another thing long, fast glass does is separate the subject from the background. People pay thousands and over ten thousand for long, fast glass. Get a gym membership if you own long, fast glass like a 600mm f/4 which weighs in over 11lbs. That weight does not include the camera.

This is the only tip that has to do with equipment. Use what you have to make great shots.

2. Faces. You need your subject’s face your picture. At any level the face makes the shot as the face shows emotion which helps tell a story. Think about the shot you are trying to get. Which leads to:

3. Get up and move!!! Many parents side near the middle of the field (soccer, football, basketball, lacrosse, hockey, any sport with the goal at the end of the field) and shoot away. This leads to great shots of the players on defense, but you will never capture the offense’s faces. Get behind the goal or the end of the sideline. Baseball seems to be the only sports where parents are willing to get up and move to get the shot.

4. Get low. Watch the photographers at a sporting event and most times they are kneeling on the ground, shooting up. Why? It gets you into a perspective not at eye level, gets you into the action and makes the players seem bigger. For little league, at least get to the players’ eye level.

5. Watch your background. Getting low also normally helps clean up the background. This is sometimes easier said then done. Take a break from shooting and look at the image as a whole on the back of your camera and take note what the background is doing. Don’t look at your camera after every shot asy ou’ll miss too much.  This practice is frowned upon by the “pros” and maybe a blog post for another day of what you really should be looking at on the back of your camera.

6. Anticipate the next play. You have probably watched enough of the sport/player that you can anticipate what will happen next. Get ready for it and have the camera up to your eye, but I would add to Photography’s Bay tip and learn to keep both eyes open. Easier said then done. Practice it. It will help with family candids as well.

7. Don’t stop when the play stops. Look in any sports magazine and there are limited action shots. Why? It gets back to faces which show emotion and great action shots are hard to get. Get the picture of the teams in a huddle, coming off the field, the celebration of the goal, the coach talking to the players, and shaking hands with the other team. These are the scrapbook images and they are easier to get. It might be the only time you can get a shot with a face as the helmets come off.

Look at Reuter’s top 24 images each day and there is always a sports shot and 90% of the time it is a celebration or the agony of defeat. Rarely the photo is of the action in the game. I would say if it is action, it is a bunch of soccer players going for a header.

Hopefully these few tips can help you get a better action shot of your player. Shooting action gets you into the action. Enjoy doing it and I think it sure beats just sitting on the sideline.

Duck Hunting - Opening Day

Saturday at 8:00am (well, we heard shoots a little earlier than that) the 2009-2010 Duck Hunt was open.   We saw a lot of ducks, but without any rain or wind, those ducks got up before 7:30am and out of range quickly. I got a few photos in before the start.   You can see how still the air was that morning.
  

Dew Tour 2009 - BMX Vert Finals

Here is the last event (BMX Vert) from this weekend's Dew Tour stop in Salt Lake City. The photographs turned out better than I had hoped. A bunch of photogs, including me, were down on the floor the whole event, never up on the deck. I did not have access to the arena's lighting system and this event was not covered by MTV2 or NBC, so no TV lighting. Needless to say it was dark in there and to add to it, the black curtain and the riders wearing black. I cranked up the ISO to 1250 to 1600 with f/2.8 on my 70-200 and got some good shots, but the grain and noise still made it into my shots. My 18-200 was too slow and a SB800 did not throw enough light to make it work.

Dew Tour 2009 - FMX Jam

Here is slide show from the FMX Jam. The photographers were originally placed in an awful spot behind the podium and shooting into the sun. With a little persuasion by the best photogs in the world, the officials got a bunch of us got access to an empty scissor lift that gave us a much better angle and the sun to our back. I wish someone took a picture of us crammed onto the lift, the photog geek hang out. Enjoy.

Dew Tour 2009 - BMX Park

I got a press pass to shoot the 2009 Dew Tour Toyota Challenge this weekend through Shutterstock. Below is a sideshow mainly of the BMX Park and a few BMX dirt as well. I am working on getting the FMX Jam together then the BMX Vert. There was not enough time to get the skate park or vert, maybe next year.

Here is a short video created for free at Animoto. One has to pay to get a longer video (more pictures). There is also a service for professional photographers to create HD video to burn to DVD. It was amazing how fast the video was created, literally in minutes. They have linked with all the major photo sharing sites to get your images so your upload is also minimal. They have their own music library, or you can upload your own. In all, registration and created was under 10 minutes. One can get the html link to embed in a website or blog, send to YouTube or email. Enjoy

Impact Soccer - U7

Here is a slideshow from this Saturday's game. Click on image to be taken to the gallery on my website.

Highland Mighty Mite Football - Slide Show

My website host (SmugMug) has a new feature were one can create a slideshow of a gallery and they create the code that can simply be pasted into another application. The slideshow below only took a minute to create. If you click on the slideshow or image it will then take you to the gallery. Its something new. It might lead to some more blog posts.

Last week's game (Highland vs Alta Mighty Mite) can be seen here on my website.

Late Night Fly Fishing

My father, brother and I were able to get out after work for the first fly fishing trip of the year. I dragged the camera along to see if I can fish and shoot at the same time. Short answer, no. I was able to get a few shots off and catch a fish after missing two pretty clean hits earlier. All shots were after the sun went down. Needless to say, all were handheld and a tripod would of been helpful.

The Tour of Utah - Stage 1

The Tour of Utah finished their first stage yesterday at Research Park after coming down Emigration Canyon. I managed to get out of the office and run up to the mouth of the canyon to catch the racers. A few more photographs can be seen on my website. Also on my website is a lot of the support cars.
I slowed the shutter speed down to 1/250 and panned with the racers to create the blurred background and their spokes blurr out. It gives a nice feeling of speed. It is definitely harder to capture, however, I think it makes a better photograph.

The main pack coming out of the canyon.

Here are the eventual winner and second place finishers, Paco Mancebo (Rock Racing) and Oscar Sevilla (Rock Racing). They of course came out of the canyon first. I wanted to make sure I captured them so I shot a shutter speed around 1/2000, thus you can see the spokes clearly.

Backyard Visitors

In the past few weeks I have not been able to get out to shoot an event, so I have focused on my backyard. Here are few a visitors:
The bee is in a hosta flower. I was shooting the flowers until the bees came along.

We have a very large butterfly bush (about eight feet tall and six feet wide) and the name holds true. During the last two years we had a lot of humming birds come to it, but this year nothing.

This I found out through a Google search is an Asian Lady Bettle, thus the orange, yellow color instead of the native red. They were introduced on purpose in the west and are taking over the red ladybug.

Beauty Dish - DIY / Lightroom

I followed the instructions of David Tejada (click on his name for the link to his blog) to create my own beauty dish fired by my SB800. The instructions are pretty simple and once one visits Home Depot for the parts, the pictures make more sense. I would not recommend painting the gray gutter part as it makes it harder to glue velco to it. The mirror I left out and used a CD instead. The impact of the mirror cannot be that great and David mentions that as well. For the velco I used some of our broken Hit-A-Way straps (we burn through one a season). Those are probably a little over kill. The first test shots were of my wife which she made me delete and deservedly so. My garden is always willing to model and never complain, so below is one of our many daylilies. Nikon D300, 70-200 2.8, SB800 through DIY beauty dish fired by Nikon's CLS. There is also a little sharpening and color bump in Adobe's Lightroom.

I received Lightroom for Father's Day and find it is the best thing about digital photography (aside from taking a ton of pictures). Wade Heninger was kind enough to do a free Lightroom for starters last week and it helped me really understand the basis of the software (we spoke techie/geek talk). It was made for photographer and is laid out the way a photographer thinks. Photoshop is not. You will see his name on the third line of developers when you open Lightroom.

He now works for SmugMug (another favorite of mine) and passed out new camera straps and hats (with the SmugMug Pro logo of course).

Newport Beach, California

Our family vacation this year was a trip to see my sister then my whole family (21 in all) spent a week in Newport Beach. One day was just for Disneyland and the rest of the time was completely unscheduled.

At least one night is spent at the Balboa Pier and more importantly at the Fun Zone for the family competition of Skee Ball. I posted a 340 this year as I was in the zone. We skipped the Farris wheel this year as we were heading to Disneyland the next day.

My son has the form of his father, great Skee Ball genes.

This was taken off of Newport Pier after getting some ice cream and Hawaiian ice at the Pipeline. There is public parking by the pier so it is always crowded, but as you move away the beaches are pretty open.

I missed the 2009 Oregon Quailifer due to this vacation, but plan to get out to the New Jersey event.

SPPL Utah Qualifier

For those of you who already follow the SPPL and paintball, below are a few pictures from this past weekend's event. Others of you will know the event from the passing of a player's daughter and nephew from CO poisoning. The KSL story link: click here.

The PAVI head and arm bands were for the Forest Demon's team mate who passed away a week earlier from injuries sustained from a truck hitting him while he was on his bike.

Rider Plastics Website Work Completed

The Rider Plastics website designed by Code Greene is finally up and running. I was asked to do the photographs documenting the mold making process for the last few months as seen in the "Our Process" page. While the final product is not too exciting, a right angle tube used in an aircraft, the process itself is interesting since so many things around us are made through the plastic injection molding process. Shooting the aluminium mold is a little like shooting a mirror. The engineer made sure to polish the pieces before I came each time. We hope to add a few more product pictures to the first page as they become completed.

Sports Photographer: Copperhills Lacrosse

I was able to get out and shoot some more junior lacrosse at Sugarhouse Park Thursday night for Copperhills. The weather was consistantly changing.

Junior Lacrosse - Highland High vs Park City

Below are a few shots from the 7th and 8th grade Highland High vs Park City lacrosse match held May 16, 2009 in Park City. It is the first time I have shot a Junior High game and it was quite enjoyable. The complete gallery can be found on my website.
There were some good hits and scoring.

Park City's goalie was solid in the net despite losing. He had many great saves.

The emotions on the players' faces are great. Its hard to get to see their faces given the size of the field and their masks, but every now and again it gets captured.

Weekend Soccer

Here is some U6 & U5 Soccer from this past weekend:

This last one was a goal (1 of 3 for the day).

Highland High vs Skyline Lacrosse

I was able to get out and shoot the Utah State High School Lacrosse Playoffs, Highland High vs. Skyline High. Highland High was the #1 seed and lost in double overtime on the following shot:I swung around to get the shot on the opposite end of the field. It happened pretty fast so the picture didn't quite make it in focus.

This shot I thought was a little funny. He almost lost his pants in the previous play.

It is the sideline spectators that make this image.

Good thing the ball went in to the net or I would have been hit. I really like sitting behind the goal, off to one side, as I get more faces in the shots; however, it is far riskier. At the last University of Utah game I was about a foot from getting nailed from a shot on goal.

Baseball

We were lucky enough to finally have good weather for baseball. Below are a few from last night's game. The best of the game can be found on my website. Click here.