jairy hunter

This was the best I could do, as it was well over 85 degrees by 9:30 and that bridge was

hot! I had to walk up the ped/bike path with all my gear. This was the first weekend the

bridge was open. There were lots of cars zooming by--the corvettes almost made a critical

mistake by driving in the lane farthest away (would've had three lanes between us). Had to

dodge baby strollers, joggers and bikers to get these shots, then the cars were moving so

fast! They wanted a shot to send to their national magazine --I really would love to get a

shot or two published. I was interested in doing some impromptu portraits of owners and

cars, but they weren't really into it.<div></div>

Great idea --I had thought of doing individual owners with car, group shot from the top of

the building, also.

Maybe ask them to slow to a creep as they get close to me.

Try to get each individual car as it passes if I can get a good background.

Geez I need to get there early.

If I've got anything good, I'll post.

Thanks,

J.

Sorry if this is the wrong forum, a search produced no relevant posts.

I'm shooting a procession (parade of sorts) of corvettes--the corvette club-- this weekend

as they traverse a new bridge here in Charleston--Police escort and all. Aside from trying

to get the procession head on with some decent DOF, a wide angle, and background

including the bridge, what tips or suggestions does anyone have? I've asked for some

samples from the clubbers to get an idea of what they are looking for. Please post your

samples.

Thanks.

Thanks, I think I figured that out lately, too, but I've tried to avoid opening and re-saving jpg as much as possible due to degradation of the data that occurs with re-saving. I suppose it's possible to keep some of the data and use the 72 pixel version as the working copy and resize to fit as you note above specifically for each size without re-saving each time resolution/picture is changed for printing. I just have to remember to reset the print preview each time fo reach specific situation.

Does any of this make sense or am I off-base?

I'll try checking properties--but I manually transfer the images--the cardreader shows up

as a drive/device on my desktop (mac), then I open the drive and move the folders over to

the computer hard drive. iPhoto (mac's proprietary photo mgr) recognizes and tries to

download but I usually refuse that so I can work with the images in photoshop.

The reason I have to change things is because if I am going to print (and I mostly prepare

my images for printing) I was under the impression that they should be printed at least at

200 pixels or higher. I'm open to education if that's wrong.

Maybe the 10d and Rebel are present to send images across at 180, but the 20D at 72?

Thanks,

J.

This may be the wrong place--please direct me if so.

Equipment 20D compact flash: sandisk ultra II

I may be missing a page from the manual but when I download/save images from card via

cardreader to computer, all images from are at 72 pixels/inch (32in and 48in /2330 and

3500 respectively) and I have to go through and change everything. the Digital Rebel

shots are at 180 pixels at baseline. Can someone explain this or tell me how to change the

resolution images are shot? I know ultimately it doesn't matter but it's kind of a pain to

have to change everything off the bat. At least at 180, every single image didn't have to be

changed.

Thanks, J.

Thanks, all.

I agree the background gets more and more blown as you adjust the highlights, but in this

case it doesn't matter as much, especially if I convert to grayscale or my preference,

duotone and add a slight diffuse glow.

I like the crop and the vignetting too!

I cropped the final image, and pushed the saturation in my version, but the hands were

still blown out.

The problem with the fill flash is that this was shot with 70-200 mm f4L and not sure how

much of the flash would reach? Using a different lens makes this a different photo

altogether.

Can someone walk me through the best way to fix this blown out photo? I did ok with it in

RAW initially but I still get a gold-white shimmer on the back of the mom's (my wife's!)

hands. This is an unretouched jpg

What is the price range of the graphistudio albums? They look pretty sleek, but some of

the layouts are kinda cheezy in my opinion. How labor-intensive are they to create?

Sorry if this sounds amateurish, but has anyone tried the iPhoto books from Apple? They

seem to be well done, although I haven't tried any yet.

Gary,

I like the simple look to the website. It's easy to navigate (the parts that have active links).

You do have some skill, that's obvious.

Regarding the copy-or verbage on your site, though, I would suggest working on it a bit.

It's hard to generate stuff about yourself that doesn't sound goofy (you should read my

brochure--blech!). Your style is conversational and that's fine, but I would recommend a

more professional-sounding bent to the tone of the information, if that makes any sense.

It seems you are trying too hard to sell yourself. Case in point is all the information on

"portrait ideas." I may be totally off base, but I would not give away all my trade secrets! ie

showing how everything is done. People can find that themselves in books and websites,

and I don't think clients really care about all that--they want to see the finished image.

Show them, don't tell them, some examples of your technological skill.

Then again, just my opinion.

Good luck, you should do well!

J.

Thanks all for your responses. There's a lot of energy in this topic, judging from the length

of your posts!

I sensed some bitterness as well, and I'm sorry for that.

Fortunately for me, my photography is still enjoyable enough as a "secondary career" that I

don't have to make a living at it. Probably couldn't anyway. But I do love it, especially

things like sports. I have the luxury of being selective in my jobs because I have another

job that pays the bills.

I just found that a lot of people were asking me to do things--"using" me a little I guess,

and I finally put my foot down, and said I can't do ALL this work for free. Not that I really

make any money at it, but it does cover some of my costs, and believe it or not it is

thrilling to think I actually DO get paid for doing something that I love. Also, believe it or

not, I truly enjoy making people happy with photos.

It is a HUGE time sink, you are all right. But I still enjoy it and I'm still learning. That's the

other reason I shoot anything. To get something out of it for myself--to learn how to

shoot football, basketball, night games, etc. I have worked out some ways to streamline

my process. I don't plan on shooting every single kid in the game either, unless that can

be compensated.

I guess the point I am making is that I don't do it for free, and I probably don't charge

what it costs me either. Nor do I charge today what I will be able to charge tomorrow.

I was just looking for some insight into others' process and experience. Thanks for all your

time and energy to enlighten me from your experience!

J.

If this has been dealt with elsewhere, please direct me to the appropiate place.

I'd appreciate any ideas or experience on shooting kid team sports--not team shots, more

candids. Some of the parents have asked me to come to some games and shoot their kids.

How do most people handle that? Do you charge a fee that can be shared among parents

for showing up (maybe that goes toward the price of any prints? Do you offer the disc or

negatives? Do you offer proof sheets or website that the parents can order from? My

experience is that parents go crazy for even shots of the back of a kid's head.

Also, where is a good place to get pictures made into sports cards--websites, etc?

Does anyone use photoshop to make your own sports cards?

Thanks.

iMovie and iDVD have gone through a number of upgrades in the past couple months--

the current versions are faster, better, and as always highly intuitive. You can learn to use

them in a day or two. The results are unbelieveable.

More expensive? Do you want the best or just good enough? With electronics and technical

equipment, I try to get the best I can afford. I think it's more expensive in the long run to

buy cheap stuff and wear it out quickly, thus making me buy more.

The new macs come with iLife pre-installed. A very good thing, especially now that you

can get a mac for $499, a little more for one with a dvd burner. Granted this is just the

box (CPU, drives)--it presupposes you have a mouse, keyboard and monitor.

None of that's really an answer to your question whether there is a pc equivalent. I'm sure

there's something on the rack at Best Buy.

Formatting the card from the camera worked.

I guess in my panic, I didn't see that option.

Thanks all!

Still don't know why you can't erase the card from the computer--maybe the card reader

lacks the functionality to write to the card--the computer can make the file images

disappear, but the computer and card reader can't perform operations on the card itself.

Makes sense to me. I'll go with that.

Yeah, I got that.

I'll probably have to pay for my stupidity. I knew how I should do it, but I kind of "just

wanted to see what would happen," to see if it could be done. Dumbdumbdumb.

I'm sure there's some way to fix it, though. I just don't know how. Yet.

I know I shouldn't have, but I erased the compact flashcard (Sandisk Ultra II 512K) from my

computer desktop rather than in-camera from the LCD menu.

Now when I insert the card into the camera, it says I only have 23 RAW shots available, yet

no images show up. In other words, the memory still seems to be occupied but I find no

way to "erase" the card.

Anyone know of a way to nuke the card so to speak and erase phantom images from the

memory? Can it be reformatted?

Thanks,

J.

For Daytime (college) football, a nice alternative to the 70-200 f2.8L is the 70-200 f4.0L. Yes it is slower but it's --oh--a thousand or so dollars cheaper ($600 vs $1500) than the 2.8 and really very good during the daytime. I've used the 4.0L as an official photog on the field but also when I was relegated to the stands as a common fan, and I've had really good results.

HS football at night is a real challenge. Flash helps but it does cast a weird glow especially on some the shiny nylon fabrics used these days. Monopod is the way to go.

Just to throw out a differing opinion...it seems to me there might be a difference between the *type* of sports photography presented in Best Action's website and the what most people here are discussing--granted you did ask to have your shots dissected. For one, the website is clearly to allow people (kids and mostly parents) to buy shots of the kid in action. Of course every shot is not a bona fide action shot. But what you are selling, what the kids want is a picture of themselves playing the sport. They would love to be posterizing some other kid in the process, but they'll settle for a good clean shot in uniform with or without the ball. In that regard, I would say that if you are selling a lot of pictures, you're doing a good job. If it's not that much trouble to put up ten shots of a kid running down the court and therefore, to let the kid or parent choose one or all (some parents will choose every shot a kid even remotely appears in the background of, trust me), then do that. I would think you could save some space by offering only the best shots.

As far as the critique of the quality and merit of your shots, some of that's been addressed. But I'd be hard-pressed to answer the comment above that referred to your lighting being "bad". Not sure how you can fix that in a high school game--you don't want to use flash, you obviously aren't going to affix ceiling lighting in the HS gym, so.....

Agreed that if you post a couple shots for review, you'll get a better critique.

PS post processing (or some other software processing--mac's new version of iPhoto now

accepts Camera RAW and can process those images) is a must if you use Camera RAW

format. Light balance, color adjustment, possible cropping, etc. need to be performed on

most images. The question is how much use of the extras--filters, layering, effects, etc. is

too much. Those filters really change the appearance of an image and take up a lot of

time.

Speaking strictly for myself and from my own experience, I would only use major effects

for a few of the best shots or portraits--it's kind of like "painting" the boquet while leaving

everything else b & w--to me there can be too much of a good thing, leaving a lot of

images overcooked. Glowing or oversaturated images can be a nice compliment, but it

almost seems gimmicky to do a bunch of them that way.

Although scripts and actions can be generated to streamline the process for all these

effects, it is a time sink!

Just my opinion and you know what they say about opinions....

Just checked out his website which is beautiful and the images are fantastic. Keep in mind

there is significant use of photoshop in his work. Not a value judgement, just not exactly

what I would call photojournalism for the most part. There is a lot of artistic enhancement

going on.

Just checked out his website which is beautiful and the images are fantastic. Keep in mind

there is significant use of photoshop in his work. Not a value judgement, just not exactly

what I would call photojournalism for the most part. There is a lot of artistic enhancement

going on.