A Little News

Shooting natural light in the documentary situation is great and ethical and all that but sometimes I shoot natural light just because there is no way to beat it or duplicate it. When you can combine something as cool as the Delta Queen riverboat with excellent natural light then you have a winner, maybe even one to hang on the wall. The Delta Queen is a historic boat and I had the chance to go on board last year and produce a Soundslides show from my visit for The Decatur Daily. You can go the the site and see the show at DecaturDaily.com and click on the extras tab. You then have to navigate to the show in the multimedia section. Sorry it is not easier. Be that as it may, the DQ is a very special boat in my life.

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This boat is really special to me because it is probably the earliest memory I have with my grandfather, Helon Waddell who was the lock master for many years at Wheeler Dam on the Tennessee River.  When I was a small boy he would call my mom and dad and let them know the Delta Queen was going to come through the locks and they would take my brother and I down to watch the boat lock through.  I was very cool then and seeing the boat today still produces wonder and awe in me and connects me to a time now long past.

I shot the boat for The Daily Thursday morning but the light was really not good.  Basically it was somewhat backlit by high morning sun and there was some haze in the atmosphere which eliminated any possibility of a decent scenic type shot.  I went ahead and turned the photos in and they were placed on the page.  I had already decided to take my kids back up to see the boat later in the evening after work because I wanted to give them a memory like I had from when I was a kid.  Plus, the Delta Queen will not be sailing the nation’s waterways much longer.  She lost a Congressional exemption last year that allowed her to carry passengers in spite of having a wooden hull.  She is also listed on the National Historic Registry and is just a beautiful boat.

I had already decided to take my children back up to see the boat before she left port so, after work, I grabbed my EOS 5D and the children and headed back to Rhodes Ferry. It was already right at sunset so there was little daylight to work with. I used this light to get a couple of photos of my children with the boat. As the daylight disappeared altogether, I tried some hand held shots in the dusk light. I used the human monopod technique to steady myself. My shutter speeds were something like 1/4 second and I was shooting at ISO 800 wide open. The only light was coming from the lamps in the park, the dusk sky and the riverboat itself.

I thought if I got something nice I would try and transmit it back to the paper after I got home. After we finished shooting the pictures, I did some chimping and decided that the photo of the riverboat at the top of this post would trump about anything I had shot earlier so I called our copydesk and they agreed to hold the page for me for about thirty minutes. I got home and zipped them a photo up and our readers had a nice, visual treat to wake up to and I think the photo did a nice job conveying the end of an era with the sunset metaphor going on.

Technically there was noting to these photos but aesthetically they are really special to me. They recall a bygone era and my grandfather and some great childhood memories of spending time down at the lock with him. Sometimes natural light is special and this was one of those times. There was not way I could have duplicated it in either quality or in quantity. The softness of the light and the muted blues in the photos are just beyond my technical ability to reproduce. So natural light is not all about ethics. Sometimes it is just about aesthetics.

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Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

I don’t know how fashionable it was to be emotional before Tiger came along with his famous fist pumps and yells, but it has certainly become more of an emo sport since he came along. I think Tiger shattered a whole lot of long standing golf idols while still managing to respect the game and its history. For all of us who have played golf as duffers, we know all about emo golf. Our golf is usually punctuated by negative emotion since few of us hit shots like the T man. We are more likely to spice our shots with thrown clubs, words our moms would not approve of and those looks of knowing disgust.

For photographers who have never covered golf, this may come as a surprise. Golf, the buttoned down game of knickers and funky plaid pants, has emotion. Looking for emotion on the course without, of course, becoming a target for someone’s thrown club, can really spice up your photography of this grand old game. Obviously, by far the most common emotions you will see are negative emotions. The grimace after a mishit drive or the bending over backwards lean after a missed putt. Sometimes the emotion shows up while players are waiting to hit. Sometimes it comes like a storm after they hit.

Like every other aspect of photography, being in the right place at the right time with the right lens and actually looking for those moments makes it much easier to shoot. You can get emotion at any time on the course but around the green you will be able to see more emotion than anywhere else. Golfers watching the ball roll to the hole are a great place to snag an emo picture. The reaction to a good putt or a bad putt are your best chance at emotion photos. Another place you will see plenty of emotion is on and around the tee box. When golfers, especially amateurs, hit poor shots they can really put on a show. You will see them drop clubs, make faces and yell things to the ball which don’t really matter to you or to the ball but it is good theater.

One thing to keep in mind when shooting the negative emotion stuff is not to overdo it. Get your shot and move on. Don’t go nuts over it because that can really irritate the competitor and most of my tournaments are the local variety where nothing other than a little pride is on the line. Most of these guys aren’t pros and won’t ever be. If I am shooting the boys who are getting paid then I would be more inclined to press the matter but that won’t help you any with your local club tournaments. Be sensitive to the situation and shoot accordingly. Of course, no one gets worked up over you shooting positive emo. You can just lay on the shutter and bang away. It all evaporates quickly anyway.

Another thing to keep an eye on is body language. A lot of golfers can play all poker faced but they will usually give away their feelings in the body language and this can be seen from a long way off. Watch the way they are walking and you can sometimes see joy or anger and that will give you a good clue where to find the emotion. Some players are just naturally more expressive than others anyway. Find one of these players and just mine them until you have some good stuff. Many times at club tournaments you are not really too worried about the leaders, especially in the early rounds and finding emotion will give you some nice photos to work with and it will keep you away from having the always present club swing photo in the paper for three or four days. It is just double eagle territory when the leaders are the ones who are giving up the best emotion. Where are you anyway Tiger Woods? Want to come play in Decatur?

Photos copyright The Decatur Daily, Gary Cosby Jr. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Believe it or not, making beautiful people look beautiful in photos is not as easy as it would seem. I have found it far easier to make people look ugly than to make them look beautiful no matter what their eye appeal is. Basically, it comes down to light. Everyone has seen the difference in Hollywood stars when they are on the cover of a magazine with a well lit portrait and when they are caught in the glaring light of on camera strobes in those tabloid moments. Lighting makes the difference. Okay, makeup artists, stylists, art directors and those cool fans they use on fashion shoots make a little difference too!

Every year, we do a send off party for the reigning Miss Point Mallard as she is getting ready to leave for the Miss Alabama pageant. During this party, the beautiful young lady models her gowns for us to photograph. There is no set, no stylist, no cool fan to blow her outfits around and the lighting is usually just what you carry in with you which, in my case, means a trio of SB strobes. The party is always held in the private home of one of the pageant coordinators so the backgrounds can range from really good to very difficult to work with. Space limitations are always the biggest problem because about all of these folks have nice homes. So there we have the challenges.

Katie Boyd is the reigning Miss Point Mallard and they tell me she has a good chance to become Miss Alabama. I photographed her in three outfits during the send off party this year and I got a couple of shots that are worth talking about. Both are three light photos but there are two different approaches which I will contrast for you. The first photo is my favorite. The red dress, the excellent background and the lovely young lady just make this a really appealing photo for me.

The main light is an SB800 in an umbrella positioned to the camera left, high and at about 65 degrees left of the camera to model line. I had Katie turn slightly toward this light so the angle of the light on her was actually closer to a classic 45 degree position. There is a light positioned very high and behind her to the camera right. It was placed a ceiling level and aimed down to give some separation from the background. Then there was a problem. The high light separated her upper half from the background but the lower portion of her dress blended in and we were losing the foot and leg extended through the slit in her gown.

To solve this problem I positioned a third SB800 on a chair slightly ahead of her and aimed from her waist down. I was getting spill onto the background which was very bad so I used my bag to scrim this light so it was not impacting the background at all. The result you see here.

The second set up was with a different gown and in a different room in the house. With the owners permission we pretty much moved the furniture from her dining room so we could use a small cove in one wall for our background. Katie’s gown featured a low scooped back and I wanted to highlight this feature. The electric blue gown made a nice color combo with the wall color but I needed to light the cove to bring out the color.

The lighting setup for this one uses two umbrellas with SB strobes. The lighting ratio is not quite 2:1 but is comes fairly close with the main light being on the camera left. I collapsed the umbrella on the right so the light fall off was somewhat controlled. You can control how much of the umbrella you collapse by moving the umbrella shaft in or out relative to your flash. This helps you control how much the umbrella closes. You have to be careful with this technique because the light fall off can be fairly dramatic causing you to under light portions of your frame. The third light is just laying on the floor and aimed up. It was set to about 1/32nd power and zoomed to the 85mm setting. This lit the cove with some control on the beam spread.

I left with two photos I was very pleased with and they fed me dinner on top of all that. Very nice indeed!

Photos copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

No one really likes problems but when you come up with a solution and overcome the problem you are better for it. This was the case when I photographed pro bikers Seth Kimbrough and Corey Martinez. These guys are fantastic bikers and I was totally amazed at their skills. Had I tried even one of the tricks they were doing I would still be in a cast, a full body cast!

Seth and Corey both grew up in and around Hartselle, Alabama and they became pros the hard way. There was never a skate park or any official place for them to practice. Both of these young men have helped to set up a skate park in Hartselle so kids growing up and idolizing them will have a place locally to go and bike or skate. Many of the ramps in the park were built and then donated to the park by one or both of them.

I had know about Corey for some time but we had never met. He and my oldest daughter are friends and my oldest daughter’s best friend is married to Corey. We finally connected to do this shoot but the only time available was mid-afternoon with a high blue sky. That was fine for action photos but not for the portrait. I really wanted some late afternoon, even dusk, light to do the portrait with. Since none of our schedules worked and Corey was leaving town for a pro event we had to shoot when we had the time available.

I had seen the guys pause on top of this flat topped concrete pyramid in the middle of the park several times while they were riding and it seemed like a great spot to pose them for the portrait. The problem was the light was far too contrasty to shoot anything but a back lit portrait which meant I had to light them. I had three Nikon SB strobes at my disposal. My basic lighting plan was to set two strobes on stands at roughly 45 degrees relative to the camera position. The concrete ramp slanted in such a way that I could not set the light stands anywhere on the slope. This meant putting them on the ground with a flash to subject distance that would be somewhere between six and ten feet from the subjects. Not good.

I tried it anyway with predictable results. The strobe exposure was more than a full stop under. I was shooting a Nikon D2Hs and a full stop underexposure with strong back light was just too much. What to do? I had used my Bogen Friction Arm to set up a remote camera on top of one of the ramps earlier so I grabbed it and used an SC17 shoe cord to attach another strobe to the camera platform on the Friction Arm. Then I clamped the strobe onto the stunt peg on the front tire of Seth’s bike. He is the one of the left. I set this strobe to fire via the SU4 optical slave function on the SB800. I also pointed the strobe straight up and extended the built in bounce card to give some fill.

The problem that I could not solve with the equipment at hand was the direction of this third light. Since it was lower than the faces it created hot areas on the neck and made some crazy shadows. I would have preferred not to do this but I could not use a larger bounce device and keep the strobe invisible. In the end, the lighting kind of creates a funky feel that goes along with the whole trick bike scene so it works okay for me. Basically, you run across all kinds of situations in photojournalism that require problem solving skills. You probably won’t ever solve them perfectly; however, the more problems you solve the better you get at solving problems. You can also take the solutions to those thorny problems and use them in other situations so the general quality of your work gets elevated. Everybody is gonna have problems. Applying creative solutions, a little hard work and some sweat will make you better and that means better pictures. Hey man, in everything give thanks, even for the problems. They make you better!

About the photo: You already know I shot with a Nikon D2Hs. I used the 17-35mm lens and obviously shot from below the guys and directly into the sun with an ambient exposure of approximately 1/250th sec at about f16. My ambient exposure is about 2/3 stop under the strobe exposure. The two strobes on stands were fired with Pocket Wizards and the third strobe was fired via its built in optical slave.

Photo copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

There is an old saying that says necessity is the mother of invention. Necessity drove me to this little flash get up while assisting my friend David Higginbotham shoot a wedding. We were in a very large, dimly lit church shooting some pretty large groups. The Vivitar 285s bounced into umbrellas were not giving us enough light. In the blinding flash of a flash, inspiration struck and man did it hurt.

I quickly grabbed a pair of Nikon SB800s and set them to the SU4 setting so they would fire on optical slave. I then strapped them to the light stand just below the Vivitars. As you can see, you can also strap them to the umbrella itself using the other flash as a prop. This doubles your power per umbrella. If you are shooting with two umbrellas you are then getting four full power strobes bounced into umbrellas. You don’t lose the nice light an umbrella provides and you get basically double the power.

Since I first did this on the spur of the moment I have been able to use it for my photojournalism several times where I would have had to use direct flash in the past. The photos I have included in this post are not real good examples of photojournalism but they were shot for an education magazine we publish for the city school system and this is the photo they requested. It did need to meet the higher repro standards that the magazine has relative to the newspaper so some fill lighting was essential. The umbrella light was necessary so the double strobe set up was the perfect alternative. I am giving you an example with the strobes and without to show you the difference. Like I said, it is not the greatest example of portrait lighting I have ever done but the assignment and time of day conspired to make this pretty difficult.

You will find several situations where this lighting technique will help save your bacon. Maybe you need monolight power but don’t have a monolight budget. Maybe you have those precious lights but they are back at the office. Whatever. Give this a try. I am sure there are better ways to secure the second strobe and I know I have seen a double strobe bracket but, like the strobes you don’t have, it doesn’t help you if you don’t own one.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer

PS. Both photos are untoned so you can see the difference without any image manipulation from Photoshop.

I don’t know if it shows how young some of you guys are or how old I am, but someone left a request for a manual focus primer in the comments to an earlier post. It really hasn’t been all that long ago that there was no such thing as autofocus. Or has it? Maybe I really am that old! I know that some of my beloved children think I am older than Noah and a whole lot more conservative. But they are teenagers.

Back to manual focus. I sometimes think that the actual craft of sports photojournalism has been changed/diluted/ruined by the advent of autofocus. There was a time when a person who shot sports was truly gifted, especially with the fine art of focusing. I have been on the sidelines at big football games and shot near a Sports Illustrated shooter and wondered how the heck he was able to focus when he was blazing through a roll of film on every play. Now the AF handles all that pretty close to flawlessly. That means almost anyone can shoot sports action now, at least in theory. There are still truly gifted sports shooters and the truth is that AF does not make a great sports action photographer. Like any other feature on your camera, AF is just a tool. A skilled shooter takes a good tool and makes great photographs. An average shooter takes the same tool and makes average photographs. So, AF opened the door to more and more people being able to shoot sports but the truth is that AF didn’t really transform everyone into a sports shooting guru.

Rant over. Now back to our regularly scheduled post. Manual focus actually has some advantages over AF. The prime advantage to manual focusing a sports event is that manual focusing causes you to concentrate. The biggest difference I notice, aside from the number of sharp frames, is the difference in my concentration levels. When I manual focus an event I tend to be much more sharply focused on what is actually going on in my viewfinder. AF allows me to relax a little and that is not always a good thing. I do better work when I am sweating a little.

Another advantage manual has is it frees you from that center spot AF mark in your viewfinder allowing you the freedom to actually frame an image rather than being dependent on your subject staying in the designated focusing area. Yes, I know, there are several AF settings that purport to actually track a subject as it moves out of the center AF sensor but I have never learned to trust them when a real picture is on the line. I notice that my photos are framed better when I shoot manual. I can see equally well in the edges of the frame as I can the center so I don’t have to worry about the AF spot.

Obviously, AF has its own set of advantages which I don’t really need to go into since we all know and love them already. Suffice it to say, both Nikon and Canon cameras AF better than I can focus manually. It is no contest especially at night. I do okay in daylight events but night events are much tougher and always have been.

The question remains, how do you develop your manual focus skills? Tip number one: don’t try. The harder you try to manual focus a sporting event the worse you will do. If you need to practice, go out to a street and shoot sequences of traffic moving toward you. (Don’t stand in the street to do this or someone will be taking your photo as you are loaded into an ambulance!) A street where the traffic is moving a 35-40 mph is about right. Slower might even be better. Basically you want to disengage your brain and just react to what you are seeing in the viewfinder. It is a bit like a major league hitter who is trying to hit versus a major league hitter who just steps to the plate, sees the ball and smacks it. The more you think about it the worse you will do. In other words, “trust the force Luke.”

Tip number two: Make sure all your lenses focus in the same direction. I once carried a Tamron 180 that focused the reverse of the rest of my Nikon lenses. Drove me nuts! Sounds dumb but make sure they all work the same. It will save you mega grief.

Tip number three: Have a plan. If you think a play may be made in a particular area, prefocus in that area and then just tweak the focus as the players move there. I love to do this in baseball because the action can be somewhat predictable especially if you understand the game. This is also known as zone focusing. Zone focusing used to save my bacon shooting basketball in the days before AF.

Tip number four: Use lenses designed to be manual focused. The Nikkors of yesteryear, ie: the ones before AF, were wonderful lenses. They focus like a dream. I can’t even begin to follow focus with an AF lens in manual mode. They are simply not made to do that. I usually don’t even attempt to manual focus an AF lens. It is just no fun. If you have an older Nikon manual lens, it will work on your AF body in aperture priority and manual exposure modes. Try it.

Tip number five: You can do yourself a favor by limiting the photos you will have to shoot following focus on players moving directly at you. You can improve your odds by making the plane of focus more shallow by shooting at angles where the action moves parallel to your position as opposed to perpendicular to it. It is much easier to shoot a player moving across your field of view than it is to shoot a player moving straight at you.

Beyond those tips, you just have to practice and be persistent. Most of my best sports images have come from that beat up old 400mm f3.5 manual focus lens. I use it all the time and that is the key. I don’t have to think about it. I just pop it on and go.

About the photos: The top photo is from a Hartselle High school baseball game. The ball was hit to the right fielder and was fading away from him. He is diving to make the play on the ball. I shot with a Nikon D2Hs and the 400mm f3.5 manual lens wide open. The photo is just a tad soft and requires a bit of sharpening in Photoshop to make it workable. The second photo is from a tennis match and the focusing here is mostly incremental rather than a large differential so it is relatively easy to focus. This is also a D2Hs and a 400mm f3.5.\

Photos copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

When I was a young photojournalist, I religiously avoided shooting with the normal lens. In fact, I did not really own a normal lens. I had a 55mm micro but I never used it for my everyday assignments. I used my 24mm and my 180mm all the time. These were the most extreme lenses I had at that time.

Fast forward to the present day and I am still inclined to shoot with the extremes in my bag. However, it is not really avoiding the 50mm that I am talking about; although, I still have an allergic reaction to that lens. What I am really talking about is avoiding your normal. If you normally are a wide angle shooter, stretch yourself and shoot with long lenses every time you can. If you are normally a mid-range lens guy, then go to either extreme but get out of you middle ground. If you shoot mostly with the long glass, break out the wide angle and shoot as much as possible with it.

Breaking out of your normal routine literally forces you to see differently. It forces you to visualize photos that you were not even thinking about in your normal shooting mode. You have to think differently. You have to shoot differently. You have to leave your comfort zone and step outside of that proverbial box. This is good. Change is good. What will eventually happen to you is growth. You will grow as a shooter. You will get better. You can still get your money shots shooting the way you always have but after you have your safety shot, break your mold and go to an extreme.

Lighting is another area where you can fall into a routine, otherwise known as a rut. If you normally light everything, shoot a couple of projects documentary style and use no supplemental lighting. If you normally shoot everything available, jump the fence and do some stylized lighting on a few jobs. What you will find is that you will actually learn to see light better. You will learn to see natural light with new eyes. You will learn that lighting an assignment gives it an entirely new look.

Eventually you will learn to blend light in ways that are absolutely seamless. Mixing natural light and some form of supplemental light is a skill that is more valuable than just about any other you can acquire as a photographer. Unless you are a strict documentary journalist, just about every other form of photojournalism, and photography in general, require good lighting skills to advance your career.

When you break out of whatever your normal is, you will discover something has happened to you. You will have gotten better. You will have grown. You will look back at the way you used to shoot and wonder how you could have been stuck there. Your work will be full of a new energy. You will be reworking your portfolio or whatever material you use to promote yourself. Mostly you will just wonder how you had been stuck in normal mode and had not even realized it.

About the photo: For this photo of a brother/sister golf tandem, I broke several of my conventions. I used a wide lens which is not really my strength and I used a two light set up to augment the daylight. I also used an unexpected perspective on the photo. Essentially, I had a thirty minute drive to the assignment which was at the kids’ home. I used my imagination to come up with something out of my normal range and tried that first. It worked great but I also had a fall back photo just in case.

Photo copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Okay, maybe this one isn’t so fast unless you are one of those people who are instinctive photographers. I am not one of those truly gifted individuals. They simply stick a camera in front of their face and magical things happen in the viewfinder. For the rest of us, getting better is an exercise much like growing. It doesn’t happen all at once and it sometimes involves a lot of repetition and hard work. This is certainly one of those areas for me.

Layering is a visual term that basically means that you are creating various layers of visual interest in the frame. It can be done with lenses, composition and light and sometimes all three of them combined. There can be a couple of layers or there can be many layers. Frankly, in the newspaper business, layering is not always well received by folks who deal in words until it is fully explained. Too often, we simply want a photo that slaps the reader in the face and yells, “Hey, wake up and look at this!”

A layered photo can do this but as often as not a well layered image invites the viewer in deeper and deeper and allows him to stimulate various parts of his visual pallet much as a fine wine does for the aficionado. This is something that takes practice and patience to develop and patience is not one of my finest qualities. That means I have to consciously work at this. It is then easier to work on layering in situations where I am controlling everything such as the environmental portrait.

Now lets look at some photos and techniques. There are more than I am showing so don’t limit yourself to just these techniques. First, and to me, most obviously, use a wide angle lens and frame the subject using a framing device. This first photo is from the Downtown Criterium bike race in Decatur. There are three distinct layers in this image beginning with the bicycle tire which is the framing device. The second layer is actually the primary focus of the image which is the bikers followed by the third layer which is the buildings that form the background. This is the easiest technique to use and it is probably the one we all learned in photo school.

The next photo is one creating layers using the arrangement of the cheerleaders and their varying expressions. Theses two devices, the varying expressions and the foreground to background relationship of the way the girls are positioned, draws you in and invites you to look for a while seeing the varying degrees of reaction to whatever may be going on on the basketball court. The foreground element is dominant and it fills the bill for newspapers because it provides an immediate hook. Then the viewer slips into the photo to see the various reactions the girls are having. This is certainly not as common a situation for most of us but it works great when it is available.

The next photo combines two layering techniques, framing and light. The use of the gentleman’s hands serves as both a layer and a framing device leading you to his face. The lighting creates the second and third layers of the photo and helps center the viewers attention on his face. As a side note, this man was one of the first to go ashore on D-day in 1944 on Utah Beach in Normandy. He was a combat engineer whose job was to disable any mines and clear beach obstructions all while under fire. His company fared well unlike many others who were killed in their boats or on the beaches, especially those who landed on Omaha Beach, the other beach assigned to U.S. forces. I really liked this man and admired his courage.

Finally, the last photo is another using a combination of framing and lighting to lead the viewer in. This was shot while the Governor of Alabama was on a campaign stop in Decatur. I used a wide lens and an ambient light underexposure combined with flash to create the funnel effect that leads you to the Governor. My oldest son was with me this day and he subbed admirably for a moving light stand. I just told him where to go and who to point the flash at and we shot several varieties of the Governor moving through the crowd.

Now you have enough to get started so go knock your editors out with your new layering skills!

Photos copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

In the last post on backgrounds, I approached the subject of backgrounds with the idea of eliminating distractions that hurt your photos. Now, let’s look at how to make your background work for you. We don’t have total control over the background in most photojournalism situations. In most breaking situations you don’t have the time to even worry about the background. When you have time to work a photo you should really try to get the background to help tell the story.

Sometimes you just get lucky, or unlucky, with the background; however, like the old saying goes, luck favors the prepared. When you first approach a situation look at backgrounds. What will you shoot your subject against, even in an action situation. Is there a background that will contribute to the photo and also, is there a background you want to avoid? This is also a good time to figure out the best lens choice. Now, when the moment happens, you are prepared.

I have three photos with to show you here. The first is a stand alone photo of a kid fishing. I was able to make use of a high embankment and get above him which allowed me to isolate him against the water which was also reflecting the sunset clouds. By the way, this photo is also strobed. I set an SB8oo on a light stand and put it in the edge of the lake to give me a little bit of separation and a nice little kicker. I used a D2h and an 80-200 lens and fired the strobe using a Pocket Wizard set. Adding the strobe allowed me to go a little under on the water without losing detail in the boy.

The next photo is from a mud volleyball tournament held every year in Athens, Alabama to raise money for the elderly and homebound. I was waiting for someone to go header into the mud hoping that they would come up facing me. That never happened but when this girl did her own version of a face plant I was able to use the people watching to get a nice photo where the background helps tell the story. You can’t see the front of the girl but you can see the other people reacting to what they see. This photo was shot available light with a D2h and a 17-35mm lens.

The last photo is also a D2h and 17-35mm shot. Decatur hosts the NAIA National Softball Championship Tournament and it is one of the highlights of my year. I love to shoot that tournament. This was the championship day and I actually had to leave before the game ended to go shoot something else. Hoping that something would still be going on when I got back, I hustled through the job and found that the tournament had ended by the time I returned. Fortunately for me there was still some celebrating going on. The girl hugging her father turned out to be the tournament MVP and her teammates in the background are holding up their championship banner for a photo. I probably could have done no better even if I had been there at the end of the game. The foreground shows the emotion and the background tells you why. I love it when things come together.

When you are out shooting, plan and prepare as much as you can but be prepared for change. Don’t over focus on the background because you run the risk of losing site of the main subject. Keep your eyes open and work your angles and lenses to maximize the background. Some of the time a wide zoom will be appropriate and other times a long zoom will be the better choice. You have to make that determination on the scene. After you have done this for a while, you won’t even be thinking about the background consciously. You will simply develop a “sixth sense” for backgrounds and you will be shooting instinctively.

Photos copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Let’s talk about getting better fast. Clever how my lead sentence reflects my title isn’t it? Cleverness aside, there are some things you can do to get better in a hurry. Just don’t get so good that you come gunning for my job!

One of the things that separates the greenhorn from the cagey veteran is the way he handles backgrounds. The background of a photo can help, hurt or do nothing at all. When I was a young shooter one of the things that really got me was backgrounds. I was so intent on the main subject that I seldom noticed what was going on in the background. That sometimes still bites me but over the years I have gotten better at watching my backgrounds.

The photos in this post are an example of how the background can either help or hurt. The first shot of the cannon actually firing is a fine moment and I like the picture. The only problem is I can’t look at the photo without seeing those cars in the background. The cars totally ruin the feel of the picture. Were it not for the cars it could be 1864 all over again. (Yes, it is sadly true that in the South we still fight the Civil War and some here feel that we are winning!)

The next photo is just a few seconds later as they gunners swab the breech and smoke has completely obscured the background. Man, where is Matthew Brady? The smoke helps deliver a feeling that is missing in the first photo. The smokes erases the signs that we are in the present day. It also makes a perfectly clean backdrop that allows you to focus on the soldiers.

Most of the time you won’t have any cannon smoke handy to blot out your background. Do not fear, there are a bunch of other ways to handle a messy or distracting background. If you remember seeing the photo by Joe Johnston of the Cal Poly pitcher you will see a very effective use of the low angle to clean up the background. Now that you have the low down, go high angle. This is very effective in shooting sports because it gives you the relatively uncluttered playing surface for a background rather than the distractions of the sidelines or the fans.

Light can also be used to clean up the background. If you use strobes on the main subject, you can usually drop the background down to either deemphasize it or eliminate altogether. A long lens will help you blur a distracting background while the wide angle can be used to deemphasize the background because it creates a very dominant foreground while diminishing the size of objects in the background. There are many techniques for doing this and these are only a few. The main thing is learning to keep backgrounds from becoming a distraction in your pictures.

Photos copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.