Sports Action "The Best of 2007"

Throughout the year I put aside pictues I feel show my best work in sports action. Last year I put together a book and will be doing the same this year. Now instead of posting 80 pictures here I put together a slideshow using Proshow Gold and attached a link here. I hope this works.

Sports Action Slideshow

Sports Collage II

I've gotten a lot of feedback on my collage, mostly from a forum I frequent (Mpix) and it's all been good, that is except for my wife, who suggested that I change the picture in the upper right corner. Mainly because it's a different type of picture and not one of him blocking. So I did a change and rather like this new one. So here is the second edition.

Sports Collage

As you know I've had some down time and have found myself just working on a few things that I've been meaning to do. Here is a collage I put together last night. This collage is for my son and was made with Photoshop CS2.

Yep, still board "Straight Arm #2"

No explanation required.

Going through withdrawals

With the air quality we've been having due to the fires and cancelled games I've been sorta going through withdrawals. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy just relaxing and catching up on some shows I've missed, but when I drive by a park or school and see them out there playing their games I just think I really need to be out there shooting.


So I've been going through some earlier pictures and found this sequence that I like a lot. This is a sequence of the straight arm. Enjoy.

Middle School Volleyball - "First round playoffs"

It's the first round of playoffs for our middle school volleyball teams. I needed one more game for my commitment with a paticular school so I shot the first round at their school. I will be shooting the championship games in early November at one of our local high schools.


Any hoot, here are some action shots from tonight game. For this game I shot at aperture priority at f/2.8, ISO 1600, with a shutter speed of 1/400 or 1/500.

An early end to football season

Well, it looks like football is over for my son. Recently my son has been vomiting and has had associated headaches. we weren't sure what the problem was and took him to the doctors. They did some tests and found nothing wrong. We later heard from some friends that his symptoms could be from a concussion. As it turns out four weeks ago during his game against Poly her took a very hard hit to the helmet from one of his own team mates. Now I remember him telling me about the hit but he said he was fine and wasn't hurting. I guess I should have dug deeper. It turns out that the hit immediately gave him a head ache, cause him to be slightly dizzy, and caused some tingling in his spine / back ("Now he tells me"). So we contacted the doctor and had a CT scan that night. The CT scan came back negative for any swelling or bleeding. That was last week on Friday. He was fine over the weekend and then Monday comes and he's sick again. So I leave work to take him back to the doctors. They tell me he has post concussion syndrome. So football is over for him. We both talked about it and he's fine with the season being over. His words "I've played all the important games I wanted to play". I just want him to get better.

I will still be out there shooting but now since he won't be playing I might be able to get out the freshmen games, who play the same time as the JV, and take some shots of them. The parents are really interested in getting some pictures.

Varsity vs Millikan

Well this was expected to be a tough game for the varsity squad and did start out that way with Millikan having the lead by the end of the third quarter, but the varsity came back hard and won the game.


I again shot this game with my camera set to manual at f/2.8, ISO 1600, and a shutter of 1/400. I recently bought a Quantum Turbo 2x2 battery pack in hopes that it would give the flexibility to shoot in continuous mode with the flash, I was wrong. With the battery pack attached the flash still only fired every other picture. I hope I was just using it wrong because I just can't see paying $600 + dollars on a battery pack that really won't do better than the flash itself. I do some reading and hopefully things will improve. So here are the shots. This first one was taken during the teams warm-up.

JV vs Millikan

Here we are at game-8. I can't believe how fast this season is going by. Other than our game against Poly our boys have done a great job and it's been exciting and a pleasure to be out there shooting them in action.


For this game I decided to use the 300 with the 1.4x converter attached. I wanted the added range and to push myself with tight shots. Again I shot at aperture priority at f/2.8 and ISO 100. The shutter speed was between 1/3200 and 1/4000.

Now what's a game without some shots of my boy in action.

Freshmen & Varsity Volleyball

Shot a freshmen and varsity girls volleyball game this last Tuesday. The schools gym has windows along the ceiling which really helps with the lighting but on Tuesday it was slightly overcast which slowed things down a bit.


For both of these games I used the 70-200 f/2.8L and had the camera set to manual at f/2.8, ISO 1600, and a shutter of 1/400 and 1/500. The varsity game started later than usual so towards the end of their games I had to lower my shutter speed to 1/320, which game me a lot of motion blur in the ball and extremities.


"Freshmen"

"Varsity"

Youth Soccer - Last games

I've finally finished shooting the last two teams for the soccer league I was asked to shoot. I had two teams to finish, one was on Saturday and the other was Sunday, both at 9am. The game on Sunday was under a bright cloudless sky, but Saturday was a different story. Not only was it cloudy and overcast but it was raining.

Shooting in the rain doesn't bother me at all. I have an old water proof bush hat that I just threw over the camera and most of the lens to cover it up and shot away.

With soccer finished I will now have my weekends again, or at least until I'm asked to shoot something else.

These first shots are U11 boys. For these I used my 300 f/2.8 for the first half and then during the second half I added my 1.4x converter. My settings were f/2.8, ISO 800, and a shutter higher than 1/1000.




These next shots are U16 Girls. For these I used my f/2.8 and 1.4x converter for the full game. Settings were AV mode at f/2.8, ISO 200, and a shutter of 1/3200 +.

Varsity VS Jordan

I still haven't found the secret formula for night football photography, but I usually end up with a few nice shots, although my white balance wasn't playing nice. All were taken with flash set at -1/3 power at high speed sync. The camera was set to manual at f/2.8, ISO 1600, and shutter of 1/500 or 1/400.