Lakewood Freshmen Football vs Serra

I"m very excited as football season has officially started for me.  My first game of the season was the Lakewood freshmen game vs Serra.

Lakewood did not fare well during this opening game with a final score of 0-45 Serra.  This made it hard to capture Lakewood in action with a lot of missed run and passes.  Of course I was able to walk away with some very nice shots, just not as much as I would like to leave a game with.

This was the first football with my new Canon 7D mark II, which handled very well.  The test will be tonight as I cover the varsity game under the lights at Lakewood High.  I can't wait to see how the new camera handles the low light, especially compared to what I was used to with my prior camera (Canon 1D mark IIn, which had a max ISO of 3200).

So enjoy the shots as much as I enjoyed being on the field capturing the action.

Bolsa Chica Wetlands

Football season is just around the corner for me, but before that starts and I begin posting action shots, I have to share some shots from my last few visits to the wetlands.

There was a period where I thought I captured all I was going to capture with the various Terns in the wetlands, that minus the rare shot of a young Tern being fed by their parents.  With that said I recently started focusing on capturing the Terns as they emerged from the water after a dive and when they shake off the water.  These shots have been a challenge to capture and I'm still working and perfecting my skill with it.

Not all of these are shots of Terns, there are a few Egret shots, as well as some Black Skimmers and a Cormorant thrown in.

The key to shooting at the wetlands is to keep your eyes open and on the swivel and be ready for anything.

Hope you enjoy these as much as I did taking them.

Special Olympic World Games - UCLA

First let me say its been an honor and privilege being given the opportunity to photography the athletes of the Special Olympic World Games on behalf of the Southern California Special Olympics.

I would have loved to cover more than the two days I did, but work is work and unfortunately takes priority.  With that said I was able to cover the last day of competition at UCLA, but once again the athletes competing fro So. Cal Special Olympics were very limited.  I had one female athlete competing in tennis and one female athlete competing in artistic gymnastics with some awards thrown in the round the day off.

My day started out with me covering tennis to get some shots of this beautiful young lady.  Its been years since I've shot any tennis, but I think I captured some great shots of her in action.

 After tennis I walked across the UCLA campus to the John Wooden Center where gymnastics were taking place.  My job was to get some shots of one young lady competing in artistic gymnastics.  This was a tough venue to cover and get some great shots of the athlete I was assigned to.  Now I was able to get some shots of her, but in my opinion they were just simple shots, but in the end they will work.  As you'll see below I did get some nice shots of other athletes, but it just didn't work out for the one I wanted.  With this venue positions for photographers were very limited.  I'm not here to say anything bad as to how it was all handled, but it does make it hard to get the shots you want when your area of view is limited and and you have to worry about other people moving about in front of you.

This beautiful young lady in the below shot is the one I wanted shots of.  Although the action shots of her were not how I would have wanted the shots to be, this shot below sort of made it all good.  Its all about the emotion in this shot.

 

After shooting gymnastics it was time to cover the award ceremonies for gymnastics.  Again I wanted to get some shots of the young lady above, which I did.  You may ask why didn't I share any here, well they just didn't meet my standard of shot to share here.

Now once the award ceremony was over it was time to head on over to UCLA's Easton Stadium for the softball award ceremony, but once I arrived I found they were behind and were just starting a game, which turned out to be two USA teams (Arizona vs Missouri).  Of course I had to take some shots of the game, which I totally enjoyed.  

It was a long day, but again, it was an honor to be a part of this once in a lifetime event.

Thanks for stopping by and taking a look, please take a moment to leave a comment and tell me what you think.