photography: April 2008 Archives

With the price of gas crippling my travel budget, I've not gone on any long distance trips lately, so I 'make do' with locations close by.

This male cardinal was photographed in my backyard on Monday. It was shot with a 70-300 mm lens, at about 1/250 and f4.5, I think. No tripod.

Bright cloudy days are terrific for photography. No shadows, highlights retain their detail, the recent rain washes the dust off everything, and the colors pop.

Don't put away cameras because it's damp or cloudy. You might be surprised with the results.

The Pennsylvania Resources Council invites student and adult amateur photographers from the around the state to be part of the 24th annual Lens On Litter Contest designed to highlight litter and illegal dumping problems in the Commonwealth.
“This is the only contest I know where photographers can use their creativity to show something ugly like litter, old tires and rusting appliances and win,” said Larry Myers, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Resources Council. “It is a unique combination of art and promoting awareness of an important environmental issue everyone can see.”
The Lens On Litter contest is open to amateur photographers taking photographs of litter in Pennsylvania. Entrants must submit entries by October 31.
Send entries (limit three per person) to the Pennsylvania Resources Council, 3606 Providence Road, Newtown Square, PA 19073.
All entries must contain the following information on the back of the photo: entrant’s name, address, telephone number, title given to photo, and location of litter site. If the entry is from a school age child, the school grade and school name must be provided. Photos will not be returned and will become the property of the PRC.

Baseball isn't really high on my list of sports to photograph. Rather boring. The pitcher throws 100 pitches, and the other team hits six of them. It's just not very exciting. And our job is to best video a sport in which most time spent waiting for something to happen. Lovely.

But in Lakeland, Florida, the York Revolution is in the middle of spring training. It's hot, the hours are very, very long for reporters and photographers, and it's baseball. Sounds like three strikes, eh?

Personalities like Matt Dryer, Keoni DeRenne, Jason Olsen and Travis Ezi make the sweltering days in Florida bearable. Stories like Dave Veres, above, the 41-year old with an aritificial hip, who's trying to climb back into the 'bigs' should inspire even the most anti-baseball cynic.

Now, I'm no baseball coach, player or even a fan, but players like Matt Esquivel, the big, smiling and speedy right fielder, and Mike Padgett, the handsome third baseman/left fielder, won't be around long. They're playing like they'll be signed somewhere else very soon. Some players, like those two, are just fun to watch but you'd better catch them quick.

We're covering the York Revolution in Lakeland, Florida this week, and attempting to shoot everything in video if we can get the technical gliches figured out. Some newspapers have already gone entirely to video, picking the stills straight from the video, running those in the paper.

Shooting video has enormous advantages, but we've not found a solution for darkly lit sports--basketball games, night football, etc.-- as yet. But we will. For now, we're juggling the stills and video camera, and that's an inconvenience, but sometimes downright frustrating. For example, we were shooting stills Wednesday when Ellie Rodiquez tells his terrific stories about catching Nolan Ryan's fourth no-hitter. We get a good head shot, but miss the audio stories. And I'd like to hear those stories again.

Keoni De Renne continues to be a fan favorite, and one of the nicest guys you'll meet. Jim Seip did a story about Keoni trying out with a Japanese team. This is the shot that went with it. Can you tell if it's from the video camera or digital still?

A group of friends got together over the weekend to talk about photography. We talked about composition, lenses, camera bodies, what we look for on outdoor excursions. All the usual photo stuff.

But much of the talk centered around tripods. When to use them, when to leave them in the car, how tall, how heavy, the heads on them. In all the photo books, you'll read this command From Above (my caps)-- "Always use a tripod". Period. No questions.

Baloney.

A tripod has its uses, and mine is witness to heavy use. But like a macro lens, a filter, flash, extension rings, only use it when necessary. Yep, it looks really sexy when people see you working behind it. You're busily checking buttons and dials-- know that they are very impressed. Well, some people are impressed, usually those who don't know any better.

Here's a good rule to remember--

The Cherry Blossom Festival committee says that about a million people crowd into Washington D.C. during the two weekends of peak blossoms. The peak bloom was Saturday, and it seemed everyone who was there was carrying at least one camera.

So, with all these cameras, how do you come up with a photograph that's not been done before? Or, as Bob Dorksen, a terrific photographer friend in Cleveland once told me, "Excellence is always excellent." In other words, if it's a good picture today, it'll be a good picture tomorrow. And, getting something different isn't always the best choice.

As he also told me, and I've remembered since 1970...