This is one of my favorite times of the year.
The college football championship was just decided — Roll Tide! And now the NFL playoffs are in full swing with two wildcard games completed today. College basketball is in full swing and the NHL is playing, too. Isn’t this a great time of year?
Photographically I will be shooting some upcoming basketball games and this week I will be in Chincoteague, Virginia to do some bird photography.
I love this time of year!
I have taken a lot of sports action photographs in recent years. I thoroughly enjoy the challenge of trying to capture the excitement of the plays on the field! The challenge is obvious because many variables are involved. Will I click the shutter at just the right moment? Will the shot be in focus? Will the ball be frozen in the frame with the player?
Of course, there are some things the photographer can control. Watch the background to keep it as uncluttered as possible. Have your camera ready for action at all times. Keep batteries charged and memory cards ready. Position yourself in the best possible location.
Last night I spent some time going through many of the baseball photos I took this year. I wanted to create a portfolio of my best sports photographs. Then I posted the resulting portfolio to my website. You can see the Sports Portfolio for yourself. Take a look at these photos and let me know what you think of them. Do they capture the action? Do they tell a story? Are they any good?
Do you Tweet?
Twitter is one of the relatively newer social mediums out there. I will admit that I was a little slow to get up to speed with Twitter, but now I love it! Twitter allows you to “follow” other people and see what they are sharing about their life, their company, and their interests.
So I decided to share some photo tips on my Twitter page. Each day I share a new photo tip and those who follow me on Twitter can read the photo tip of the day. Of course, they can also go back through all the formerly posted tips as well.
To follow me on Twitter you need to set up an account, which is free. Then you can join in this social medium by following others and sharing your own Tweets. Go to www.twitter.com for more information.
One of the cool things that I did was redesign my Twitter page to feature my own photographs instead of having the basic, boring backgrounds that come standard on the Twitter design.
It’s a fun way to keep up with people and learn at the same time. I hope you will consider following me on Twitter. My account is http://twitter.com/bobshank
The Christmas and New Year’s holidays along with some time away on vacation have kept me away from my blog. I am slowly catching up and enjoying every minute of it!
Time spent with family and friends are always welcome by me and when accompanied by special holidays and vacations how can one not be happy?
We did spend some in Elk County and saw 8 elk–all bulls! It was snowy and cold and not ideal for photography, but it was fun to be on the mountain again. The elk sure are beautiful creatures!
Oh yeah, and watch for this coming Sunday’s edition of The Morning Call newspaper for an article about “Pennsylvania Elk Photography Experiences.” I was interviewed on New Year’s Day by the reporter, Diane. We talked for almost an hour and a half! I thoroughly enjoyed answering her questions and am looking forward to seeing the article myself.
Much more to come soon!
The plan was to put the Christmas tree up but a lot of interesting distractions got in the way!
My son, James, and I started going through all of our trains and we got distracted. After all, we had track to lay, accessories to locate, and engines to test. There is nothing more exciting than watching a steam engine chug down the line with smoke circling out of its stack!
Lydia is not happy that we haven’t progressed to actually putting the tree up yet, but it is coming–I promise. So are some photos of our trains and the tree with its lights and decorations. Christmas is fast-approaching but we will be ready, I’m pretty sure.
Ever notice how life changes our best-laid plans? That’s been the story of my week, but I like trying to handle the curve balls that get thrown our way! This happens in photography, too. We plan and plan for a specific shoot–trying to imagine every possible thing that could happen. Then the big day arrives and something pops us that never saw coming. Learning how to handle these surprises is what makes us successful. The alternative is we let the surprises take over and we merely complain about them. No, this is not the approach for me. Deal with the surprises and unexpected trials that come our way. In the end, we will learn and be much better for it. Bring it on!
It’s almost Christmas! Our daughter wants to get the tree decorated and our son wants to set up the toy train underneath the tree. I feel like a kid again!
I was one of the lucky boys whose dad gave him a Lionel train. We had great fun watching it run around and around and around the oval track. Wooooo! Wooooo!
The meteorologists are saying a snow storm is coming into our area tomorrow so we are going to stay inside and decorate and finish setting up the train. I hope to post a few photos once we have it together.
“Old toy trains,
Little toy tracks,
Little boy toys,
Coming from a sack,
Carried by a man dressed in white and red,
Little boy don’t you think it’s time you were in bed?”
(As sung by Roger Miller)
This past weekend I photographed a Christmas musical that my daughter had a role in as Holly Moss. I find stage light to be difficult and un-user friendly much of the time. The problem is that many different colored lights create all kinds of light casts on the actors and have a way of tinting skin and hair to amazingly unhuman qualities. It can get quite funky!
I choose to go without flash for two reasons: first, most of the time flash is not allowed in these situations, and second, I want to portray the lighting as we see it in the actual performance. These seem like pretty good reasons to me.
I have found that dark, black backgrounds are the best in these conditions. Other backgrounds not only can get busy looking, but they can reflect a lot of different colors that come from the stage lights. Black is predictable more so than any other background and it seems to swallow up some of the ambient light colors that reek havoc on skin tones.
The next time you are out on a photo shoot think more about the backgrounds and try a black one if possible. It works beautifully at times when nothing else seems to work at all.
If you had predicted that I would some day be photographing portraits and headshots I would not have ever believed you. Funny how our children bring us into things we never even dreamed of doing!
Our daughter, Lydia, is very much into musicals, singing, acting, dancing, and performing. She sings in our church, performs in many community plays and musicals and does the same in her school. Just as our son, James, gives me opportunities to photograph baseball games, Lydia gives me the privilege of photographing plays and musicals. Moreover, she sometimes needs a headshot for an audition and enjoys sitting in as my model as I learn how to do this more effectively.
Headshots and portraits were never high up on my list of photographic interests until Lydia started with all of this. Now I am finding the challenge to be invigorating and rewarding! I am learning more and more how to make better portraits and headshots these days!
I had the privilege of meeting Tara Lynn last year at a concert she opened up for Jimmy Fortune. Tara is an incredible singer with an awesome voice and she has a stage presence that is absolutely amazing!
This past Saturday I attended another Tara Lynn concert and served as the photographer, hoping to capture the mood and excitement of the concert with my camera. Take a look at these concert photos and let me know how I did in trying to accomplish this task.
Do you ever find your photography creativity getting stale?
Creativity can be elusive at times. It’s like a flash in the pan–it comes out of nowhere but disappears just as quickly. Maintaining creativity is essential to keep your edge and to keep your photo dreams within reach. So how do you maintain creativity?
One thing I do is look at the work of other photographers. Seeing fellow artists’ work can stir some new ideas within us. Reading books can help, too. I have a growing photo library of good photo books which I find myself constantly referring back to time after time. The internet can be an extremely helpful in keeping our creativity alive.
What do you do to maintain your creativity?