Grove City Mud Volleyball – Images by Adam Cairns

Worthington, Ohio fireworks show seen from over the pond in Antrim Park.

DeSales State Baseball – Images by Adam Cairns

As a side story, Northland coach Satch Sullinger announced earlier in the season that this would be his last as coach. His son Jared is the star of Ohio State’s team that just lost a heart-breaker to Kentucky in the Sweet 16. As a result of the loss, Jared was on hand to see his dad’s final game.

State Basketball – Images by Adam Cairns

Hocking Hills Winter – Images by Adam Cairns

Bestof2k10 – Images by Adam Cairns

Abby Spencer Nine Months – Images by Adam Cairns

Youth Swim – Images by Adam Cairns

As far as the game, it was a physical match, as can be seen in the images of Steven Lenhart’s broken and bloodied nose. Seemed like most of the calls went against the Crew, which definitely frustrated the team and fans. They lost 1-0.

Columbus Crew vs Kansas City Wizards 071410 – Images by Adam Cairns

And one near miss:

I’m not exactly sure what Anheuser-Busch wanted me to take a photo of, but it said “photo opportunity” so I took a picture. Check out my flickr page for more photos from the brewery tour.

We didn’t have a photographer assigned to the protest, and I hadn’t even heard that it was taking place. I was actually on my way back to the office from another assignment in Grandview when I stumbled across the protestors making signs and setting up. With nothing else assigned for me to do the rest of the day, I pulled into a nearby parking lot to see what the fuss was all about. We don’t cover a lot of news events at the paper I work at, so given the historic significance of the debate, I’m really glad I stopped.

Standard poodle Haku narrowly escaped the crashing sled run of these two young ladies during a snow day in Marysville on Feb. 11. I don’t know that I can remember a winter with snow on the ground this many days. Hopefully Buckeye Chuck was right, and spring is just around the corner.

Gotta say 2009 was a bit of a strange year. It’s my third year at ThisWeek Community Newspapers. When pouring over my work from the year, my first edit of the “best of 2009″ photos included more than 150 pictures. After that initial edit, I had a pretty hard time knocking the list down to the 35 that I picked for my slideshow. Everything seemed to be about on the same level. A lot of good, but not enough great.

I’m happy that I’m shooting with a consistency that produces a solid image from every assignment. I want more pictures to jump out though. I need to keep pushing the creative limits to produce more unique photos, while at the same time maintaining a storytelling quality. It’s easy to do one or the other, but to accomplish both in a single frame takes a bit more work. So it looks like I now have a personal challenge for 2010. Stay tuned!

The photos:

All three Columbus-area guys soccer teams in each of the three divisions won their respective state games on Friday. Worthington Christian won 2-1 in overtime. St. Francis DeSales beat their opponent 1-0 in regulation. The third game, Gahanna Lincoln vs. St. Ignatius, remained scoreless after two overtimes, so they went to a shootout. The Lions won the shootout 4-3 to claim the state title.

Shooting three consecutive soccer games in the same day proved to be physically exhausting. I was in quite a daze through most of the two overtime periods in the third game. Thankfully the excitement of the shootout gave me a jolt of adrenaline that woke me up a bit.

Spent the afternoon sloshing around the river in the rain with my dogs. It was an unexpected scenic view, and all I had with me was my iPhone, but after applying a few filters from various apps, I got a photo I was pretty happy with. Check out more iPhone photos in my flickr “Cellular Sightings” set.

Thursday was wet and dreary, yet thousands of people spent their afternoon at the horse track inside the Delaware County Fairgrounds to watch one of the premier events for harness racing – the 64th running of the Little Brown Jug. Admittedly, I don’t follow horse racing of any type, but I’m told that the Jug is one of the biggest events in the sport.

You hear crazy stories about the infield at the Kentucky Derby. Since there is no infield at the fairgrounds, spectators do their partying and betting all the way around the track on the outside. The rain, however, dampened the party considerably this year. Many of the spectators didn’t even bother to stick around for race 18 to see which horse and driver would claim the jug trophy.

Those who did stick around were treated to a dominant performance by Ron Pierce driving Well Said. The duo easily won their preliminary race and then held off Tim Tetrick driving If I Can Dream to claim the top prize.

At the end of the day, I was muddy and soaked, but I was able to put together a decent collection of images. One photo I didn’t take was of the drunk lady who felt it was necessary to show me her water-logged butt cheeks, proof she had sat down in a wet chair. There are some things we see as photographers that are better off undocumented. In fact, I’d be better off if there were some things I could un-see.

Hiking to the summit was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. It was definitely rewarding, even if it was a bit short-lived due to an impending thunderstorm. Talk about a leg workout too! After the 4-mile hike to camp the first day, we climbed nearly 2,500 feet of elevation to reach the top on day 2.

About the baseball… I shot Newark Catholic’s and Pickerington North’s attempts to capture their respective divisions’ state titles. Newark Catholic came up just short in Friday’s morning Div. IV semifinal game against New Middletown Springfield in a 5-3 loss. Pick North had better luck in the Div. I evening semifinal against Green, giving them a 10-2 spanking. The Panthers didn’t have the same winning spark in Saturday’s final against Cincinnati Moeller, losing 5-2.

The Memorial PGA tournament at Muirfield Village Golf Club wrapped up yesterday with Tiger Woods claiming his fourth tournament title in his vintage come-from-behind on Sunday fashion. It was looking like we might see a playoff with only three holes to go and four guys tied at 10-under par. Birdies on 17 and 18 sealed the win for golf’s Man of Steel.

I spent four days at the beautiful Muirfield Village, and all but the first had beautiful weather. Wednesday’s skins game proved to be the only soggy day of a perfect weekend for weather. I did a lot of walking and took a lot of photos. Here’s a rather large selection of images from the tournament.

Students in the building trades program at the Ohio Hi-Point Career School, from left, Brandon Schwyn, Trey Bowersmith and John Baesmann lower tools down to project supervisor Ben Ludlow at the end of the work day on March 11. The students are working with UCo Industries to build a home that will be donated to a Union County family.

Washington Elementary fifth graders, from left, Scott Morris, Garrett Askew and Luke Seman perform “On Top of Old Smokey” using IBC root beer bottles filled with varying amounts of water during a practice before school on Feb. 26. The trio will compete against other grades at the school on March 5. The winner of that competition will face bottle musicians from other schools in the district.

Since being diagnosed with kidney disease just before his twenty first birthday, Youth Needing Organ & Tissue Transplants founder Edward Drake, now 23, has assisted nearly 500 kids during their quest for new organs. The Toledo native started YNOTT in order to raise awareness about becoming organ and tissue donors and to provide support for those in need of a donation.

Otterbein College security officer Chase Rogers writes a parking ticket outside the Campus Center building on March 10. Otterbein is in the process of turning their security force into sworn-in police officers.

Gary Carter clips the hair of Pickerington resident Shawn Wuertz on March 19. Carter, owner of Reynoldsburg Center Barber Shop, is hanging up his sheers after 35 years in the hair cutting business.

In order to raise awareness for multiple sclerosis, the National MS Society arranged for LeVeque Tower and the AEP headquarters in downtown Columbus to light up orange.

And last, but not least, I chuckled as I followed these two pooches enjoying the spring breeze…

Shooting the finals was a different beast altogether. There were only three mats set up, and fortunately, I only had four wrestlers who were all in different weight classes. There was a lot of pageantry before the matches started. The mats were actually elevated two feet off the ground. A herd of pro and wannabe photographers lined up shoulder-to-shoulder along the side of the mats opposite the officials and coaches. Unfortunately, I was only one for four in the winner department.

2008 U.S. freestyle wrestling gold medalist Henry Cejudo

Thomas Worthington’s Alex Karageorge takes a knee after losing to Mason’s Dan McCormack in the 285-pound class during the opening round of the state wrestling meet at Ohio State’s Schottenstein Center on March 5.

Marion Franklin’s Filandus Boyd, right, gets twisted up with Tyler Regan of Miamisburg in the 112-pound class.

Bishop Hartley’s Jarrod Zang gets pinned by Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy’s Alex Utley in the 160-pound class.

Hilliard Davidson’s Tyler Rich, right, tries to keep his balance while wrestling Westlake’s Nick Lawrence in the 125-pound class.

Upper Arlington coaches Matt Stout, left, and Brett Purcell talk to senior Kevin Drake after his come-from-behind victory over Wadsworth’s Nate Ball in the 145-pound class.

Johnstown’s Chris Block, left, tangles up Delta’s Max Pennington in the 140-pound class.

Despite the limitations, I was firmly in my element at the pool. Since I grew up as a swimmer, lifeguard, and coach, I think there are probably still traces of chlorine in my blood. It was an assignment that I specifically requested and one that other photographers thanked me for taking. I had a good time shooting, and I hope that comes through in the photos.

Columbus has a great parks system. There are tons of large parks spread throughout the city. No matter what neighborhood, they’re usually one of the first places to look when in need for wildart.

On this occasion, I made a pass throught the Whetstone Park of Roses without finding anyone to take pictures of. It was nearly 0˚ outside, so it was to be expected that it was going to be a tough task to make an interesting photo of anyone out doing anything. I proceeded to drive around Clintonville for almost two hours before trying Whetstone again. The second time proved to be more successful as I found these two cross country skiers making their final pass through the park.

CAPTION:
“We live for days like this,” said Tamy Rudavsky, left, about the snowy, cold conditions as she skis through Whetstone Park of Roses with Rich Brody on Jan. 15. After receiving several inches of snow on Wednesday, the high temperature on Thursday topped out in the single digits.

Janis Krums‘ iPhone photo (larger version) talked about yesterday in Silicon Alley Insider ran six columns wide on today’s LA Times front page.

View it here.

I visited the Gruenbaum family dairy farm outside of Marysville last week for a story on, yep you guessed it, family farming. When I first arrived, Kenneth, pictured here, and his son David were de-horning the young steers. Mutually agreeing that the bloody practice wouldn’t best illustrate our story, not to mention wouldn’t stand a chance of running in my publication, I decided to come back later in the day when they were milking the cows. This is what we ran.

We have had a stretch of bad weather over the past week, so here is a feature photo from the German Village neighborhood. Driving from my house on the north side of Clintonville, I didn’t have any trouble navigating the slushy roads until I hit the brick streets and of German Village. Something about the bricks caused the road to stay frozen and icy longer than standard blacktop roads. After creeping around the neighborhood for almost half an hour looking for someone struggling with the ice, I pulled over when I spotted these two pink pooches scampering down the sidewalk.

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And a close up of the ring:

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This lady cardinal had a helluva time eating lunch as winds zipped through the area causing the bird feeder outside my living room window to sway wildly. I like how you can see her feathers blowing with the breeze.

At a post-Christmas Christmas party in Indianapolis, Brian stands outside his front door waiting to be let in. The McNerney Christmas party has become a holiday tradition for me and a bunch of high school friends.

This young lady accompanied her mom to the car wash this afternoon. She did her best to avoid the spray but still got a little wet.

This is a storefront preacher who gave up a shot a professional football to spread his faith as a senior pastor.

It was amazing to listen to the passion Mr. Doubilet has for sea life, and how me managed to turn that love of the ocean into a successful photography career. He started snorkeling when he was eight, and began taking a camera with him wrapped in a plastic bag before he was even a teenager. 50 years later, Doubilet has shot 40 assignments for National Geographic, including numerous cover shots. What I liked most was his passion to try to change the marine world with his pictures. It didn’t take more than a few minutes of seeing his pictures to realize that he has succeeded.

On an assignment related note, I shot the second image at the very beginning of the lecture. Immediately after hitting the shutter button, the spotlight on Doubilet went out. Dark. Fortunately, after shooting a few of his photos, he moved away from the back of the podium, so I could get the silhouette shot. I’d like to think it was just one photographer looking out for another. Thanks David!

Once the game was over, the supporters went nuts. The players went nuts. Even the photographers went nuts. Half ran over to shoot the team. Half stayed back to shoot the fans. I was part of the latter group. It didn’t really matter in the end as the players came over to the sideline and eventually ended up getting swallowed by the front row of rowdy supporters.

A tighter edit of these photos is over at my SportsShooter page. Here is a slideshow of everything else.

*If you’re having trouble viewing the slideshow using Firefox on a Mac, try opening it up in Safari instead. Something is wacky with Flash and FF right now. I’m working on a fix.

One of the cards reads, “Dear Veterans, Thank you for serving and fighting for our countries rights to be free people. Your friend, Jana.”

The second was a pet costume contest in Gahanna where pet owners couldn’t let their pups have all the fun.

I have another Halloween-related assignment tonight, so the it looks like the ghoulishness will continue all week.

I had some pretty sweet light for most of the first half of the mid-afternoon game, but it went away for the second half and both overtimes. Regardless, the afternoon start was a nice change from the harshness of stadium lights that I’m getting used to.

As an aside, if you’re a photographer looking to buy rain gear, don’t buy Tenba. Anything heavier than a slight drizzle, and you’re gear is soaked. I hope ThinkTank will soon come out with something that fits lenses shorter than 400mm.

As far as the game went, it was a blowout. In the first meeting of Worthington Kilbourne and Thomas Worthington, Kilbourne came out on top 43-3. As expected, considering the conditions, it was a very sloppy game.

The field had four small, low banks of lights, one in each corner. They were your standard sodium vapor bulbs. Each bank had two rows of lights with about six lights in each row. I positioned myself directly under the light to get the most light on the faces of the players coming at me. The exposure for the lighted area was ISO1600, 1/320 at f2.8. Not bad… until I turned toward the goal. Unfortunately, the lights didn’t put out enough power to reach the middle of the field. The way they were positioned, they didn’t put any light in front of the goal either. What I was left with was acceptable light in the corners and darkness in the middle, more than a whole stop difference.

This called for the use of flash. Unfortunately, I have grown to dislike using flash on outdoor sports. Not only is there red eye to deal with, but there are usually color balance issues and a loss of any sort of naturalness (if that’s a word) to the photo. Also, Canon’s flash system flat-out stinks. It has a mind of its own and no real consistency when in eTTL.

To partially combat the red eye, I mounted my flash upside down to a clamp on my monopod and used a TTL cord to trigger. The theory is that the further away from the lens you can put your flash, the less likely you’ll get red eye. There are formulas to calculate distance ratios based on focal length, distance from subject and distance from light source. Since my subjects are constantly moving, there’s no point in getting technical. I just put the flash as far down the monopod as the cord would reach. Mounting it upside down gave me a few extra inches.

As you can kind of see, the kid on the right still has red eye (which I corrected in PS as best as possible), and I got this nasty upward shadow. Not exactly ideal. Shooting downfield produced better results, since the shadow disappeared into the background instead of the nearby fence, like here:

No nasty shadow, but now I ran into a different problem: flash sync. My Canon MkII camera only syncs at 1/250 of a second. As you can tell, this isn’t always fast enough to freeze the action. Another knock on using flash is its limited recharge rate. With full batteries, it took at least a second for the flash to be ready to fire again. (Without the flash, the camera fires eight frames per second.)

To up the flash sync, I had to switch cameras. My old Canon 1D has a sync speed of 1/500. The downside is that it produces very small files with little room for exposure error, even in raw mode. I was also limited to ISO1000, since files above that are too noisy for my taste.

Ok, better. But to help with the refresh times on the flash, I only went to 1/320 of a second. 1/500 required it to put out too much power for such a fast moving sport.

Now here is where the night got interesting. Since I only brought one flash (dumb mistake, I know), I set my MkII camera to expose manually for the lit area. This is the result:

The result is much more natural looking. I switched back and forth between cameras for awhile as the play moved closer and further from me. I had my 300 on one camera and 70-200 zoom on the other. One one particular play, I got caught with the wrong camera following the action toward the goal. My MkII, which was set to expose for the area in the light, caught this image right in front of the goal:

Uncropped or toned, I thought it was a throw away for sure. You can see how big a difference in lighting there was from the previous picture. Going through my edit, a co-worker saw this frame and asked if I could make it work with a little lot of help from Photoshop. I didn’t think so, but I gave it a try anyway. A little bit of shadow/highlight tool here, some levels there, adjust the curve a bit, re-adjust the color and saturation, crop, and voila!

Holy smokes, that’s acually newspaper usable! I wouldn’t want to see it run huge, but as a two-column photo on newsprint, it might actually look alright. I was amazed with Photoshop’s ability to find the color in that file. I was even more amazed that the MkII stored that much information in the image on my M1 jpeg setting. The camera stores jpegs at compression levels from 1-10. One is the most compression and smallest file size, and 10 is the least compression and largest file size. This photo was shot at 8. Some compression, but generally not noticable for newspaper work. There is no way I could have pulled this much information from my original 1D at 1600, that’s for sure.

This is by no means a breakthrough revelation. The 4-year-old, now discontinued MkII has since been replaced by the MkIIn and MkIII. Each new generation of camera has produced better results at higher ISOs, thus eliminating the need for flash altogether at high school stadiums. Nikon’s D3 has pushed the envelope even further. Until my newspaper decides to upgrade its 7-year-old 1D bodies, I’m stuck relying on Photoshop and the technology of my personal MkII to make usable images at some of these dungeons we photograph. It’s worth repeating that my MkII is not a company-issued piece of gear.

If the Canon gods are reading this, please make all of our 1D shutters blow one week before the state football tournament. With no time to get fixed, we’ll all have to get new cameras. I think that’s the only way the company will fork over the money for replacements. Until then, they’re content fixing a hot shoe here or a shutter there. And while all these fixes certainly add up financially, spread out over the course of the year, no one in accounting notices. I think it’s going to take several fatal failures all at once to get our much-needed upgrade. My fingers are crossed!

As soon as Beckham announced joining the MLS, I marked the date on my calendar that the Galaxy would be traveling to Columbus. There was a lot of hoopla around the league, and tickets to all the Galaxy games quickly sold out. It was mid-summer when he finally made his MLS debut, and shortly after when he suffered a season ending injury. My hopes were a bit dashed to see one of the truly iconic sports figures of all time.

My family spent a semester in Oxford when I was in high school, and I studied in London for a semester of college. Add a spring break trip and a month-long jaunt in London, and my time in England quickly adds up. For many soccer fans in the US, Beckham is a known star, but in England, regardless of your football knowledge, Beckham is a household name. From daily sportscasts and gossip shows to sidewalk billboards, simply put, his face is everywhere.

With the Crew doing so well this year, I figured Beckham’s first appearance in Columbus would be a big deal. The game sold out, and the Crew ran a “black out the Galaxy” promotion. Numerous fans hung over the railing snapping photos and shouting for autographs as he took the field for warm-ups. There were a considerable amount of No. 23 jerseys in the crowd, and flash bulbs erupted each time he ran down the sideline.

I have to give the Crew faithful a ton of credit though. They didn’t let Beckham steal the show. It was business as usual from the Crew supporters’ section in the northeast corner of the stadium, jumping, chanting and waving Crew flags throughout the entire game. “Go home Beckham” cheers rained down from the bleachers drowning out the gasps from the Beckham-watchers each time he touched the ball.

In the end, Alejandro Moreno’s goal late in the first half ended up being the difference in the game. Everyone in attendance, save for maybe the Galaxy team itself, went home happy. The Crew supporters got their win, and the Beckham watchers, myself included, got their first-hand glimpse of the man himself, albeit a year later than expected.

My assignment for the night, which I came up with on my own, was to show the frenzy Beckham can cause. We don’t normally cover Columbus’ professional sports teams, Buckeye football included, so the sports action part of the game was inconsequential. Fortunately, I got my shot early in the evening when Beckham took the field for the first time. He had a slight smile on his face, and the fans behind him went wild. That left me free the rest of the night just to sit back and watch him work.

Seeing Beckham play for the Galaxy gave me a similar feeling to when I watched Michael Jordan play for the Wizards late in his career. Both were a few steps slower than in their prime, but their remarkable athleticism caused me to hold my breath each time they got the ball. Beckham took a few corner kicks directly in front of me that sailed off his foot with a touch unlike anyone I’ve ever seen. For this photographer, it was definitely a memorable experience.

Despite all the good action on the field, the best part of this game was its start time, 6 p.m. Normally the games here start at 7:30, and aside from the first week or two of the season, it’s nearly dark by kickoff. The early start this week meant I would have daylight for nearly the entire game. Once it started getting dark in the fourth quarter, the big, beautful banks of lights at Crew Stadium did a great job of illuminating the field. I’m sure for bragging about the light this week, I’ll be relegated to a City League game next week, but it was worth it.

Olentangy Orange junior Jason Hoskins, middle, belts out a cheer for his team during the football game against New Albany at Crew Stadium on Sept. 26.

The Olentangy Orange team prepares to enter the field prior to the football game against New Albany at Crew Stadium.

New Albany’s David Sharpe (29) leaps into the endzone over teammate Wes McKeever (3) and Olentangy Orange’s Ross Smith (8) and Alex Chekanoff (33) during the football game at Crew Stadium. New Albany won 30-21.

Olentangy Orange’s Chase Swisher (7) loses control of a long pass while being defended by New Albany’s Ryan Priddy (6).

Olentangy Orange’s Chaz Weisenstien (81) and Andrew Laws (71) team up to sack New Albany quarterback Jake Sullivan.

Olentangy Orange’s Chase Swisher catches a 58-yard touchdown pass over New Albany defender Chance Moore (2).

Olentangy Orange takes on New Albany at Crew Stadium on Sept. 26.

As a side note, after I took this picture and started driving, the temperature went up a degree after I drove a mile. Spooky, I know. How crazy would it have been if it kept rising with each mile I drove?

Glenn DeMott helps cut fallen limbs out of Denise Worthington’s Upper Arlington front yard on Sept. 15.

While walking to a friend’s house, Chad Mayhorn, 23, of Westerville stops to record a webcam video of a downed powerline and tree that fell on a car in the middle of Highway 161 in Worthington on Sept. 15.

While playing in Monterey Park on Sept. 15, Kornelijus Lesniauskas, 4, and his brother Emilius, 2, push their toys under a downed tree caused by wind damage from the remnants of Hurricane Ike that blew through town on Sept. 14.

I still don’t have electricity, so I’m posting as I’m getting ready to leave work. I think we’re going to make a campfire in our back yard and roast hotdogs and make smores for dinner. Hopefully the power will be back on before breakfast. The lines at McDonalds were ridiculous this morning. No one really saw this coming, so we were all caught unprepared.

For those keeping track, we’ve had rain three of the first four weeks of the high school football season so far.

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I’ll admit this was my first time covering a large political rally. I’ve done election night stuff and covered politicians (including presidents Clinton and W. Bush) but never had the opportunity to do anything campaign related. We don’t do a lot of news at our community weeklies, so it was nice being in this situation.

After waiting in the long line of traffic waiting to park at the football stadium, I met up with our reporter almost three hours before the rally was set to start. Media and VIPs were directed to the parking lot directly outside the stadium. After a quick pat down and dog sniffing of my gear, I made it inside the event. Media spots were ample, but we were cordoned off from the rest of the rally-goers. The crowd was fairly subdued (probably because of the mid 90-degree temps and blazing sun), so wading through the crowd wouldn’t have gotten me too much anyway. Several people actually passed out from the heat while waiting for the rally to start. One even passed out during Obama’s speech, and the presidential hopeful did his best to alert medics and even tossed the woman his own bottle of water.

Amazingly, the rally started promptly at the announced time of 6:45. After a few passionate speeches by local Democrats, Obama and Biden took the stage just after 7 p.m. to a roar of support. Due to the start time, the sun began setting directly behind the main bleachers just as Obama took the stage. I did the best I could to avoid the flare of shooting directly into the sun, but several shots were still unusable. Fortunately, as Biden finished speaking, the sun went down far enough to not be a problem.

I was able to move around freely during the speeches thoughout the large swath of the football field alotted to journalists. From the field level behind the supporters immediately in front of Obama, I was able to get the shot of him framed by the signs. I stood on the steps of the press riser at stage left to get most of my other shots. The riser itself was filled with TV journalists and cameras from ABC News, CNN, etc., but the steps weren’t blocked, so I was able to get more of a unique angle than the majority of the photographers shooting from the second press riser directly in front of the stage.

Once Obama was done speaking, I hung around for awhile while he shook hands and took pictures with supporters. He had a herd of secret service agents shuffling him through the crowd, but from atop the press riser with my 300mm lens and 1.4x teleconverters, I managed to get a few clean shots of him interacting with the crowd.

Fortunately I wasn’t under any deadline pressure to get the photos edited, because I got trapped inside the stadium until the entire motorcade hit the road and then waited again while the police officers figured out how to guide traffic out of the stadium lot. With the long holiday weekend, I knew no one was even going to be in the office for three days, so I took my time with the edit. They ended up using three photos on the cover of the Dublin Villager and another inside. In all, it was a good experience. With Ohio being such a hotly contested state, I imagine I’ll have a few more opportunities to cover the candidates before the November election.

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Football season is finally here. Since I haven’t shot the sport since last season, I made sure to get to the game early. Not only is it nice to have a front-row parking spot, but it’s good to get used to the football field before the game actually starts. Kind of like muscle memory for photograpers, just walking up and down the sidelines brings back the recollections of where to stand and what to look for during the game.

There were a few big plays, but most of the game was run-up-the-middle and repeat. I didn’t get a great variety of action shots. As a result, I spent a bit more time watching the sunset and working with the light.

There was a nice moment before the game when Johnstown took the field. One of the linebackers lead the team through the bleachers carrying his cousin, who has a rare type of muscular dystrophy. Once the crowd parted, it turned out to be a good photo.

With three more months of Friday night football games, I’ll have plenty of time to work on the action. Nonetheless, I consider week one a success.

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I drove down to Jackson, Ohio yesterday morning for two local schools (Scioto and Westerville North) conducting their band camps this week. I didn’t stick around long enough to bring back my own, “One time, at band camp…” story, but I did try to make a variety of photos in that short amount of time.

I had the opportunity to visit the Hartford Fair (The Biggest Little Fair in the World) in Croton, Ohio this afternoon. I’ve heard good things from other photographers about this fair, but this was the first time I got to experience it myself. It definitely didn’t disappoint.

The fair, which is about half an hour northeast of Columbus, was a blast from the past. It wasn’t overly commercial like other county fairs and the state fair have become. To get to the main concourse, you have to walk through a field of antique tractors. There is a bigger focus on animals and competitions than on neon lights and amusements.

I was free to roam wherever I wanted most of the day, but my only requirement was to shoot the frog jumping competition. Some kids brought their own frog, but most picked their jumper from a dozen or so that were on hand. The competition was held under one of the covered, open-air pavilions. This worked out in my favor since the sun was beating down from directly overhead. Kids went four at a time, and had a minute to do anything they could to get the frog to jump, except for touch it. Parents and fellow competitors watched from outside the black walled-off circle.

I got a lot of pictures of kids clapping, blowing, and pounding their fists, but not many of actual frogs jumping. This frame came together perfectly. The sunlight coming in from outside the pavilion gave the girl a nice rim light. The rest is just ambient exposure. A lucky jump and clean background completed the frame.

CAPTION: A strong breath was all it took to entice 5-year-old Dylan Cunningham’s frog to leap 29 inches during the frog jumping competition at the Hartford Fair on Aug. 4. Cunningham, from Thornville, was one of more than 60 competitors between the ages of 2 and 15 to enter the contest.

I always have a hard time finding good photos at car shows. It seems like it should be a piece of cake with all the color and people around, but it’s really hard to make a unique image. I don’t even have a good theory as to why this could be. Maybe it’s the heat. Who knows?

Regardless, I shot this picture at the car show in downtown Delaware. I saw the Sandusky Street Antiques sign, and immediately knew it would help give a different perspective. I also shot the standard photos of people peering into cars, but I think this one is visually more interesting.

CAPTION: Reflected in Sandusky Street Antiques storefront window, cars line the street of downtown Delaware for the 15th annual “Blast from the Past” vintage car show on July 26.

CAPTION: Kids at Reed Road Water Park wait out the 10-minute break while being splashed by counselors from Thompson Park and Once In A While day camps as they do cannon balls off the diving board on July 29.

We did a story on a local canoe livery, so I took it as an opportunity to break out the fish tank and swim trunks. For those who don’t know, putting your camera inside a fish tank can provide enough protection to partially submerge a digital camera under water. For this shoot, I wasn’t too concerned about what was going on under water. I just wanted a unique perspective to show the canoers and kayakers from a low angle.

I think the tank I use is actually made for crabs. It looks a lot like this one. With my 16-35 attached, I can sit my 1D snugly at the bottom of the tank. Sometimes I put a towel over the camera if I think there is a chance of splashing. I switched the focus to to shutter release priority and set the focus point to the top middle position. At f8 in aperture priority, the results are pretty decent. The tank is small enough so that I can maneuver it around easily while guessing at the composition and pressing the shutter button.

There are some drawbacks to shooting through a plastic tank. After the first time I used it, I learned that the jagged teeth of the UV filter scratch the plastic easily. There are now several circular scratch marks that I have to shoot through. You can see that there was some abnormal flare that the not-so-high-quality plastic created while shooting directly into the sun. I probably could have done a better job of avoiding it by keeping the sun more to my back.

I’d love to get some feedback on whether or not this shot works for you. Hit me up in the comment section.

CAPTION:
Josh Kauffman, 16, of Grove City takes off for a four-mile kayak voyage down the Darby Creek from Trapper Johns canoe livery on July 23. Kayakers and canoers can launch from Trapper Johns and get picked up down creek at several different stops.

Sometimes I’ll drive around all day looking for wildart, and sometimes it takes no time at all. I found this duo fishing in Hoover Reservoir as soon as I crossed the bridge into Sunbury, where we needed a feature photo. I thought about driving around longer since this photo came so easy, but with the cost of gas, I’m not going to chance throwing away a good photo if it might mean 50 more miles of driving around.

CAPTION:
Recently retired Jerry Gedert spends his morning fishing off the dock in Hoover Reservoir at Alum Creek State Park’s Cheshire boat launch area with his 3-year-old lab Hunter Riley on July 22. Gedert says Hunter isn’t much help catching bluegill or bass, but the dog enjoys swimming in the reservoir before and after fishing.

Here is a shot of Ohio State’s Chelsea Davis, the reigning NCAA 3-meter springboard diving champ. As soon as I got the assignment, I began brainstorming how I could shoot this portrait. I’ve shot a lot of diving action but only a few portraits, so I asked a few of my diving friends if they had any suggestions. I knew I would have the luxury of being able to climb to the top of the diving tower, so this was the best idea we could come up with. Since I’ve only been in the OSU aquatics facility a few times, and never for diving, my biggest concern was that I wasn’t going to have a clean background below the diving board. As you can see, it turned out perfect.

Chelsea is on the 3-meter board, and I climbed up to the top of the 10-meter platform to shoot down with my 70-200mm lens. It took a bit of moving around atop the 10m platform to get the right angle without any overhead lighting glare. I know I lost a bit of the sense of height with the longer lens, but it did a good job of giving me a clean background.

I used two lights for this. The first is shot into an umbrella reflector at the base of the diving board looking at Chelsea. The second light is below the board pointed at the water. Both were at half power triggered by Pocket Wizards.

Climbing up and down all those steps with my gear in a humid pool on a 90-degree day left me awfully sweaty by the time I got back to my car, but I’m happy with the result.

CAPTION:
Worthington Kilbourne graduate Chelsea Davis recently placed 12th at the U.S. Olympic trials on the 3-meter springboard. The Ohio State senior won the event in front of her hometown crowd at the NCAA championships in March.

The above picture was from the 2006 Red, White and Boom fireworks in downtown Columbus. All the smoke drifted my direction, so I didn’t have the best shot of the night. Below is a shot from a parade in Bexley this morning:

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CAPTION:
Grant Heilman, middle, and his brother Cole, right, ride their Independence Day decorated bikes down Roosevelt Avenue during Bexley’s July 4 parade.

Gymnastics is notorious for being one of the most difficult sports to shoot. Not only are the athletes flipping their bodies around quickly, but photographers generally aren’t allowed to use flash to brighten up the gyms. The training gym I shot in this past week was actually darker than most high school gyms, so I took my wide aperture prime lenses and shot at the highest ISO possible for my camera in order to freeze the action. Unfortunately the window you see at the far left of the frame provided no help for bars or beam.

I took a few frames of my subject, in this case it is the girl in the middle doing the back handspring, working out on bars, but it was way too dark to stop the action. I hung around until she moved to beam. I liked that all the girls were spread out practicing on different beams, so I used my 28mm f1.8 lens at 1600 ISO. It was the widest of the fast prime lenses that I have. In case you’re interested, the other lens I used was the 85mm f1.8. Our pool 200mm f1.8 lens is still at Canon. Apparently someone in the accounting department didn’t pay our bill, so CPS is holding our gear hostage, grr. Needless to say, it wasn’t available for use.

This was only a practice, so I didn’t have any restrictions as to where I could stand. I just needed to be in a spot where they couldn’t fall on me. There is still a bit of motion blur, but for newspaper work, it’ll be close enough to work. A considerable amount of Photoshop work went into toning this image. Not only did I use Noise Ninja to get rid of the splotchy grain, but I had to bring up the curves and levels to help with the exposure. Lastly, I converted to B&W to hide the crappy color of the sodium vapor lights. The athletes had a nice oompa loompa hue when it was in color.

CAPTION:
Recent DeSales graduate Nicole Ciminello does a back handspring on the beam while working out with teammates at Buckeye Gymnastics in Westerville on July 3. Ciminello, who finished second in the all-around at this year’s club state meet, will compete for Ohio State in the fall.

By pure scheduling luck I’ve managed to get several assignments to do outdoor sportraits at high noon in the past few weeks. Having the sun directly above the subject isn’t the most flattering light, and also isn’t the easiest to work with, so we do what we can with external flashes to make things work.

For this one, I was able to put Justin on the shady side of the white brick wall outside the lacrosse/football field. I added a few flashes, one directly in front of him as the main light and one to my immediate right for fill light, to make the wall go pure white. After moving myself around a bit to get the best angle, this is what I came up with.

CAPTION:
Recent Westerville South graduate Justin Young, a goalie for the lacrosse team and cornerback for the football team, will play lacrosse for the Presbyterian College Blue Hose in the fall.

Funny story for a funny picture… After taking this photo and writing down all the caption information, I proceed to take it back to the office to upload in our system. After we finish working up the photo, our workflow requires us to print out a black and white copy and place it in the corresponding edition’s bin. Since we have 23 newspapers, this keeps things a bit more organized.

As I’m putting the photo of Sam and several other pictures from the Worthington Art Festival into the Worthington bin, I see another staffer’s picture that catches my eye. It was a shot of Sam at the Worthington bike race from the day before! Talk about random! Never once did Sam’s owners mention he had just been photographed by someone from my same paper. After calling the other photographer to share the story (and getting a pretty big laugh out of the whole ordeal), we decided to use my photo of Sam looking at the bird photos due to the irony of the situation.

CAPTION:
Sam the retired 27-year-old blue and gold macaw from the now-defunct Kahiki Restaurant admires David and Joanne Kelch’s bird photography while being pushed around the Worthington Art Festival by his owners Jim Rush and Beth Mitchell, not pictured, on June 21. Sam, who worked at the Kahiki from 1982 until it closed in 2000, was admired by festival goers young and old throughout the morning.

CAPTION:
As Scottish Corners Elementary first graders, from left, Simranjit Butalia, Allison McGrover and Daniel Buehler practice balancing plates, Jimla the clown declares success after helping Sowbhagya Gosangi balance hers during a circus-themed recreation time at the school. Jimla, a 1989 graduate of the Ringling Brothers’ Clown College in Florida, toured Columbus in preparation for the Ringling Brothers Circus coming to Nationwide Arena.

Generally photographers prefer shooting with the sun at their back. This puts the light directly on the subject’s face making it not only easier to expose the photo, but also providing better color and detail. Unfortunately, we’re not always able to get in a position to put the sun behind us. Thus was the case for half of my matches at the state tennis tournament. [singlepic=48,,200,,right]

The matches were played at Ohio State’s 12-court outdoor facility. The courts were arranged in rows of four aligned from east to west, so depending on which court the local kids were playing on, I either had to shoot across three courts to keep the sun behind me, or I could stand on the other side and shoot directly into the light.

Shooting into the light has its benefits too. Depending on how low the sun is in the sky, it can provide a nice rimlight around the players. Things like smoke, and in this case tennis ball dust, will show up better when backlit as long as the background is dark. Getting the correct exposure in this situation is the hardest part. Cameras will almost always underexpose the subject when metering automatically. Spot metering on the shadow side of the player’s face and setting the camera to manual exposure is the best way to get around this.

Here are two examples of the difference between shooting into the light and shooting with it behind me. Note the clean backgrounds, which make or break a tennis photo.

CAPTIONS:
(above) Gahanna Columbus Academy singles player Will Petrie returns a forehand shot during his first round match against Warren John F. Kennedy’s Michael Fredericka during the state tennis championships at Ohio State’s Stickney Tennis Center on May 30. Petrie won the match 6-3, 6-0.
(side) Gahanna Columbus Academy singles player Andrew Enslen tosses up a serve against Cincinnati Country Day’s Joey Fritz during the first round of the state tennis championships at Ohio State’s Stickney Tennis Center on May 30. Enslen lost 6-2, 6-0.

The third state tournament we had this past week was baseball. Canal Winchester was the only local team to make the state finals this year. Their semifinal game was far more exciting than the 6-0 loss in the finals two days later. After tying the game in the bottom of the seventh inning, Canal went on to win it on a walk-off single in the bottom of the eighth. After the player hit home plate, and the ump finally got out of my way, this was the image I ended up with.

CAPTION:
After scoring the winning run in the bottom of the 8th inning, Canal Winchester coaches and teammates tackle Matt Romanowski, lower left, at home plate ending the Division II state championship semifinal game against Notre Dame Cathedral Latin at Cooper Stadium on June 5. The Indians won 6-5 to advance to the final game against Walsh Jesuit where they lost 6-0.

The state championship lacrosse game between Worthington Kilbourne and Upper Arlington provided some great shots of the players putting it all out on the line and smashing into each other. Here’s the shot I like the best.

CAPTION:
Upper Arlington’s Alex Pore (26) collides with Worthington Kilbourne’s Angelo Gutierrez (25) knocking the ball loose as Kilbourne’s Pat Riffee (2) takes a hit from UA’s Cal Case (45) during the Division I state championship game at Dublin Coffman High School on June 7.

We had two Columbus School for Girls runners in consecutive heats of the 400 at the state track meet on June 6. Their school mascot is the Unicorn. The girl in the first heat collapsed at the finish line and was helped off the track by meet volunteers. The girl in the attached photo was in the second heat, and she fell at the finish line as well. As soon as it happened, I hear one of the photographers beside me exclaim, “We have another Unicorn down!” It was funny at the time. The girl was fine after some ice and water.

CAPTION:
Columbus School for Girls’ Clare Connor collapses to the track after completing the 400-meter dash during the state track meet preliminaries at Ohio State’s Jesse Owens Stadium on June 6. Gusty winds and temperatures in the high 90s posed problems for many runners.

Ana constantly reminds me that I work as a photographer for a living, yet somehow we don’t have any photos hanging in our apartment. I’ve never had a photo printer at home, so it’s my thinking that I’d rather save the money we’d spend making prints at Cord Camera or Printroom.com and invest in a good photo printer. I saw what I thought was a good deal on a decent printer at Staples earlier in the week, but I wanted to do some internet research before pulling the trigger.

I spent better part of the afternoon today looking at printers online. For about $300, I can get a printer that does 13×19″ glossy, archival prints. Both HP and Epson have models in this price range. Doesn’t seem like a bad deal until I started calculating the cost of paper and ink.

HP Premium Plus high gloss paper costs $35 at Staples for a 50-count bundle of 8.5×11. OK, I suppose I can handle that. It’s a heavy, tangible object that will probably outlive me.

Then I start looking at ink.

That’s when I stumbled across the above chart that compares price per milliliter of various common liquids. The cost of HP black ink blew bottled water out of the water, not to mention human blood, penicillin, and Red Bull. I’m not sure about the specific data in the chart, but a recent antitrust lawsuit against HP alleges some ink can run upwards of $8,000 per gallon. The lawsuit also addresses the ridiculous steps printer companies have taken to prevent the usage of “generic” inks.

Now I’m never going to use a gallon of black ink, but proportional to usage, the cost of ink is probably going to be the deciding factor on whether or not Ana gets some wall decoration. Looks like now I have to figure out which photo printer uses ink most efficiently and whose brands of ink are the cheapest. I had no idea this was going to be such an ordeal.