atomicphoto

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.

This is the first official post using my iPhone. It’s more of a test than a real post. I’m not sure how my thumbs are going to take to typing on this little keyboard. I have a ton of photos in the can that I’m waiting to publish until they run in the paper. Expect a plethora of posts soon.

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:

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.