Getting ready for CORHA

It has come around to that time of the year again, and I am so excited to be preparing for CORHA, the Central Ohio Reining Horse Association, horse shows.  These are some of the premier Reining horses and riders in the midwest.  The action is fast, the horses are beautiful and the people are just great to be around!

I don't take this event lightly.  There is one show per month, from May through August, and it is an entire weekend full of classes.  Our Pure Energy Photography team delivers not only the photography but also the videography for each run.  This allows the judges the ability to review any run if there is a question about the score.  We have a full setup that allows the riders to complete their run and as they come out of the ring they can walk over to our table and see their run immediately.

This takes a full team of people from still photographers to videographers as well as people to man the tables.  Each person on our team are incredible.  We all pitch in to get our video stand set up, our table viewing area set up and prepare everything for the weekend.  This takes hours, blood, sweat and tears (sometimes) to accomplish, but the end result is definitely worth it.

I will do some additional posts this summer to detail some of the specific areas on this project and maybe even do some BTS (Behind the Scenes) videos to show you how some of it is put together.  Feel free to checkout our Youtube channel and our website to see some of the pictures.  I better get some sleep now, because in a month I will be so excited I won't be able to.

Check out our youtube channel and subscribe to keep up with new video posts:
http://www.youtube.com/pureenergyphoto

Also, check out our website and check out the pictures in the Central Ohio Reining Horse Assoc folder.
http://www.PureEnergyPhotography.com

I LOVE birthday parties!!

We were at my niece and nephew's birthday party and I was able to capture my daughter with my niece as they were singing happy birthday.

I love trying to capture a low light picture with the candles glow on the kids faces.  I learned that it is an extremely hard picture to capture.  It is low light and of course the kids are singing and moving, so you can't have a long shutter speed or everything will be blurry, but too short of a shutter speed and you get nothing but a candle flame and no faces. 

Most of the time your camera will pop up the flash and it will blow out the picture including that nice warm candle light.  You will be able to see all of the faces and usually it will be a sharp focus, but just my opinion I think you lose the mood with that.  I am definitely not saying that using a flash for taking pictures like this is bad, just my 2 cents. 

I hope that you will try to capture a low light birthday cake sometime.  It is definitely harder than I thought, but worth the effort.  I am going to keep working on those low light pictures to see if I can get better pictures without using the flash.

Cool lighting in Chicago

When I was in Chicago last month I went to a bar called the Scout.  It was happening, the Bears were playing and the drinks were flowing.  There had to be a ton of tv's and they even had a DJ. It was cool when the game was on the DJ would play music during the commercials and switch back over to the game once the commercials were over.

The food was really good too!  They had all of the normal bar fare with nachos and wings, but they also had foot long toasted cheese sandwiches.  It was really good but it was so rich I couldn't finish the whole thing. 

One of the most interesting parts of the whole scene was behind the bar.  The bar tenders were amazing, great smiles and good service.  The lighting of the bottles behind them is really what caught my eye.  The green lighting and the clear liquors was a great combination.  I hope that you like the picture.  Wish I would have had my good camera not just my camera phone.  However, with a little help from Snapseed software on the tablet and the picture just pops.

If you are ever in Chicago I highly recommend the Scout downtown.

Championship trophies make great picture moments

About a week ago we had our son's Championship game series. It was a great series, best 2 out of 3 games.  My son loved it because it was at night under the lights.

As a photographer, that really scares me because without the light I couldn't get decent speed shots without adding a flash.  A flash is not really acceptable at the game. 

However, I found that after the game there are some great opportunities.  The team shots and individual shots can be incredible. You don't always have the ability to have lights 50-60 feet up behind your subject.
The next time I am out at night I am going to remember that there are special lighting opportunities that yiu don't get normally.

Jumping horses Rock!

Hunter Jumpers, Cal and Johnny...


I have to say that I had a great time the other night where I was invited to have a photo shoot with a couple of incredible horses and their rider Summer P.

It was at night so we decided we would do the shoot within the indoor riding arena. The facility is great and has plenty of room to set up a shoot with some of my flashes. I didn't bring the big studio strobes as this wasn't at the Convention Center or anything so I didn't need megawatts of power just enough to add a splash of light as Summer was making her jumps.


I just used two Lumopro LP160's on stands with Pocket Wizards to trigger them. We tried a couple of different angles and lighting setups. I kept the flashes on half power to allow me to have a fast refresh time and with two of them I had plenty of power, they are incredibly powerful for as small as they are.

I set my camera to Shutter Priority at 1/250th to sync it with the Pocket Wizards. This allowed me to get enough speed to get sharp pictures of Summer and the horses, but at the same time allow enough light in to get a decent aperature (usually at 2.8) and low ISO. I kept my ISO everywhere from 100-400 depending upon the shot. I didn't want to go too much past that.

We had fun with some poses as well. Using the flashes, one in front, camera left and one behind Summer. The horses really were funny as they watched the flashes. I could have sworn that they were models in a previous life as each hammed it up for the camera. When working with animals you never really know what they are going to be like with the camera and flashes but these two, Cal and Johnny, really had fun with it. That really made my job easy.





I did up my shutter speed on one shot to really get a nice focus on Johnny's face. I turned up the shutter speed to 1/320 and then took the shot of Johnny looking right at the flash. I really liked how it took all of the ambient light out of the picture and allowed only what was lit to be captured. I will be trying this concept in many other shots.






I hope that you enjoy the pictures and any helpful hints I have shared. If you would like to check out more pictures please take some time and visit my website, Pure Energy Photography.

Thank you to Bonnie Clary, Summer, Cal and Johnny!! Your facility and horses are fantastic! I hope to come out and do this again in the future.

Feel free to leave any comments at the bottom.

Thanks,
Ross

Slow down and look around...

I usually eat my lunch at my desk or on the run while I am trying to get some errands accomplished.

In Ohio, this winter has been exceptionally mild.  I took a lunch last week and instead of rushing around I took a few minutes to take a walk at one of the nearby walking paths. It was nice to slow down, even though I only went for about a 15 minute walk.

As I was contemplating things I had to finish before the day was over, I happened to look down at a very interesting broken and decaying limb with a fantastic set of mushrooms growing on it. I couldn't get over how the patterns and texture really caught my attention.

It made me think that in our fast paced world I need to take a moment and slow down, look around and take it all in. If we don't there are many wonderful things that we can miss. I hope that you enjoy these snap shots as much as I had taking the pictures.

Good morning = Good start

As I sit here drinking my coffee I think about all of the things that went well, things that went great, and things that went bad this year.  It is funny how sometimes we are so busy that we don't sit down long enough to contemplate how life is going.

The end of one year and the beginning of the next seems to be the only time we focus our effort on looking back and reflecting. I am going to make my first resolution to reflect a little more often and adjust my course accordingly.

I have high expectations for this year and I am sure you do as well. I wish all my friends and family the best this year!

Happy New Year!!

PureENERGYPhotography.com