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.