St. Patrick's Cathedral
Windows
Night shots
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Snapping away in NYC
Went into NYC recently to see the sights. Many of the stores had their window displays done up for the holidays already but what I really enjoyed taking pictures of were the night scenes! These were all grab shots but it was fun to just be trigger happy!
St. Patrick's Cathedral
Windows
Night shots
St. Patrick's Cathedral
Windows
Night shots
Thursday, September 9, 2010
The Challenges of a Hip Hop Challenge
At a recent local street festival I was came upon a hip hop competition. This was a great opportunity to capture images of a subject I know little about. I don't follow hip hop music and know almost zero about break dancing. But for a photographer this is the kind of challenge that really gets the creative juices flowing! Watching the dancers warm up and going through some of their routines I knew right away that I needed to stay for the competition - there was going to be great photos to be had.
Whenever you are in a situation where you have little or no experience - play to your strengths. I may not know about hip hop but I'm experienced in photographing sports. On this late afternoon the athleticism unfolding before me was obvious. These dancers were amazing!
Another challenge was the quality of light. It was an overcast afternoon and the competition was delayed for reasons unknown to me. I only had my camera mounted speed light to rely on. The competition started around 7pm so I was going to have to make do with available light supplemented by my flash. This meant that the high shutter speeds usually associated with photographing sports were not going to be an option in this case.
You can see the effect this has on the images. The ones taken early in the evening have a lighter background. As the evening wore on the background grew darker and the main subject colors popped out more as the effects of the flash become more prominent
Many of the subjects wore dark, muted colors which made it harder for them to stand out in a busy background. I addressed this with my computer by removing the color in the background as well as blurring it. The result was more artistic and less photo journalistic - but I like it!
Whenever you are in a situation where you have little or no experience - play to your strengths. I may not know about hip hop but I'm experienced in photographing sports. On this late afternoon the athleticism unfolding before me was obvious. These dancers were amazing!
Another challenge was the quality of light. It was an overcast afternoon and the competition was delayed for reasons unknown to me. I only had my camera mounted speed light to rely on. The competition started around 7pm so I was going to have to make do with available light supplemented by my flash. This meant that the high shutter speeds usually associated with photographing sports were not going to be an option in this case.
You can see the effect this has on the images. The ones taken early in the evening have a lighter background. As the evening wore on the background grew darker and the main subject colors popped out more as the effects of the flash become more prominent
Many of the subjects wore dark, muted colors which made it harder for them to stand out in a busy background. I addressed this with my computer by removing the color in the background as well as blurring it. The result was more artistic and less photo journalistic - but I like it!
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