Category Archives: Photo Shoot

Picture or description of pictures I have taken.

Taking a Shot at Shooting Baseball

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I had some time before my daughters soccer practice started, so I thought I would take a shot at some baseball pictures. All were taken with a 70-200 at f/4.

The first thing I did was try to get some images of the pitcher. To do this I was standing just off to the side, behind the plate, and shooting through the fence. With the sun shade off, and the lens right against the fence, they come out fine. I don’t see any lines.

Well, those aren’t too exciting really. I need some real action. Well, wouldn’t you know it, a pop up that the catcher and the pitcher ran to get.

I got it, I got it! Boom!

I almost had a great shot there. Two players colliding, the ball in the picture, and the focus on the back of the closest player. Oh well. Have to use a smaller focal length, or get the person looking at me in focus.

Then I moved over to the first base line. There was an opening in the gate that I could peek through. They walked a player to first, so no play at the plate. Then this:

Again, I like the shot. I was waiting for this one. The guy was taking quite a lead, and I was just waiting for the pitcher to throw it to first. But, as luck would have it, the pitcher doesn’t throw to first very well. This is the actual picture I got.

Somehow I don’t think that cutting someone off at the head is a good sports shot. I was surprised how sharp the image looked when I cropped 2/3 of the picture away, but I can’t imagine it prints all that well.

Anyway, that was only about 15min of shooting, and quite fun. I am definitely going to try to get back and shoot some more.

Ben and Alexa’s Wedding

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This last weekend, I had some family getting married. Alexa, who I have known for a while and is great with our girls (She watched Hanna Montana with them) and Ben, my wife’s cousin had their big day this past Saturday. My girls were also the flower girls.

I was not the official photographer, and so I tried to stay out of their way, and not poach any of their shots, but I was there… and other family members were expecting me to take pictures. I suppose not that many guests at weddings have a 70-200mm lens on their camera, and were playing with a remote flash during the dance, but hey, it was a good opportunity to practice, and this photographer wasn’t doing candids anyway.

I have more pictures up in an album in facebook too if you are interested.

Star Wars Parade Float

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Darth Vader and Queen Amidala were a top the Mike Endrizzi for School Board float (www.Mike4MPS.org) in the Minneapolis North East parade. It was a bigger deal than I thought and a hoot to shoot.

Mike went with a Star Wars theme obviously, and several characters actors showed up to get into costumes.

It was a really hot evening to be in a costume too. These folks were drenched when they took off their costumes.

I also learned how difficult a skill it is to hold a camera steady while you try to walk backwards at the same pace as the people walking, or riding in the parade.

Not wanting to leave all the fun to his friends, Mike dressed up in a Boba Fett costume, and rode his bike. He and Darth Vader got lots of cheers from the kids. They would run out to give high fives, and take the Mike4MPS bookmarks that the kids on the float were handing out.

I took a few moments to take pictures of kids both in the parade, and on the sides, but that will be a post for another day.

RGC Stills and Photoshelter

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Ok, so here are a few stills of the hundreds that I took for the Richfield Gymnastic Club. The DVD’s are delivered, and now I will try to sell some of the stills to the parents. My current site wasn’t really laid out for this,  but I made a landing page that my marketing materials at the club, and an email that will be sent out to the parents that gave one, will point to here.

So, the way to sales, will be through photoshelter. I have recently started an account with them, and will be using their e-commerce site to offer the images for purchase. You can see them here. There are a lot of images there!

There are images from the rehearsal, the warmups, and the main event. It was a lot of fun to shoot. It was also a big editing job with over 3000 pictures taken.

Anyway, I got them edited down, and hopefully there are some images in there that parents would be willing to purchase. Here are a few more. Check out the photoshelter site for more.

Richfield Gymnastics Club Spring Show

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http://www.viddler.com/explore/cwardphoto/videos/1/

I finally have a video up from the Richfield Gymnastics Club’s Spring Show. For this show I took almost 3000 images from the rehearsal to the warmups to the actual event over two days. Some of them were dismissed right away as I missed focus, or body parts, but I had over 2000 shots that I had to whittle down. These are some of them.

What I was asked to make was a DVD, that the club will sell to the parents of the kids. I created 7 videos from images over the event, about a 100 per video. Seven individual songs to create the videos. I then put them together into a DVD with a menu. The one above is not one that I put on the DVD, it has images from all over the night.

It was a lot of fun to make. I shot a bit of video at the event as well that I mixed in with the stills. It worked out well. The club loved the videos that I showed them.

Photos of Mike Endrizzi, Candidate for School Board

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I just noticed that my client finally got his web site up and running, so I can post the pictures that we took of him. (Web, Facebook) This is Mike Endrizzi, and he is running for the School Board in district 1 of Minneapolis.

Mike is a pretty busy guy, and always on the move. He also has a commitment to his family that evenings would be for family time, so he wasn’t going to give me much time. I wanted to bring out a light, and tone down the backgrounds a bit more, but he wouldn’t give me a chance, so we had to go just with natural light.

I think the top image is the one that turned out best. I was able to position him in partial shade, just at the edge of the light that was wrapping around the building. The other two I had to tweak in post a bit more than I would have liked to get separation of Mike from the background.

Kim and Josh Engagement Photos

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We almost called this shoot off because it was raining and windy and cold. A couple of hours before we decided to go for it. A half hour before, the rain stopped, the clouds cleared, the sun came out at full force, and the wind picked up.

We took the pictures at the Millennium  Gardens in Plymouth. It is a nice setting. So nice in fact, that there was another wedding taking place there. A couple of the choice locations were not going to work.

We had full on sun, lots of wind, and no shade at 3:00. Not the best, but that is what worked with their schedules, so we made it work. I tried to find some shade, and use some fill flash, but there wasn’t much to be found at that time on that day. I tried to position them so the sun was like a hair light, then blast them with a SB900 to try to fill in the shadows as best I could. Only so much you can do with a little light in full sun.

Still, I think we got some good shots that I hope they will like.

Just Swinging Around

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Truth be told, I have hundreds of images of my kids on swings sitting on my hard drive. But most of them don’t really have any sense of movement or height. This time I was going for height.

I went with a wide’ish angle lens (18 is all I have right now) and got as close as I could without fear of getting hit. I gave her a big push, and then ran over to snap some pictures.

Cardinal in Front of my House

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This Cardinal keeps showing up in a tree near the road, right out our front window. I have been trying to catch this shot for a couple of days. I never seem to have my long lens on or ready.

The one time I was ready, I went out the front door, and the bird got spooked, and flew away. Then I got another idea. I removed a screen from one of the front windows, and had my lens at the ready. And then, when the kids yelled “He’s Back!”, I went over, slid the window open, and took this shot.