Emma's Bars and Floor routine from Winter Wonderland • 11 Feb 2012

Changing conditions

As a photographer, I have to be accustomed to changing environments... Weather, lighting conditions, gear limitations, etc.
The last three days of work have been under very different lighting conditions.

A cheerleading competition, with studio strobes set up on the railing of the balcony.  Set to just under full power, I was able to shoot at ISO 320, 1/250th of a second at f/3.5 and get results like this:





















The next assignment was to shoot 64 swimming races, thats right 64!  I was tired and wet at the end of the day.
Under probably the worst lights possible, fluorescent lights, only around the outside of the pool, with no lights over the water.  As well, there was a very large set of windows behind the starting blocks.  There goes all the good starting block shots.
I had my camera max'd out at 6400 shooting at 1/640th, wide open.  using a custom white balance on the bad lights... Now, some of these swimmers were really good, but most were beginners and could barely bring the heads out of the water for me to get action shots.  And I had to deal with a really nice reflection from the windows!  I'll look for a sample from this event.

Next we go to shooting green-screen portraits of a small basketball league.  3rd grade to 8th grade boys and girls, about 20 teams.  Setting up the green-screen is like second nature, and not difficult. Keep the large shadows off the background, use a lighting pattern that shows a main light and control the shadows with a fill light, about 1 stop less than the main.  On the meter, it read f/11 on the main and f/9 on the fill.  I added a grid spot to the top of the backdrop holder to offer a a hair light and a little separation from the backdrop.  Here is a shot of the set-up.

When all the hard work pays off...

I returned home Thursday to see a message on my office phone.  I didn't recognize the number so I listened to the message.  I had to play the message 3 times to make sure I heard it right.  
A Picture Editor from SI, that's right Sports Illustrated, wanted to talk to me about a few images they saw on one of the websites, of a football player from Don Bosco Prep, Leonte Carroo, who committed and signed with Rutgers University.

Before I called her back, I went through the images I had on Carroo to see which ones they might be interested in.  I had 10 - 15 that were in the gallery, but had a bunch more that did not make it.  
We finally connected, and talked about the images they were looking for, the possible layout and the SI process of using images from photographers.  
She sent me screen shots of the images.  I quickly began editing the images to the sizes they needed and added all my information the the files as required.  I added a couple of different shots that I thought may work.  The images were sent off un-cropped at 300dpi, about 10MB per image.  This way they can crop the image to the layout as needed.  I don't usually send out non-water-marked, high res files to someone who just asks for them, but hey, it's Sport Illustrated!  Zoom, of they go...


The response I received back... "Perfect!"

The story closes on Monday and Claudia, the picture editor, will let me know how the images fit the article and how much to bill.  They pay a standard rate for the size of the article, so it could be a good one.  Very exciting to get noticed for all my hard work on the sidelines, especially from SI.  This has to lead to bigger and better things!  If they make it into the article, I post a copy of the page. JM


Just received word back that they didn't choose any of my images.  Oh Well!  Nice to be asked. JM