It’s been a long past two weeks.
Multiple exams, work, starting back into a workout routine, and literally THOUSANDS of photos taken.
Two weekends ago, I photographed a close friends “wedding” (they actually got married last year, but organized the large family affair for the other weekend, which I attended).
I finished culling and editing roughly 1600 images from that wedding, of which you the dedicated reader may see one… 😉
(They were proud of their daily pushups, and wanted a ‘flex’ photo.
That Wednesday, I coached the last normal season high school meet of the year, and shot a few photos, of which these are only two…
The following weekend, I photographed another wedding, although this one was in Tallahassee, versus Orlando the weekend prior. THOSE photos, I have yet to touch except for backing them up.
BUT! I do have some photos from the day before the wedding, scouting the location and hanging out with Madison!
The following day (Sunday, a week ago today), I had a portrait shoot for a family that just recently moved to Tallahassee, and although I’ve finished all but one of their photos, I don’t really want to share too many here. So you can just appreciate a couple that I took wandering around downtown before meeting them.
Then this week.
…
……
Wow what a lot of shooting. What a lot of not very satisfying results on my part.
Wednesday I was hired by the FSU Tucker Center to photograph Chance the Rapper, who had come to town to preform as part of the FSU Homecoming events. It’d been a while since I shot a concert, and the first time I would’ve been getting paid for it.
Thoughts? Very loud – I neglected to bring earplugs… 😦
Aside from that, it was an interesting task to get a unique set of photos that the venue would be pleased with, but they were happy, and so was I; my only major regret was I went a little overboard with continuous burst mode and ended up with a WAY excessive number of photos…
Here’s one for perspective as to where my credentials got me access to…
A few more…
Thursday I photographed the annual FSU vs UF dual (duel?) swim meet. This year it was hosted by/at FSU. Now, I’ll go out on a limb here and say that swimming is probably the sport I photograph the best/easiest – it is the sport I spend the most time around and have the most background in.
However.
Thursday I struggled, and it would be the first of three days struggling to capture satisfactory/quality images.
THIS was the only one I got that I was PROUD OF.
The rest were slim pickings.
I was especially disappointed that 2016 Olympian, Florida Swimmer, and brother to one of my friends here in town, was racing, and I botched all of the actually swimming photos of him…GRrrrr
And the rest of the meet…
Friday, I shot local high school football for the newspaper, and experienced a terrible evening shooting again. I submitted only twenty photos.
However, I did manage to snag one excellent one, that proved good enough for the sports page cover Saturday morning:
Also, that soccer image on the bottom of the sports page is mine as well…
And then on to Saturday!
FSU Football! A home game! Cooler weather than the first game of the season, which was also the only one I’d shot so far.
I was pretty pumped. I had a game plan, a few photo ideas, a new camera strap system so my gear was more secure and I was more easily able to run up and down the sides of the field…
But no. Similarly to the high school game from the night before, this game was less than exciting, and the images reflected it. It was an embarrassing email to send FSU: a Dropbox folder with only 13 items post-game.
But here is what I kept after editing the RAW files this morning (I was more pleased after I tweaked the RAW files, versus looking at out-of-camera JPEGs…):
This image above is terrible, and not processed at all – but it was the shot I managed to get just before looking up to a ball hurtling out of bounds towards, me – which I managed to smack out of the way, but that was then closely followed by FSU’s #17, whom I couldn’t smack out of the way as easily, and who ended up coming crashing into me, causing me to crash into the photographer on my side.
It was a first for me…But, I am uninjured, and although I was being cautious and aware of my surroundings, I could do better and need to be more mobile.
This is probably my best shot of the day (above), and I’m glad I cropped it into a vertical – the horizontal had WAY too much dead space, and I think this is a pretty clean image.
Got bored enough I started taking pictures of the horse…
A view from my corner position in the south end zone…
The only other shot that I was very pleased with – our second touchdown.
And then, for the sake of adventure, I asked a fellow photographer to show me how to get up onto the roof…
And with that scenic(?) vista I will leave you.
Thanks as always for taking the time to read my mumbly ramblings, and hopefully the next post I bring to you will be filled with better images.
-Colin
