More NCAA College Basketball

I’m sorry but this is the closest thing I have to March Madness, so if you want something more you might as well head on over to Sports Illustrated dot-com or ESPN dot-com. If a few shots of the Arizona State University Sun Devils Basketball game against USC will help with your March Madness fix than this is the place to be.

Thankfully I have a few images of the “older” Sparky uniform before the change over to the “new and improved” Sparky that no one seems to like.

At least they didn’t change the cheerleaders outfits.

24 January 2013: Jordan Bachynski #13 of the Sun Devils dunks the ball during an NCAA Basketball game between the Arizona State Sun Devils and the University of Southern California Trojans at Wells Fargo Arena in Tempe AZ. The Sun Devils beat the USC Trojans 98-93.

24 January 2013: USC Trojans Byron Wesley #22 drives toward the basket during an NCAA Basketball game between the Arizona State Sun Devils and the University of Southern California Trojans at Wells Fargo Arena in Tempe AZ. The Sun Devils beat the USC Trojans 98-93.

24 January 2013: Dewayne Dedmon #14 of the USC Trojans during an NCAA Basketball game between the Arizona State Sun Devils and the University of Southern California Trojans at Wells Fargo Arena in Tempe AZ. The Sun Devils beat the USC Trojans 98-93.

24 January 2013: Jahii Carson #1 of the Sun Devils during an NCAA Basketball game between the Arizona State Sun Devils and the University of Southern California Trojans at Wells Fargo Arena in Tempe AZ. The Sun Devils beat the USC Trojans 98-93.

24 January 2013: Jahii Carson #1 of the Sun Devils during an NCAA Basketball game between the Arizona State Sun Devils and the University of Southern California Trojans at Wells Fargo Arena in Tempe AZ. The Sun Devils beat the USC Trojans 98-93.

24 January 2013: Carrick Felix #0 of the Sun Devils dunks the ball during an NCAA Basketball game between the Arizona State Sun Devils and the University of Southern California Trojans at Wells Fargo Arena in Tempe AZ. The Sun Devils beat the USC Trojans 98-93.

24 January 2013: USC Trojans Eric Wise #34 takes a shot while ASU Sun Devils Jordan Bachynski #13 defends during an NCAA Basketball game between the Arizona State Sun Devils and the University of Southern California Trojans at Wells Fargo Arena in Tempe AZ. The Sun Devils beat the USC Trojans 98-93.

One last farewell to the “good” Sparky.

2012 Scottsdale Polo Championships – Horses and Horsepower

I have never attended an actual polo match before, except for the polo scenes in the movie “Pretty Woman” so when I heard about this event to be held on October 20, 2012 at the Scottsdale Polo Fields I made the necessary inquires for a media credential. What a great event, all kinds of interesting things to photograph, although covering the actual polo match proved to be difficult and would require very long glass with very shallow depth-of-field to help with very, very distracting backgrounds. I didn’t feel like lugging big heavy glass around with me on a warm day in October, so I took an f5.6 lens which didn’t cut the mustard as they say.

I was a bit disappointed with most of what I got, with the difficult lighting conditions and me not having a long enough and fast enough lens I tried to capture some reasonably good images. Have a look and feel free to let me know how you think I did.

Covering a polo match is, as I said is all new to me, I sure had a good time and found the event very interesting. I look forward to the next event where I can apply what I learned at this event and try to capture more compelling images.

To see more images from the 2012 Scottsdale Polo Championships, click the continue reading link below:

PGA Golf — 2013 Waste Management Phoenix Open

I know golf is not hugely popular on my photo blog, but I thought maybe if I had some images of one of the most popular local players, Phil Mickelson and some brightly colored images I might get a few extra viewers. Here are a few shots from round 2 action, I hope you enjoy these.

February 01, 2013: Phil Mickelson on the 9th green during round 2 action of the Waste Management Phoenix Open at the TPC Stadium golf course in Scottsdale Arizona.

To see more from the 2013 Waste Management Phoenix Open, click the continue reading link below:

The Arizona State University Sun Devils Final 2012 Regular Season Home Game

Everyone seemed excited for the Arizona State University Sun Devils football final regular season home game on November 17, 2012. I was excited because it would be a day game and I would get to create images in the beautiful sunlight rather than the typical night game, high ISO of most of the ASU games I cover. This was the game when the Sun Devils would celebrate the graduating seniors on the team so a great many of the players had several family members either in the stands or on the sidelines.

You could almost feel the excitement in the air as the teams took the field, and for many of the players, the last time they would play in front of the home crowd.

17 November 2012: Arizona State Sun Devils QB Michael Eubank (18) drops back to pass during the Pac-12 conference match-up between the Washington State Cougars and the Arizona State Sun Devils at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona.

To see more of the exciting Sun Devils action, click the “continue reading” link below:

2012 Fun in the sun — UCLA Bruins vs ASU Sun Devils

All year the photographers that cover sports here in Arizona hope and pray for the sun drench day games when the year’s ASU football schedule is released, and when it is released we review it with nervous anticipation in hopes that there will be at least one, and if we are lucky two games that don’t take place at night under the lights.

All around the world great sports photography is produced where golden sunlight and beautiful color is the norm, but due to the summer time temps here in Arizona most of our sports photography is at night or indoors, and that can make capturing the kinds of images that make it into printed magazines a challenge. With so many of the sporting events taking place at night you can’t rely on that golden sunlight to give your images that extra “pop.”

It turned out this year’s game against the blue and gold of the UCLA Bruins was going to be a day game and, I for one was very excited for the day-game opportunity.

The light before the game on the Sun Devils marching band looked fantastic as it bounced all around the stadium.

To see the rest of the images click the continue reading button below:

Lucas Oil Off Road Series — 2012 Drivers and a buggy or two

For the 2012 season of the Lucas Oil Off Road Series racing (LOORS) I tried to mix it up a bit with my images and I found some personal gratification from producing images of some drivers in their trucks. The way the screening and window net as well as the dash configuration sometimes made fitting my wide-angle lens between everything difficult so not every driver is represented and some shots just came out better than others. Here are a few that I liked:

Todd LeDuc gives me the eye as I grab images through the window net.

To see more images click the continue reading link below:

NCAA College Football – Oct. 18, 2012 University of Oregon Ducks vs. Arizona State Sun Devils

I am excited to see the Oregon Ducks play in this year’s Fiesta Bowl so I went back for a little look at the images I captured when the Ducks came calling on the Arizona State Sun Devils

18 October 2012: Sidelines are reflected in the helmet of University of Oregon Ducks CB Terrance Mitchell (27) prior to the start of the Pac-12 conference match-up between the Oregon Ducks and the Arizona State Sun Devils at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona.

First off the Ducks had these really cool helmets that would make all kinds of great reflection images so I had to try to take advantage of that opportunity.

To see the rest of the game images, click the continue reading below:

With youth sports images, does quality make a difference?

Almost all of the modern digital SLR cameras available today will make reasonably good photos even in the worst of conditions, so does the quality of an image really a determining factor in your purchasing decisions?

With today’s digital cameras almost anyone can stand on the sidelines of a high school football game and come away with some reasonably good photos and for many high school football games there are several moms, dads or students on the sidelines with decent digital cameras. Many of the people taking pictures from the sidelines have no training in either photography or specifically capturing good sports images, but does that really make a difference?

These days it seems most of the photographers on the sidelines of a high school football game are either a parent of one of the players on the team or a student attending one of the schools so I’m going to have to assume that is their reason for being on the sidelines.

When I was in high school and just learning photography we would photograph our high school football games either for the yearbook or for the school newspaper, things were much more complex back then when we shot film. First not everyone had a camera and everybody shot everything in black and white film. The reasons we shot black and white film were three-fold, we could develop the film at the schools photo lab, printing color images in the yearbook or school newspaper was very expensive, and lastly we could “push” the film speed to deal with the poor lighting conditions on the fields. Those days are long gone, with easy access to low-cost highly capable digital cameras that don’t require any background or instruction in photography almost anyone can take pictures at a high school football game, and they do.

Shooting high school football at night can be very challenging due to the poor lighting conditions so the first thing most mildly experience photographers do is increase their ISO, and for the photographer that doesn’t understand things like ISO and shutter speed the camera will take care of most of those settings for you. One of the problems with shooting high, or very high ISO night football is the grainy images – back in the film days we would call images grainy, today we call them noisy – higher ISO images tend to be noisy and have a lot of deep shadows inside the helmets making it almost impossible to see the player’s face or eyes. One way to deal with the poor lighting conditions, deep shadows and lack of face/eye detail is to shoot with a flash, not the built-in flash that pops up on top of your camera, but a dedicated hot-shoe flash, sometimes referred to as a speed-lite or strobe.

Shooting flashed football with strobes or a speed-lite requires an entirely different skills set from shooting your typical ambient light night football game. The complexities of shooting flashed football are extensive and range from where you mount your flash to how you trigger it so let’s not go into the details of that and focus the discussion on the quality differences and if they are a determining factor in your purchasing decisions.

Some examples of the quality and “look” of flashed football.

With flashed football you can clearly see the player’s face and eyes, the colors are brighter and the grain or noise is very low.

To read the rest of the story click the continue reading button below.

NCAA College Football — September 8, 2012 Illinois at Arizona State

I haven’t posted any college football this season and I’m not sure why, so I thought I would show you some stuff from a few of the games I covered. I’ll start this with the September 8th, 2012 game between Illinois and ASU.

When one of the coaching staff holds up a sign that says “Nasty” you know this is going to be fun to watch.

To see the rest of the game photos, click the continue reading link below.

2012 Phoenix Fashion Week Runway Shows from Talking Stick Resort

“How about some more images from the 2012 Phoenix Fashion Week Runway Shows at Talking Stick Resort you say.” Well here are some more of my images from the Thursday night runway shows, but first I want to talk about the value of these images — Zero, Nada, Nothing, Zip, Not One Thin Dime, A Big Fat Goose Egg. The reason for this lack-of-value is because they are not unique, or special in any way and the fact that there were at least two dozen other photographers there on the riser around me as well as several guys and girls shooting hi-def video with most, if not all of them willing to give away their images and video footage for FREE. So, I can’t for the life of me figure out why the nice folks at Phoenix Fashion Week would even consider paying a photographer to license his or her images when almost every image of almost every designer’s clothing is available from any one of several photographers for free.

I know before the lights come up that there isn’t much value in covering runway fashion shows, but yet I still enjoy doing it for some odd reason and as long at I am allowed to cover these shows I will continue to do so. Sure some day I would like to be paid to cover a New York Fashion Week runway show, or gasp . . . travel to Paris France to cover an event associated with the Paris Fashion Week, but sadly I’m sure that’s never going to happen. In the mean time I’ll keep working to improve my runway fashion photography and continue to have fun doing it.

At least they are using a nice raised runway with a decent reflective surface to help with the lighting, I shot all of the Thursday shows using only ambient, i.e. no flash.

To see more of the runway fashion shows, click the continue reading link below.