Saturday, May 20, 2006

Off for 3 weeks...

I will be out of the country for the next 3 weeks. And to make you drool more... I will be in Peru, including Machu Picchu.
I shot two high school graduations this morning in Ocala. One started at 8 am and the other at 8:30 am. Way too early! Both made me remember my high school graduation, which shockingly was only 3 years ago. Any way, those photos should run tomorrow and I don't know if I'll have a chance to post them before I leave since I leave Gainesville at 8:30 am to drive down to Miami with the group.
So in short, sorry nothing new will occur until June 11th or so, but it's vacation time! Camera packed and ready to go!!

Monday, May 15, 2006

Symphony Under the Stars




And one final stand-alone package for the weekend...
This was a nice end to the weekend. If only I didn't have to drive an hour each way. Driving home at 10:30 pm is not what your friends expect when you call them to chat during the drive.

Mother's Day


Okay I really need to work on portraits using my one little Canon 550 flash. For this one I had the flash off to left to fill the shadows. I tried something out in the sun and tried to underexpose my backgound and just bring in the flash on the subjects but either my flash isn't powerful enough or I was doing something wrong. I thought I knew how to power-up my flash but I guess I should re-read the book.
I'm sure I'll have plenty more chances to mess this up again, or actually fix it.

Children's Health Fair

Another stand alone package this weekend.
The Children's Health Fair, which had some scary clowns. (And of course photos of them didn't run.) At the Health Fair the children could receive a free physical, decorate cookies and ride a bike outside under the watchful eye of the Ocala Police to ensure they were riding correctly. Here we go:


Flag Football

Forest High School played in the championship flag football game on Saturday. Knowing there was to be no legal tackling allowed I wondered how exciting this would be for a photo package, to my delight both girls teams were fierce! They both wanted that championship title and thus about 1 and a half hours late, the game started. The game was tight and at halftime neither team had scored. By the end of the game however, Forest High had 12 points and North Marion High had none.
Needless to say all 40-50 girls on the Forest High team were excited. They were screaming and hugging and hamming it up for the camera, which of course you don't want too much of since as a photojournalist you want to be invisible. So it was a challenge as I was the only photographer and every single girl knew where I was at all times. Grr.
So here's what ran. (Again, not my favs.)


Monday, May 08, 2006

Last two weeks...

So the past two weekends have been nice and hot as summer in Florida has jump started early. Last week not many photos made it online from the weekend work for some odd reason. As a stringer I can't really complain, but it makes it hard when I tell people I photograph from out of town to check the Web site to see their photos.
Two weekends ago I photographed arbor day, a steel drum concert, the Thoroughbred football game and a golf championship.


Here are the links to the articles that made it online: FOOTBALL
ARBOR DAY
This past weekend I photographed, the Belleview libary book sale, the Belleview Founder's Day Festival, including the Miss Belleview Pageant, the championship Ocala Thoroughbreds football game against Miami and an African American Art Festival that no lie there was probably only 30 people at. The African Art festival tested my ability to turn not much into a little photo package.


And after an hour and a half I walked away with 4 photos to for the paper and happily all ran today.
AFRICAN ART FESTIVAL
I also got to test out my new camera waist bag and found my 70-200mm IS doesn't fit very well. I decided not to pack it and instead packed 16-35mm and 70-210mm (F3.5-4.5). I learned I should have packed the flash for some fill. I had the mid-range zoom (28-105mm) on my 30D for most of the time as well.
The people looking over the dress here and the little girl dancer were both from this package.

The Belleview festival was really fun and this father and little girl were part of the 6 photos that ran yesterday. The pageant was the best part of the day and I even photographed behind the scenes as the girls got ready but of course the paper only wanted the winner freshly crowned and smiling. I'm hoping for some of the behind the scenes shots to make it in the Belleview special section on Thursday. The little girl laughing at the goat down below is also from the festival. BELLEVIEW FOUNDER'S DAY FEST

The book sale on Saturday was small and cramped as usual. It was hard to maneuver in the building but I found some children hiding out below a shelf pretty bored and waiting for their parents to finish shopping. Their mother walked away with 9 bags of books full of romance novels.

The football game Saturday night was a slow starter but ended up being exciting right as the timer ran out. The game was tied 21-21 and went into overtime. Because of the deadline they didn't want me to stay for the remainder of the game and I left as overtime began. The Ocala Thoroughbreds ended up winning and I feel like in the past three night football games I have become much more comfortable shooting it with flash. It's not easy as my flash doesn't recycle too fast, but I think I've figured out timing much better than I use to. I dont know if any of the football photos are portfolio material but atleast I'm more comfortable on the sideline.
THOROUGHBREDS WIN CHAMPIONSHIP GAME

Sorry about the out of orderness to these photos, I tried once to organize everything nicely and then accidently closed out the window, needless to say I became fustrated and gave up giving it a second go. I'm still working on my HTML skills... :)

Peru is creaping closer and in two weeks I'll be off. I'm planning to capture some audio while there too for a multi-media project on the actual trip. We will be visiting orphanages, schools and perhaps hospitals while in Peru in various cities. We are also doing the tourist thing and making a side trip to Machu Piccu. I'll type some more about the trip as it gets closer.