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“Stand in front of better stuff”

Growing up I remember the stacks of yellow-bordered National Geographic magazines my parents kept around the house. Those of us of a certain age remember how the magazines opened our eyes and minds to the rest of the world through great photography. I assume the stories were also good but I just looked at the photos. Seldom were the magazines thrown away – the stacks just kept getting taller through the years.

And while the magazines are still outstanding, the National Geographic website may be even better because of all the information it offers readers. I highly recommend the photo section. Be sure to read Jim Richardson’s postings, “Notes and Tips from the Field.”

One of my favorite lines from his writings comes this nugget: “If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of better stuff.”

–Gordon King

Driving the Mark IV

The Herald-Republic recently purchased three Canon 1D Mark IV cameras and after a week of road-testing these top-of-the-line Canons we’ve got a few initial impressions.

A Canon 1D Mark IV (with logos covered by gaffer's tape, of course)

First, the functions of this camera are mind-boggling. You can configure the camera to operate in just about any way that suits your shooting style.
But all these custom functions can be a bit bewildering as we found the instruction manual to be less than clearly written for some of the functions (changing the back-button focus and disabling the focusing on the main shutter release was particularly challenging).
I’d recommend going to Canon’s video tutorials for clear, concise explanations of all the camera’s functions and options. These tutorials do what the instruction manual doesn’t.

The autofocus is blazing fast. I got more in-focus frames of an indoor football game than I would have gotten with my Canon 1D Mark II.

Yakima Valley Warriors v. Ogden Knights;

Yakima Valley's Rokiem Rowland intercepts a pass late in the first quarter as Yakima Valley leads Ogden 13-0.

Also, the low-light capabilities of the camera are amazing (especially for a person whose first digital camera was a Kodak/Canon DCS520). This football photo was shot at ASA 6400.

The autofocus was the subject of some discussions just after the Mark IV hit the market with some commenters bemoaning that the autofocus on the Mark IV was no better than the autofocus on the Mark III (which had numerous problems).

The autofocus has worked well for me and I suspect some of those folks experiencing focus problems might not have taken the time to properly configure the autofocus. There are numerous autofocus options and each user should take the time to work through them all to ensure the best option is chosen.

Though some of the control buttons are different the layout is essentially the same as the Mark II so once you get the camera set up it’s easy to use if you’ve been shooting with the Mark II or an even earlier model such as the ID.

I’ve not had the chance to shoot any video with the camera but staff photographer Sara Gettys has shot some video and offers this perspective on the combination video and still camera.

–Gordon King

“One of the things I love about our new video capabilities is, simply, the ability to carry less gear. Being able to be flexible and responsive to a situation is one of the things I like about being a still photographer. With my two cameras and a hip bag, I can hike, climb, run, ride, and move around easily in many situations. When I had to carry around another entire set of gear to do video with, I felt it limited me to what I could do. It’s hard to be response or move through a crowd or hike up a hill while carrying two camera bodies, a hip pack, a large tripod, and a video camera bag that’s measures 3 feet by 1 foot by 2 feet. It meant that changing position, to shoot a still or video clip, meant moving a lot of equipment and often not being able to get myself and all my gear into the ideal shooting situation. No hiking up long trails, no climbing on a ladder for a different angle. Now I can move like I do as a still shooter and that freedom has helped me make videos of situations that would have been physically difficult, if not impossible with our other equipment. I imagine the photographers who switched from speed graphics to 35mm cameras!”

–Sara Gettys

Picture (im)Perfect Plastic

When I was given the chance to do a story about a tour of the Hanford site, I wanted to try something a little different, something to evoke the history and grand scale of the site. Hanford was built in WWII, before computers to the multitude of exact calculations needed to both build and safely run the world’s first nuclear reactor. I thought it was fitting to step away from the digital cameras we use everyday on our assignments and try something a little less technologically advanced.

Okay, a lot less technologically advanced. The Holga is a plastic toy camera with minimal controls. The shutter is a simple wire spring and the film moves from one reel to the next and can’t be rewound without using a dark bag. Exposure and focus are mainly left up to guesswork. I’ve used it for one other story at the YHR, shooting dreamy images of the state fair in 2007, and explain what it brought to that process here.

For this shoot, I decided to shoot 35 mm film. Both because I’d never tried it before and because it’s easier to process. I could just take it to a photo lab. Because the Holga is designed to shoot 120mm film, I had to modify the film holders a bit, using the high-tech method of stuffing packing peanuts around the reel of film and jiggling it to make sure it will stay in place. I adjusted the 120 film reel with some rubber bands.

I did a little bit of research and found out that 1.5 rotations of the film winding knob will give plenty of space between exposures, and (after ruining a test roll), covered the red window on the back (used to wind 120 film) with a couple pieces of cardboard and lots of black tape. Then I just packed a dark bag and several rolls of film and set off to shoot.

One of the limitations of shooting with this was the limitations of exposure. 400 ISO film is great for daylight, but didn’t give me much indoors. I found myself wishing I had toted along my tripod to shoot the face of the reactor, which I could have “built up” an exposure by exposing the film over and over and over without winding the film or moving the camera. I also could have used a flash on some of the smaller spaces I shot inside and that would have helped the contrast of the image.

Lastly, I converted the digital files from the flatbed scan to black and white. I did this for two reasons — it seemed to fit the historic flavor I was trying to convey with the story and also the color bars on the bottom of the film, above and below the sprocket holes were too visually distracting. Converted to black and white, I felt they contributed to the image, but in color, they just dominated the image.

This was a fun way to tackle this story and a simple way to have some photographic fun. If you’re interested in giving it a try here are the resources I used:

I bought my Holga at Freestyle Photographic Supplies, the simplest version of the camera cost about $28.

You can buy film and get it developed at many local shops if you shoot regular color (not slide, not b&w) film.

I had the negatives scanned at ProPhoto supply. I just mailed them in a stiff cardboard mailer and paid over the phone. They scanned them and sent them back in about a week. Their price list is on their website.

There are also tons of Holga galleries out there and work on Flicker as well, so you can always find inspiration!

Playing the numbers game

OK – so you’ve made a good – or even great- sports photograph. It’s got all the elements – good composition, great emotion, interesting lighting, etc. But what if you can’t identify the players in the photo?

It’s a problem we often have when shooting high school sports. Cross country runners don’t wear numbers during meets (except in the bigger meets) Ditto for high school track athletes. This time of year our biggest problem is high school soccer. Many of the teams we cover don’t have numbers on the fronts of their jerseys.

I shot this photo at a recent soccer match.

West Valley High School's Forrrest Chapin, left and Sunnyside High School's Alfredo Gomez battle for the ball in the second half of their game May 15, 2010. West Valley won 2-0.

No numbers. How to identify the players?

One solution is to shoot the backs of the players, where there are numbers.

West Valley High School beats Sunnyside High School 2-0 in the regional soccer championship May 15, 2010.

Sometimes, though, the players don’t turn around soon enough for us to photograph the backs of their jerseys.

Then, we must look for other identifying marks on players. In the first photo above, the player in red has white athletic on his left hand. We can look for that tape in another frame, hopefully a frame in which we can see the jersey number of the player.

Shoes are also good way of identifying individuals since most players wear different shoes with different markings.

If all else fails, we can take a copy of the photo to a coach or other player later in the day (or e-mail it to them) to get help identifying players. But the photo has to be really, really good to merit this amount of effort and often there’s not time to do this.

Trying to sort out players’ identities can be time consuming and frustrating (especially with a looming deadline) but it’s part of the job. We sometimes joke about each of us on the photo staff chipping in money to buy numbers for the fronts of jerseys.

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Playing the numbers game

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