Saturday, January 15, 2011

Shooting BJJ and sports in general...

I had the privledge of working with Simi Valley Jiu Jitsu, a part of Watts MMA and Fitness.  I shot their kids BJJ class, a little bit of their muay Thai class and their older kids BJJ.  I also had the chance to use video on the D5000...Not bad...Not bad at all...

Anyways, the shoot I found to be challenging because I didn't have the use of any flash or additional light.  I had a ton of fluorescent lights.  To be able to have a decent shutter speed, I had to crank the ISO to the highest setting.  I tried to use the fastest shutter speed I could considering I was shooting a lot of intricate movement.  Also, the amount of background activity led to a lot of creative cropping.  Multiple classes going on at once, parents looming in the background and me not having a bigger telephoto zoom lens, it was a great learning experience for shooting similar events. 

I think a lot of the shots came out okay, but I think they only came out okay with heavy use of Lightroom. Ehhh...I shouldn't say "heavy"...Some shots barely needed to be touched, but I'd always find something wrong.  I would get great shots technically, but then wouldn't use the picture because I didn't get something usable.  Or I would get shots that were only great after the editing. 

I went to Hooper Camera to look up lighting rigs for the portrait studio and then hot shoe flashes for the camera.  Not a bad place, but just a bit out of my price point at the moment...A few more gigs will hopefully get me a better zoom lens, then a better hot shoe flash.

I'm getting a lot of mentoring from a couple friends that are already shooting professionally.  I just want to take some time to say "Thanks"...

On to the next one!






Saturday, January 8, 2011

Messing with the dogs and the family

While trying to push the borders of the new D5000 and it's kit lens, I think I got some good shots in...Nothing spectacular, just a lot of fun. 

Gonna need to find a soft flash STAT!

  
Mom in law and her mom   







I love being able to turn the flash off
See what I mean about that flash?

The quiet mode on the D5000 is perfect for these shots.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

New camera gets a spin.

The wife sprung for a Nikon D5000 for Christmas. 


I decided to take it for a spin at a New Year's Eve party with my family.  I often found it hard not to pose people after they decided to become "unnatural" once they realized that a camera was pointed at them.  I think that I will have to resort to sneaky paparazzi/ninja tactics with super zoom lenses on quiet mode to really capture people in their candid elements. 

I did have an issue with the NEF format not being able to be utilized with most printshop sites, but then again, it shouldn't make too much of a difference.  Pictage and Zenfolio seem like such nice sites, but can I really trust them to make great prints off of JPEGS?  I guess I have to just switch to huge, fine JPEGs with Pictage and convert to TIFF for Zenfolio if I make the switch. 

Here's a few of the family...


Isabella



Liam

Tin

Dylan

Video games didn't skip a generation in this family...
Love that smile!


 

I can't tell you how many cameras were present...
 

Should probably get some sleep



Dancing gets tiring


Classic...
Of the 300+ pictures I took in the span of 2 hours, I can already see where my rig will have to expand...

On to the next one!