Studio Portraits
As I blogged about last spring, I want to create unique portrait experiences for athletes that move away from the ordinary sports portrait that so many young athletes get.
I’m also now working on the studio experience – as the field of play is not always available, it makes sense to also provide a studio experience that has a twist versus the conventional sports portraits. I’m trying to do away with the well used looks and develop new ideas.
This is my son Aidan, who plays U6 Soccer at Atlanta Soccer Academy this fall.
Personal Project Subjects Needed
While I’m investing a lot of time this fall on Football, I am always working to expand my skill set and find new photographic subjects.
The personal project I’m currently planning is a series of Editorial (Magazine) style portraits. Subjects needed include:
- A beach volleyball player capable of getting above the net
- An indoor volleyball athlete capable of getting above the net
- A high level Double Dutch team or group
- Soccer player who can perform a bicycle kick
- A high school level (9th grade/JV/Varsity) quarterback
- A wakeboarder who can get air and can perform various tricks
- A boxer or mixed martial arts fighter
Subjects will receive copies of the images and prints.
Please contact me if you meet any of the categories above. All photo shoots would start in the Atlanta metro area.
USA Volleyball – Off the Floor
As the USA Volleyball event was so large – four hundred participating teams over the two weeks it ran – I felt it was important to get off the floor where the games were played and photograph some of the down time for the teams.
Some time was spent practicing skills in the hallways above the Exhibition Hall. This is the one area of the Georgia World Congress Center with good natural light.
Championship Hair
It seemed to be popular to show your team spirit through your hair. Or at least I assume that was the reason behind it!
USA Volleyball Boys’ Junior Olympic Championships
The July 4th weekend was the middle of the Boys’ Junior Olympic Championships at the Georgia World Congress Center. The event had nearly four hundred teams from across the United States (with many teams from Hawaii and Puerto Rico as well).
Indoor Volleyball is always a difficult sport to photograph well. There are a number of challenges, starting with the dim lighting typical in most gyms. The Georgia World Congress Center is no better than these conditions, as it is more built for conventions and trade shows than athletic competition.
Variety of shot was one of my goals for this event. This meant changing viewpoints a lot.
A Tale of Two Athletes – Part II
On the other end of the field, Senior Chris Thomas has been an impact player for his full career in a Spartans uniform. He will be playing at Elon next year as a result.
A Tale of Two Athletes – Part I
May 9th marked the third Boys Soccer State Championship match I had photographed Greater Atlanta Christian playing in. The result this time around was a victory for the Spartans.
It seemed a lot of the action and storylines of the game revolved around a pair of the Spartan Seniors, which I’ll profile in a pair of posts. The first was Senior Keeper John Max Bolling.
Westminster took an early 1-0 lead and the early part of the game was played with the Spartans in a defensive position against the attacking Westminster squad. With the action taking place on the defensive end, I worked several positions to help cover the game.
From the opposite end of the field, I had the opportunity to capture a goal kick and the defensive strategy employed to defend against Westminster. I kept my focus primarily on Boling as the offense and defense revolved around the goal.
Boys Soccer Takes a Win
The Spartans Boys Soccer team fared better against AAA St. Pius, taking home a victory.
Girls Soccer at St. Pius X
I’ve photographed a number of football games at Atlanta’s St. Pius X High School over the past three years, but this was the first time I was there for soccer. They have a great Sprint Turf articifical surface, which means no rain outs (or cancellations after rain).
This was an out of classification match up for the Spartans – St. Pius X plays in Georgia’s AAA classification and GAC in the AA. It meant the Spartans were a little overmatched and ended up losing 5-2.
During warmups I laid down behind the net on the turf and shot through the net, and the goalkeeper’s feet as players took shots on goal.
Back to School – Basketball at Lovett
Last Friday I returned to the playing field, so to speak, with my first engagement for Martin Photography for the Winter season as three Greater Atlanta Christian School teams met with the Lovett School at Lovett’s Atlanta campus.
I actually photographed three different games in two different gymnasiums last Friday – first the Girls Varsity match in the main Gymnasium, followed by the 9th Grade and JV Boys games in the lower school gymnasium. As I needed to be mobile, I kept to on-camera lighting. However, I used my Bogen Manfrotto 233B Flash bracket on my main camera body to get my flash high off of the camera to reduce the occurence of red eye and help make the light a little more natural.
As with Football, the flash is used to create the “Stop Action” needed for a crisp photograph. 1/4 Power on the Canon 550EX was all that was needed to give enough light at the closer ranges that basketball is photographed at. It allowed for use of ISO400 and a more narrow aperture (f4 to f5.6, depending on proximity to play) to allow more depth of field using the 70-200 zoom.
Moon Over Football
I don’t consider myself a celestial photographer – but during the fall I spent almost every Friday night under the stars (or rain clouds) and the moon.
I tried to grab a frame of the moon each week when possible. This was my best result – a quarter moon that generated a lot of visible texture. I found the quarter moon gave the right amount and direction of light – much like a backlight in a studio situation, it helped highlight texture.
High Flying Volleyball
The most exciting element of volleyball is the play at and above the net. When photographing Saturday’s matches between Greater Atlanta Christian and Henry County, and later Marietta’s the Walker School, my goal was to get tight isolation on the play at the net.
Saturday’s matches were all at Holy Innocents Episcopal School in Dunwoody. The gym has average lighting when photographing from from floor level, but when shooting down on the participants you almost double your light. As the faces are looking up and facing the lights directly, you no longer have a shadow falling on the face. This lets you increase your shutter speed and get better stop action.
When shooting volleyball, I use a combination of lenses – usually the 70-200 and 300/2.8. I spend a lot of time following individual players and waiting for the rhythm of the game to bring the ball their way. When it does, I’ll shoot a two or three shot burst to get the full range of action and capture a great face waiting for the ball.
Change of Plans: Rainy Night at Lovett
Friday’s AA match-up of Greater Atlanta Christian at Atlanta’s Lovett School had a lot of dimensions. The two squads were both hoping to improve their chances of making the playoffs with a victory. With region 6-AA receiving four playoff slots, undefeated Buford is in the driver’s seats, trailed by Blessed Trinity (one loss), GAC (one loss in region play entering this week) and Lovett (two losses entering this week).
The weather proved to be a big part of the game, at least from my point of view. A rainy Friday hit Atlanta with more than an inch of rain, leaving the field very wet and with light rain still falling at game time. The rain was almost fog light and created some refractions when coupled with flash.
So plans changed: I decided to use Lovett’s lights (slightly better than average in quality) to light tonight’s game rather than my usual flash setup. I protected my primary body (with the 300/f2.8 mounted) with Lightware’s Rain Cover. It’s a basic cape of heavy duty water resistant nylon and does a good job of keeping things dry.
I swapped out my normal 70-200/2.8 on the second body for a 50mm/1.8 lens to give some additional light for a higher shutter speed with the natural light. The wider field of view helped on the Spartans first scoring run.
Firing on All Cylinders – GAC Defeats Avondale
It looks like the Spartans have managed to turn around their early season difficulties with another win, this time against DeKalb County’s Avondale High School. At the same time, I felt like I was starting to hit a rhythm with camera and flash coming together to pick up the action in another Spartans’ win.
I’ll have a more in-depth look at flash in high school football next week after the match-up against Atlanta’s Lovett School.
Decatur’s New Home and Light Quality Versus Quantity
Friday night Greater Atlanta Christian School traveled to Decatur High School in downtown Decatur for another Region 6-AA match up. It was also Greater Atlanta Christian’s first visit to Decatur’s new stadium.
Last fall, GAC was the last opponent at a Decatur home date and closed out the stadium. Since then, Decatur demolished and rebuilt their football stadium in great fashion.
The field surface is a new Sprinturf playing surface, which has become a popular option in drought-prone metro Atlanta. Gone are the uneven surface and thinning grass – replaced with a well-cushioned durable surface. The field now has seating on both sides, a video scoreboard, and the best lights I’ve seen in three years of high school football beat coverage.
One of the big controversies (if you can call it that) in high school football photography is how to get the best photographs in the low light of most stadiums. Most photographers usually say, “If I could use a higher ISO with good quality then I would.” However, in most situations in high school football even a higher ISO (film speed equivalent) will not solve the problems of the lights.
Baylor Catches GAC From Behind
Greater Atlanta Christian School hosted Chattanooga’s The Baylor School. Unfortunately for the Spartans, the long distance traveled by Baylor to Norcross did not tilt the game in their favor.
Despite starting off with a scoring drive on the first possession, Baylor ultimately caught GAC 44-22.
Greater Atlanta Christian’s strongest play came on their first possession. The Spartans drove the ball to the goal line, and then Colton Chapple tried (unsuccessfully) to dive in and then Blake Southerland capped the drive with a powerful push into the end zone.
Thursday Night Underclass Football
I love the opportunities that JV and 9th Grade Freshman Football provide.
The games always start (and usually finish) in daylight, and more specifically, go through the golden hour of the day. I get the benefit of higher shutter speeds and shooting natural light. Sometimes, like last Thursday at St. Pius X in Atlanta, you get the additional benefit of back to back games.
Natural light means no flash – and I can take full advantage of the 30D’s five frame per second bursts.
USA Volleyball Open National Championships
The week of May 24-June 1 USA Volleyball held their Open National Championships in Atlanta at the Georgia World Congress Center. The event, as its name implies, has a wide range of ages and athlete skills. Every age from college to 75+ was represented at the event.
The Georgia World Congress Center typically isn’t a sports venue. It’s a large convention center in downtown Atlanta. For this event, they set up thirty-five regulation sized volleyball courts on the convention floor. Most do not have any seating except for a row of folding chairs, and the lighting available is the same lighting used at your average trade show.
Volleyball is a fast moving sport at the higher levels, and needs a good shutter speed to stop the action. With so many games set up and operating at the same time, you also need to block out as much of the background as possible, so I selected Canon’s 200/f1.8 telephoto lens as my primary tool.
Rain Again
Week three of the football season brought another rainy night my way. My Thursday assignment was coverage of the 9th grade and junior varsity teams’ doubleheader against St. Pius X. However, strong thunderstorms rolled through the Atlanta area at game time and the 9th grade game was canceled.
Normally these games start at four or five in the afternoon when light is plentiful. After the storms moved through, clouds remained and light was fairly scarce.
One plus from these shooting situations is the lack of hard shadows.
A two shot sequence of GAC’s touchdown near game’s end:
