other stuff » One Fine Picture

Horsing Around

Nov 302010

Shots rang out and a thin veil of blue smoke filled the air — the horseman rounded the turn and another balloon disappeared into shreds. The evening action had begun at the 63rd annual Brecksville Kiwannas horse show.

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This year they featured a contest where riders fired blanks to detonate balloons in a fast-paced circuit.
Although my camera doesn’t shoot that many frames a second, I still had a chance to capture the shots.

First, I tried tracking each horseman by panning during their 30 second trot. This worked well for a couple of images but too often the horse abruptly veered away and I was left with a photo of the back of the riders head. Kind of like shooting the Indy 500 and catching only the fumes.

I decided to do what the pro’s do with their huge bulky telephoto lens at the big ticket sporting events — choose an area of focus and wait patiently for the shot.

Turned the camera to the far set of balloons on the right, zoomed the telephoto, and had better luck this time.

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More soon….

Panning for Patriots

Sep 272010

The crowd fell silent as the four jet fighters moving as one, screamed through the air. They continued to accelerate, approaching the speed of sound while making hairpin twists and turns in a carefully choreographed maneuver above Lake Erie.

Suddenly all the jets bolted dead upright defying gravity in a heart stopping straight vertical climb that lasted several seconds before turning and swooping down toward the earth.

The Blue Angels

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It was official — the Blue Angels were in town.

Photographing anything airborne always presents challenges. How could I capture this through the camera’s small rectangular viewfinder?

There’s the technical challenge of getting a crisp image of a moving subject. This is done with a technique called ‘panning’ or slowly moving th camera from side to side.

Panning is as much a skill as an art.

The skill involves holding the camera close to your body, elbows tucked in to your sides, and smoothly tracking the object while pressing the shutter. The art is predicting where the object travels next — easier done with bicyclists circling a track than jet fighters showing off their latest evasive military exercises.

Panning is really impressive when the subject stays sharp and a soft blur falls over a busy background such as trees or buildings. However, this doesn’t really apply when you have a blue sky and just a few scattered clouds.

The other important piece is to add perspective. Capturing a nearby cloud will let your audience know that these jets are legit — not toy planes launched for a high school science fair. I was lucky and caught this flag in the foreground.

Faster than the Speed of Sound