PShizzy: The Blog

After some Friday night hs football action, I had to gear up again for Saturday night, as the #15 ranked Arizona State Sun Devils faced off against the unranked Stanford Cardinals. Stanford, if you recall, ended USC’s 35 home game winning streak last year in one of many upsets last year. Stanford came into town hoping they could revive some of that magic.

Arizona, led by Rudy Carpenter, led the whole way, only letting up slightly when the Cardinals cut the lead to 27-17 before the Sun Devils put up another two touchdowns. Thankfully, despite the score, the game was much more competitive than ASU’s home opener against NAU.

While it’s the same game, there are many differences (besides skill level) between the hs and college games. Yes, if you’ve shoot football, you understand the game, but at the college level, football is an event. So, what are these differences?

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Tags: photography // 3 Comments »

So I get a call from an old friend and she asks if I wanted to go cover a HS Football game. I was amped. I haven’t covered hs football in a long time, and while football is football, each level of skill has their own challenges. With the NFL, even the worst coach teams can run off a play with military precision. Broken plays just don’t happen that frequently. In college, if you’re lucky enough to shoot a D1 school (such as ASU), then you’ll have an assortment of talent, and while play’s may get broken, the players are often talented enough to make the best of it.

At the HS level, sometimes having enough players is good enough. And thus enters Boulder Creek at St Mary’s. Boulder Creek in only it’s second full varsity year put up a good fight, led by All Region quarterback Taylor Davis. Inexperience in their receiving core kept Boulder Creek on the ground, with Davis running for dear life and the ocassional first down, against St Mary’s. Boulder Creek’s defense held their ground, only giving up a touchdown through the first half to keep the score close at 7-0, but St Mary’s opened the second half with a kick return TD. Eventually, a 32 minute (of 48 total) time of posession by St Mary’s caught up with the Boulder Creek defense. Final score: 27-7.

So, how do I prepare for a hs football game? a few thoughts, and a gallery, after the jump. (more…)

Tags: general, photography // 5 Comments »

So there you are, in the middle of or after a shoot. You have a small pause in your day, and you decide to start downloading your files. If you’re like me, you let the card download while you go get a snack or attend to something else. You wait for that familiar “ding” sound. Except this time, your download starts off with the “error” sound. It doesn’t kick in just yet. You figure it’s a forgotten setting or you had a hidden window asking you if were you sure you wanted to do what you just tried to do. So you set it up again. Ready to leave the computer to it’s chore, you get the error sound again. It’s starting to kick in: You may have just encountered your first (and unfortunately not last) corrupt card.

You panic, of course. It’s an important shoot. It’s a memorable family gathering. It’s an image of you with Charles Barkley. Whatever it is, it’s lost. You think it’s unfair. You always backup (you do, right?), having two or more copies of a file, offsite (so both copies don’t burn down in a fire or short out in a flood), perhaps online (so that you always have access to it), and in different mediums (DVD so you can’t overwrite a file incorrectly). But how can you backup something that’s corrupt before you even get to a computer? Forget that. How can you at least get back a single copy of all your images? Oh God, what’s it going to cost?

We’ve all read about those companies that will recover your files for you. They often have engineers in bunny suits (cleanroom outfits, not the mall kiosk gig). Those bunny suits ain’t cheap, and neither is the service fee for file recovery on any sort of disk.

So how about FREE, and Mac/PC friendly. Link after the jump. (more…)

Tags: general // 3 Comments »

Aside from the silly name, this is going to be a fairly serious post about travel. I am no travel expert, as I only travel a handful of times, so I will link to the real expert on this kind of stuff. I have a video as well, featuring my packing of a Think Tank Airport Security bag, as well as repacking some of that gear into my Lowepro Computrekker AW.

This post will feature a set of Youtube videos (the 10 minute limit means I had to cut the piece into two sections), as well as a Mediafire link to a higher quality download.

On top of that, I’ll go into some detail as to my “philosophy” on packing and travel. I don’t expect that everything I do will be copied, but I hope that the video and this post will at least give you an idea or two to try out on your next trip.

Oh, and one last thing: A turducken is a turkey stuffed with a duck, which itself is stuffed with a chicken. It just seemed fitting for a post title about how my bag is packed. If you want to make one, Paula Dean has a recipe on Food Network. Oh, and if you happen to make one, mind sending me some?

Read on! (more…)

Tags: equipment // 12 Comments »

Luminous Landscape is an interesting site. While it may not be the common fare for a lot of photographers, because of the niche the site caters to, it’s still a great read. I especially like James Russell and his views. In the latest LL, he discusses a commercial shoot for Phase One, the digital back company. Think sensors the size of LCD screens. Think 40 plus uh, make that 60 megapixels. Think 30 plus thousand dollars. Ok ignore that last part, because it’s depressing.

I love how honest James is. He goes into the somewhat gory details of the commercial shoot, including the pros and cons of doing the shoot (I love how he mentions the low profitability). Later he talks about the adventure of getting to the shoot, and how unglamorous it is, which is refreshing. Often we may think of some photographers, especially at the higher end, as making a large sum of money and living it up, jet setting across the world in private jets and Maybach whips.

Not James apparently. He rolls to Paris (ok that IS cool) in a truck with his friend who doesn’t know that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, and drinks coffee that apparently is heated by a small nuclear reactor.

Oh, and he does actually talk about his steps in getting it all done, from start to finish. It also helps that James is a kick ass photographer. So, great read.

He has another article, about the D3 and his use of it for sports. Again, great read.

Two last tidbits: First, I’m sorry I haven’t posted recently. X Games was great, but upon my return, I’ve had to play catch up with the rest of my life. Secondly, the video of me cracking open an Airport Security bag like a camera piñata is on it’s way to me. I plan to post it as a mediafire download and a youtube video. If its treated like the Minitrekker video, I may end up dying in photographic infamy (again).

Tags: business, photography // Add Comment »

12:30 Friday and I’m headed back out soon. The first day of X Games 14 was interesting. First, a fast run to the Home Depot Center, simply to get our credential. This wasn’t news to us, as that happened last year. At least they gave us the coolest USB flash drive, the X Games SkateDrive. I actually needed a new USB drive, so it kinda worked out. So after getting our credential, we had to drive all the way back to downtown LA to the Staples Center.

First up: BMX Freestyle. It was a new venue, the Event Deck, across the street from BMX, but it was also about 4:30pm in direct sun. No dreams about cloudy days offering solace, or at least some beautiful golden hour. I tried a few basic shots, and they came out looking like they were shot in direct sun. But I tried a few different things, and eventually got a few shots I liked.

A basic backlit shot. It’s not new, but the idea is that it doesn’t have that super blaring direct sun look. I adjusted the WB in the camera to 10,000 Kelvin, shot about a billion stops under, and it almost looks sunset-ish. Also, I had to do this shot from the media spot under duress after security told us that no media was allowed in the bleachers, where the fans sit. A fisheye, or a long lens to get a nice clean background woulda been great.

Read on for the link to the gallery, including shots of Skateboard Big Air.

Update on the Airport Security video: It’s been shot and basic edits applied. With X Games underway, and strategizing where to go and what to shoot, it’s been hectic. But it will come out in a few days. (more…)

Tags: photography // 4 Comments »

Anytime I fly, the biggest question I have is: What do I take? Well, here’s a little snippet of what’s to come tomorrow.

Remember the Minitrekker Video? Well that up there is an Airport Security bag, by ThinkTank Photo. And surprisingly, when it’s closed, it doesn’t bulge at all. But if a picture is worth a thousand words, what’s a video worth? (more…)

Tags: equipment // 3 Comments »

It’s almost 2am, but I’ve had a long week, and I’ve got a lot to take care of., so I’m sneaking in a post real quick. Wednesday night we covered the state Little League tournament, specifically Blue Ridge, a team from the White Mountain area of Arizona.  They didn’t fare well against the Tempe Guadalupe team. Thursday night, we saw Blue Ridge fall to the eventual state champions, Mountain View.

We mixed it up Friday, catching a Mercury game, as they squared off against the Seattle Storm.  Diana Taurasi led all players with 31 points and 9 rebounds, and the Mercury defeated the Storm 94-80.  Great way to end the week, but the weekend was just beginning.

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Tags: photography // 1 Comment »