Earlier today I covered the home opener of the Phoenix Mercury against the LA Sparks. This would be only my 2nd WNBA game (my first being last week, a preseason game). While I have experience with the NBA, I knew that it would be different.
Covering a new event can be a daunting task. It’s something we all face, especially early on in our careers. In this post, I’ll speak about my experience with shooting something new, and what I did to prepare myself. [Read more →]
Before we begin, I explicitly asked permission to post the following message. I will not disclose the identity of the person asking the question, unless they ask me to. I plan to make this a series on my blog, where I offer my honest opinion and insight on a photography related question posed to me. Remember though, these are just opinions, not hard rules. Feel free to email me or contact me privately, and I’d be glad to answer your questions in a future post.
Without further ado:
Hi Max,
I see your work often and it’s spectacular. I shoot lots of soccer and lacrosse and have limited experience with basketball.
I’d greatly appreciate some advice from you.
My son is playing on an AAU Basketball team and the coaches want me to shoot games this weekend. I’ve done a few tourneys with my 1D Mark IIN using F/2.8L 70-200. I don’t travel with strobes and don’t see it practical at the U-15 level, especially if I’m not intending to sell images to families.
That said, are there any circumstances where you shoot any basketball games w/o strobes in dingy lit basketball gyms?
The noise is killing me. I do use CS3 and it helps, but still want less noise. [Read more →]
This is an oldie but a goodie. It requires no plugins, just Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw. I’ve edited it to work better in the form of a blog. For now it will be a simple how to in the post, but if it’s popular, I may make a video of it. Here it is:
I’ve received quite a few comments on my black and white conversion, and I finally decided it would be best to post my own personal workflow on the process. My method by no means tries to be scientific nor accurate, only pleasing to my own eyes. I did not invent anything here, I picked up some info from various books and over time, found the following method to give me the most pleasing results. Hopefully you will find some use in the following. [Read more →]
You tell me. This blog’s direction should be led by the people who visit the site. Actions are great, but there’s more to the site than that. I will dive into other stuff shortly, but rather than post something of my choice, I leave it to you to tell me what you’d like to see.
Leave a comment, and if you see someone’s comment and agree, then say so. If I see 10 comments on the same subject, I’ll know that’s a great idea. But just in case you’re not sure what to consider, I’ve created a list of ideas I already have in mind. [Read more →]
Gelling your light sources for color accuracy (matching your flash to that tungsten light bulb in the room) or effect (giving a background a slight touch of blue, for example) can be the difference between a good photo and a great photo. In fact, Strobist already has two of their four articles on just this subject (here and here).
They cover using gels in order to match light sources that are too warm, like tungsten, or just plain hideous, such as fluorescent. They mention all sorts of gels, like CTO (color temperature orange) and minus green, but they don’t mention the cost of those gels. Wouldn’t it be nice to get them for cheap? How about a penny?