Opening Day at Turf Paradise 6 October 2013

Opening Day Turf Paradise!

There are some sports I enjoy photographing more than others.  Baseball to me is a difficult sport to photograph.  Yes, I’ll try it again in the spring, but it’s always been a struggle.  Hockey?  Yes, as long as I’m close to the action.  Horse racing I’ve done several times and enjoy it.  Turf Paradise in Phoenix is a nice venue.  Plus 6 October was opening day for the race season.  I joined 7,100 other people on this lovely Saturday to watch the ponies! 

 

Pretty Girl in the Stands

Getting close to the track is difficult because the rail is below the track.  I’ve tried but unless you can get on the other side of the rail, forget it.  I found the best place to photograph the race is from the upper deck.  Today I used my Canon 5D Mark III and a Canon “L” 70-200mm lens.  A few of the shots I took with the Tamron 2X extender, giving me a double reach of up to 400mm.  Yes, you lose a few stops of light, but I compensated with an ISO of 400.  Most of the shots were in the 7.1 to 8 aperture (AV on a Canon) setting.  This gave me enough of a fast shutter speed to freeze the action.  All shots were hand held.  I could have brought in a monopod for a bit more stability, but there is so little to no grain with higher ISO’s on cameras, I didn’t really need to.  Forget bringing a tripod, folks.  Security will nab you every time you try it!

I edited nearly all the shots with just Adobe Lightroom 5.  In one particular shot that looks like a painting, I used Photoshop CC with Topaz Simplify.  I typically use that plugin if a shot is a wee bit out of focus or I just want to try something different.  If your shot is blurry because of camera shake, consider using the camera shake filter within Photoshop CC.  It might just help.

Here they come!  Edited with Lightroom and Topaz Simplify.

By the way, if you want to know how I get a Flickr slideshow to appear at the bottom of this blog, here's how:  Upload your photos to Flickr.  Go to the first photo in your set.  Look for three dots in the lower right hand corner of the photo.  Click on it.  Click SHARE.  Look for share slideshow.  Then copy and past the html code you get into your blog posting!  Easy breezy, once you know how.  I had to look it up!

 

Out of the Gates

Happy Shooting,

Jim Patterson

http://JamesGordonPatterson.com

Flash Photography in the Fitness Center

Lisa Cvach asked me recently if I’d do some photographs for publicity for the Paradise Valley Community College Fitness Center.  I was happy to help out.  If the fitness center was a corporate client, I would have charged of course.  I mean, you wouldn’t ask your car repair guy or medical doctor for free services; I get that.  But this is to help out colleagues at my college.  Plus, darn it, it’s work sure, but it’s fun! 

When I walked into the fitness center I noticed Lisa trying to take photos using a small point and shoot camera.  What she said to me was pretty important.  “How do you get the background to blur?”  That’s why I’m glad I took my flash with me. 

My models this day are Fred from the fitness center and Shay.  Now, look at Shay.  The pressure is on me not to make her look bad.  Sorry Fred but Shay is the star of this shoot!

My camera body is the Canon 5D Mark III, using a 24-105mm Canon “L” lens and the new Canon 600ex-rt flash.  Shooting without flash under fluorescent light could be done, but with a much higher ISO and more grain.  I wanted to use flash to highlight the subjects and to darken the background some.  To make sure I had a fairly dark background, I used a shutter speed of 1/125 and faster.  Plus, I used Lightroom 4 in post production and could brush a darker exposure around the background, as you’ll see in many of the examples here and in the slideshow at the bottom of the blog. 

I shot everything in manual mode.  For some shots, I used direct flash and turned down the power; for others, I used modified flash using a simple white card to reflect for softer light. 

For the panorama of the fitness center, I took seven photos vertically set to aperture priority and available light, then combined them in Photoshop CS6, then I applied HDR (high dynamic range) toning to produce the effect you see in the photo at the top of the blog. 

Happy Shooting!

Jim Patterson

http://JamesGordonPatterson.com

…And, here are all the photos from the fitness center shoot!