Saturday Photo Adventures in the Phoenix Area: 23 March 2013

I hit two venues Saturday: Turf Paradise for the camel and ostrich races and later that evening I travelled to Cave Creek for the pro rodeo.  Each presented photographic challenges.

I’ve been to Turf Paradise before, so I knew what to expect.  The challenge here is getting a good angle on the action on the track.  If you stand at track level, you find that you are going to be slightly below the track, so I had to walk way off to the side, down from the finish line, to get some track level photographs.  I used my 24-105mm Canon lens on the Canon 5D Mark III body for those shots.

I then retreated to the highest grandstand for the best angle, primarily using my 70-300mm Canon lens on my Canon 5D Mark III body. 

In post-production, I primarily used Lightroom 4 on all of the shots, as I usually do.  For daylight photographs I mainly used the “shadows” control, which for the most part worked quite well.  Maybe a bit of “clarity” control, too.  And many of the photos I cropped.  I pretty well stayed with ISO 100 or 200 through the whole afternoon since there was plenty of natural light. 

Then it was north to Cave Creek and the pro rodeo there.  The rodeo started at 7pm.  Yes, I’ve been here before but only during the day.  I immediately had an “oh oh” moment:  the lights for the arena were tiny.  Sure enough, lighting was horrible for a photographer.  And very uneven.  Using the same equipment as I had for the Turf Paradise shoot, I had to increase ISO to 3200 and sometimes higher than that.  The Canon 5D is good, but even at higher ISO you will see grain in the photos.  The other problem I had was it was a huge crowd with people constantly going up, down, and across my field of view while I sat in the first row.  I also had a fence in front of me, uggggh! 

I had to throw away the bulk of the photos I took.  They were simply too out of focus and grainy.  I did manage to salvage a few shots.  On one, I imported into TopazLabs “simplify” and made it into a painting.  It was either that or delete it.  Others I boosted using Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro.  Sharpening and de-noise didn’t help much.

I learned a lesson here.  Daylight for action shooting like rodeo.  Sit at the top row, not bottom row.  Even better, ask for a photographers area!

Friday 29 March is my next challenge: photographing the University of Arizona football team’s spring game at Phoenix College.  It is also a night shoot, but at least I will be on the field closer to the action.  Yes, another high ISO challenge. 

That’s it for now. 

Happy Shooting!

Jim Patterson

http://JamesGordonPatterson.com

Here are photos from Turf Paradise:




And photos from the Cave Creek rodeo:

 

Roots and Boots with Aaron Tippin, Sammy Kershaw, and Joe Diffie 16 March 2013

The Chandler Center for the Arts was the setting for a concert featuring country music greats Aaron Tippin, Sammy Kershaw, and Joe Diffie. 

Before the concert, we went to the SanTan Brewing Company, just south of the concert arena.  First off, yes the beer was tasty.  I had the hefeweizen which is a muddy wheat beer.  Many Americans are turned off to the dirty look of the beer, but I find it quite refreshing.  The food was quite good too.  French fries never tasted as good.  This blog is not about the brew pub, but I was very excited to visit this place as I had done a photo essay of brew pubs last summer in Santa Fe and wanted to do one for my home state of Arizona.  The manager gave me a road map to the so-called Arizona Ale Trail, which will be quite helpful to me this coming summer.  If you are in the Chandler area, I strong suggest you visit!

Now back to the concert. 

This venue presented some obvious lighting challenges.  Most of these concerts won’t let a photographer take in “professional” cameras, so I took my pocket Canon S100 with me.  I have a lot of control over aperture, ISO, and shutter speed.  I also can shoot in raw with this camera.  Still, you are going to see some areas that are overexposed and some under exposed.  It’s pretty hard to rescue that with Photoshop CS6 or any of the plugins I use such as Nik, OnOne, and Topaz. 

I edited all photos at first in Lightroom 4.  Sometimes all I needed to do was crop and touch on clarity.  Other times I used Silver Efex Pro from Nik to convert to black and white or OnOne’s Perfect black and white on the final goodbye shot of the three country crooners. 

Next photo adventure up for me is the Cave Creek Rodeo!  Look for a new blog post soon.

And remember, Just Shut Up and Shoot!

Jim Patterson

http://JamesGordonPatterson.com

Click HERE to see all the photos from the Roots and Boots concert 

Photographing Jai-Cea

Photoflex “The Power of Light” sponsored a model shoot in Gilbert, Arizona on 2 March 2013.  John Beckett was the photographer-host.  John is a commercial photographer based in Phoenix, Arizona.

Since this was sponsored by Photoflex, we used Photoflex strobes and softboxes.  I will say for the record right now I am more comfortable with Canon Speedlites because of their portability.  My speedlite of choice is the Canon 600ex-rt, which is controlled by radio frequency.  But it is good to get some familiarity with large AC or battery powered studio strobes. 

Our main model was Jai-Cea.  She’s obviously very beautiful and very tall at 5’ 11”

My camera is the Canon 5D Mark III and the Canon 28-105mm lens. 

I edited photos primarily with Lightroom 4, but also black and white enhanced one shot using Nik’s Silver Efex Pro and a few others with OnOne’s Perfect Photo Suite 7.1’s Perfect Portrait, through Photoshop CS6.  And, a playful shot I enhanced with HDR toning from within Photoshop.  I guess you could call me a plug-in junky, since I own OnOne’s Perfect Photo Suite 7.1, Nik’s Ultimate Collection, and Topaz Bundle.  Take a look and if you are interested, remember if you are a student or educator you are likely to get a nice discount!  ALWAYS ASK!

My personal style is called “photo journalistic” or catching people at ease, not posed.  However, sometimes you have to pose a model!  I had Jai-Cea just goof around a bit and then had her go into “model mode” and give me some poses. 

That’s it for now,

Have fun and keep shooting!

Jim Patterson

http://JamesGordonPatterson.com

Enjoy the Flickr slideshow of all of my photos on the shoot below!

Tucson Visits from Late '12 and Early '13

I visited Tucson, my old stomping grounds (University of Arizona graduate and longtime resident), two times; once at the end of the year and the second time in the new year.  In November, Professor David Rubi and I took a group of Paradise Valley Community College students to the Tucson area for Mexican food and culture.  In early January, I went to Tucson by invitation of the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum to visit the Warren Aquarium. 

At Presidio of Tucson

Our first stop in Tucson was the downtown area and the Presidio of Tucson.  They were filming while we were there so there are a few photos of a lady dressed as a Presidio resident would be dressed in the 18^th century. 

Mural at La Pilita

We had lunch at El Minuto in Tucson's Barrio Historico neighborhood.  Just south of El Minuto is the shrine to a murdered sinner, El Tiradito.  And next to that is a little museum of early Tucson history called La Pilita.  On the south wall, there is a beautiful mural.    These three stops, right next to each other, are musts if you want a flavor for early Tucson history. 

San Xavier Del Bac, The White Dove of the Desert

We also visited Tumacacori Mission south of Tucson and on the way back to town, we stopped at San Xavier del Bac, the White Dove of the Desert,  still an active Catholic church.  A huge part of the story is the painstaking restoration work that went on that saved this history church. 

Fish Friend from the Warden Aquarium

A month later, we re-visited Tucson, this time to go to the new Warden Aquarium, part of the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum located west of Tucson in the Tucson Mountains and attend a University of Arizona basketball game.  Cats won in overtime 92 to 83, whew!

Senior Kevin Parrom #3 Shoots and Scores!

You can view a slideshow of all of my photos from the late 2012 visits below.

Happy Shooting,

Jim Patterson

http://JamesGordonPatterson.com

Cave Creek Balloon Festival 2013

I spent the late afternoon and evening of Saturday 12 January at Rancho Manana golf course in beautiful Cave Creek, Arizona.  The reason was the Fourth Annual Balloon Festival.  The good news is the wind was still to about 5 mph.  The bad news is it was CCCCOLD!!!  One of the coldest weekends I can remember in the Phoenix area as it dipped well below freezing.   There was still a fairly large crowd enjoying the festivities.  One thing I noticed was how hard it is to control a camera wearing gloves.  By the way, this was the last event I’m shooting with the Canon 7D and Tamron 18-270mm lens.  I traded them in for the Canon 5D and a few “L” class lenses and I should have them by Wednesday.  My next photography event will be a Phoenix Coyotes hockey game with my new gear!

Officials said the balloons would light around 6pm, so before then the band Remedy performed and I had a chance to get close and take some photos.  You can learn more about Remedy by going to their Facebook page here.  Nice folks and quite happy to have photos taken.  So it was nice to enjoy a gourmet dinner put on by the Tonto Bar and Grill in Cave Creek while Remedy entertained. 

Sure enough, by 6 pm they started to inflate the balloons. 

Enjoy all of my photos of the balloon festival below.

Keep shooting and stay warm! 

Jim Patterson

http://JamesGordonPatterson.com