Soccer Action

I dropped in on a Gaston Day School soccer match versus St. Anne's from Rock Hill on Tuesday. This is a gorgeous setting for a soccer match. The field is dropped in a pretty scenic location. The only bad view happens to be the one from where I was shooting most of my pictures. With the setting sun behind my back, I was forced to shoot mostly into the side of the pitch where there is an annoying white fence and tops of houses in the background. Still this was a fun match to watch. I found it interesting the St. Anne's team had several girls playing on their team against an all-male squad from Gaston Day School. But St. Anne's held their own quite nicely.

Foggy morning

We had a nice bit of fog a few days ago. As I walked to get the paper I snagged four frames of our front yard and stitched them together for a little panoramic. Again, it's nothing extreme. It doesn't even look very panormic-like. But I'll be getting to those soon enough.

Panoramic attempts

This is an old structure near my house that I've been looking at and wondering how to shoot it. I did this using my home-made panorama gadget and Arc Soft's Panorama Maker. It's not a very extreme panoramic--just something to play with and test out the system. This is only four vertical frames stitched together probably approximating about 100 degrees.

Pear trees

This is another location I'm eyeballing for a landscape photo. This is a few miles from my house, just near the South Carolina border. I think these are pear trees. The light here is tricky. I love the tall pines that create a shadowed backdrop for the backlit trees, but fighting off the lens flare is a real trick. I'm going to watch this sight as the seasons change and keep shooting it until I'm satisfied. I don't know what those pear trees do in the fall, but I can see the leaves starting to turn red. This might make a pretty dramatic shot come October.

Yet more soccer

I hit more of the Gazette Cup soccer tournament on Saturday. I'm still shaking off the rust, but starting to get my groove back for shooting sports. Soccer is a great sports event for working out the kinks. Its got a lot of action, but it's not too hard to shoot. I also tried shooting some video with my new, little Canon camcorder. The video quality was OK, but the shakiness of the camera is hard to overcome even with stabilization. This kind of video is best done with a pro camera that is shoulder mounted and has an eyepiece. Shooting video essentially from the hip by using the camera's fold out monitor is just not very easy.

Moonscape from my front porch

Here's a bit of fun from my front porch in south Gastonia. This is a moonscape about two days after a full moon. I've been eyeballing the light from a street lamp that pushes through my trees. It makes some great shadows on the lawn. But the picture has needed some extra kick.

I was on the phone talking outside late Wednesday night and noticed the full moon intermingling with the clouds and thought this might be a good time to knock off a few frames.

I noticed on the initial exposures how the moon was a little hot when I exposed for the lawn shadows. Instead of shooting a set of images for a high dynamic range composite, I decided to go old school. During the 15-second exposure, I used my hand to dodge out the corner of the frame where the moon was illuminating the sky. This effectively cut that part of the exposure to about 8 or 10 seconds, giving me a fairly well exposed single frame.

Soccer in Gastonia

After a brief hiatus, I'm back shooting. I visited a soccer match between Forest View and Highland Technical on Wednesday to work out the kinks and check out my new Nikkor 300 f/2.8.

The lens performed flawlessly but I feel the need to add the Nikon battery grip to my D700 to increase my motor drive speed.

I had a ball shooting for the brief time I was there. The light in Poston Park is beautiful and it's accentuated by a gorgeous landscape that provides a great, clean background for sports action.

I didn't shoot any prize winners for sure. I'm still rusty and I've got to shake off some cobwebs, but I'm excited to be out and shooting again.