One Game at a Time

Here's my advice on getting started in the photography business: get out and shoot!

I'm far from being in the photography business, but I'm experiencing first hand how one can start a career in photography if that happens to be one's goal. It's remarkable how pervasive photography is these days as a result of the digital revolution. In the film days you had to have some level of seriousness in order to shoot. But in the post-film era you can pick up a digital camera at Best Buy for $100 and start to become knowledgeable.

At Maryland games this past Spring I talked to a few spectators in the stands who inquired about my equipment. Some photographers may consider this a distraction but I actually find it quite enjoyable. It's a lot of fun to listen to people talk about their equipment, hear what they enjoy shooting, and learn from their experience. You have to take everything with a grain of salt, but several times I've had someone make a comment that got me thinking about some of my own techniques.

And there's something about carrying around a 400mm f/2.8 lens that starts up conversation. It's usually "that's a big lens!" and that leads to further discussions. Tonight I was shooting the third game of the Baysox series against Binghamton and I spent a lot of time shooting from the stands. I made my way all the way down the 3rd base line hoping to catch some good foul ball shots of the batter and I ended up sitting next to a gentleman named Rusty from St Mary's. Rusty told me all kinds of facts about minor leaque baseball that were really quite interesting. He also told me about some new teams that are starting up next season.

Although I'm not a reporter I do consider myself something of a photojournalist, and a huge part of reporting is listening to people talk. Listening to Rusty describe the minor league and some of the history of the pitching coach of the Mets taught me a lot about the teams.

Game #2 of the series, and early in the game tonight the pitching coach was ejected from the game. The person I was sitting next to (I didn't catch his name) told me that in Game #2 the pitching coach and the umpire got into an argument and the coach kept pestering theI also sat next to an older gentleman who sits slightly down the 3rd baseline but next to 3rd base. I missed umpire throughout the game. The guy speculated that the pitching coach was ejected prematurely to send a message to the Mets: Don't mess with the umpires.

Another gentleman passed me while I was on my way between two spots and asked me what kind of lens I was using. When I described it he asked the cost and mentioned he was thinking about going into the photography business and wanted to know if I had any advice. I laughed at the thought of me giving someone else photography advice because I'm usually the one soliciting advice! He's retiring and is thinking about doing some work on the side as a photographer. I didn't catch his name but I gave him my business card and told him to email me if he had any questions.

Lastly I spoke for awhile with a gentleman named David Hartcorn. It turns out that David and I have a lot in common both professionally and photographically. We both work in the same domain space, we both occupy office space in Annapolis MD that's close to each other, and we both shoot Nikons.

David told me that he his car was recently burglarized and all of this equipment was stolen. This really reinforces my desire to obtain insurance and to do it soon. He said that he had a dashboard navigation system as well as a satellite receiver on his dash and the thieves used a slim jim in broad daylight at Hunt Valley golf club in Columbia MD to break into his car. Once inside they lifted his satellite and navigation system and made off with his suitcase of equipment.

He lost two D2XS bodies, a 70-200mm/f2.8, 50mm/f1.4, 85mm/f2.8, 105mm/f2.8, 17-55mm/f2.8 and I believe a 400mm/f2.8. He also lost a few teleconverters, spare batteries, media, and all the other assorted accessories we all carry in our bags. I'm not too worried about theft of my gear from my car because I take my bag into my office with me during the day, and when it's in my car it's always in my trunk. But still... hearing about someone losing ALL of their gear sounds like a devastating thing to have happen. Fortunately David has commercial photography insurance and was able to replace all of his equipment. I'm sure he missed a few assignments tho while he filled out police reports and waited for an insurance claim to be processed.

We had a pretty lengthy discussion of lenses and when I started describing my 70-200 and D200 combination and it's performance at 200mm he completed my sentence by saying: "It's soft isn't it..." His statement is consistent with my personal observations and what I've read on Nikonians.org's forums: the D200 and the 70-200mm lens is soft at 200mm and f2.8. Stepping down to f4 or f5.6 helps though.

He also told me that the D2XS body and sensor are so sharp and perfect that they really expose "bad" lenses. I'm not too sure what he means by "bad" lenses since I'm not a physicist and I don't know about the laws of light and how chemicals impact it's progression through the lens elements. I only know about AF-D and AF-S style lenses and the differences in the focusing mechanics. For me it's not a problem since I'm on a D2H and a D200, but I thought it was an interesting comment.

Tonight's shoot was a great experience from a lighting perspective. The Baysox tend to start the Sunday games at 6pm rather than 7pm, giving photographers and extra hour of sunlight. This makes a huge difference, and I wish that they started every game at 6pm. I realize this would probably reduce their crowd size (because people may still be at work at 6pm) so it will probably never change. But when they play at 6pm I like to get to those games because the lighting is perfect! You can get a solid 5 innings in before you have to go to ISO800 or ISO1000.

I decided to give a shot at using both my 400mm lens and my 70-200mm lens at the same time. During Friday night's game I just carried around the 400mm lens because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to handle 2 bodies, one of which was attached to a monster lens. I like to play it safe, so I decided to shoot Friday night's game using just my 400mm lens on my D2H body. But when I shot that game I felt too close for a lot of shots.

It was nearly impossible to catch any steals using the 400mm lens from the lower level because I was in too close. I had to go up to the upper level to shoot, and I wanted to stay down low so that I could get excellent profiles of the players while they bat. I kept thinking on Friday night that my 70-200 would really work well for catching some of the steals where you need to be wider, and the 400mm lens would be great for the up-close profile shots as well as the candids that I love shooting.

It was a bit awkward at first negotiating between the 70-200mm and the 400mm lenses, so I decided to shoot from down on the field to get started. I figured that by shooting on the field I'd be all alone and wouldn't have to deal with the complexity of the crowd moving around and possibly stepping on my equipment. Down on the field I have my own little chair I sit in, and I can safely place one camera on the ground while I use the other camera.

It was surprising to me how well it worked. The only awkwardness I encountered related to the extension on my monopod. I use a monopod on my 400mm lens, and to put the 400mm lens down I place it hood down on the ground (not on it's side). When the monopod is extended it's too much weight on one side and the camera wants to tip over. But if you reduce the monopod to it's storage size the camera and body stand upright just fine.

Observing this made me think about the AF-S II lens and how it's slightly lighter than the AF-S I lens. My 400mm with a D2H and monopod hanging off of it is somewhat unstable. I imagine that if my 400mm had it's weight reduced by 1lb or slightly more that it would not longer be able to support the D2H body and the monopod, even when it's fully reduced. I'll have to ask some other photographers with 400mm lenses how well their rigs hold up. Maybe that's why some people by those carbon monopods (because they are light).

After 2 innings on the field I was extremely comfortable going from the 400mm to 70-200mm lens and I decided to journey up into the crowd to get some shots from above. This worked out pretty well except the children posed a challenge in some cases. Children tend to be attracted to cameras (probably because they like getting their picture taken!) and that can be risky when you're talking about $6k worth of equipment sitting on the ground next to you while you're looking through the eyepiece of another $2k of equipment.

I found a bunch of spots tonight to shoot from and my pictures are coming out better than ever. These days I'm shooting 75% of my shots using group weighted continuous autofocus and it's working remarkably well. The other 25% of the time I use single spot continuous autofocus. The single spot autofocus mode works very well when you have 2 players talking to each other, one shallow and one deeper in your field of view and you want to blur one to bring him out of focus. In those cases the group autofocus locks on both players as one unit, or you go back and forth between the two players. But using spot you're able to point to the player you want to focus on and take your shot.

I'm very pleased with how the quality of my work is progressing. I've been going back over a bunch of old Maryland related photos I shot during the Spring and moving them over to BlunckSports and many of them are really low quality. I'm not ashamed of them at all, but it is remarkable how much of a difference just a few months makes in shooting.

That brings me to the advice I offered in the opening paragraph of this lengthy post: Just get out and shoot! If you're considering going into photography get out there and start shooting whatever you think is interesting. Maybe it's critter-shots or maybe it's nature. Maybe it's sports. Or maybe it's architecture and business. But get out and figure out if you enjoy shooting, and if so what you enjoy shooting. The worst thing you can do is not try.

And with that I'm off to eat some chicken ramen surprise. In my house that's just chicken ramen with some curry seasoning and cayenne pepper. It's the cayenne pepper that's the surprise.

All week I've been looking for a game to use my 400mm, and tonight I got that game.

Earlier in the week I shot the Maryland Terrapins during Media Day, and that was a lot of fun. I covered it using my 70-200mm and my D2H. The shots came out very well. I've really sped up my post-processing speed by using Aperture and adding a second screen to my laptop.

I hate the Windows so I use the Linux and the Mac OSX for work and pleasure. I encourage everyone to take a look at Linux and OSX for their development, professional, and personal workflows. Recently I added a 22" Acer LCD that I purchased from NewEgg for a cool $220. Going up to a 24" more than doubles the cost, so a 22" is a nice sweet little price point.

The screen has a DVI interface and a 400:1 contrast ratio. The brightness is like 3000:1 and it looks great. It's brighter than the glossy LCD on my MacBook Pro, and I do most of my photo editing (post processing) on the LCD and use my MacBook's display for shells, emacs, and other non-graphical applications. I highly encourage anyone doing photo editing to add a second screen because it greatly increases your productivity in post processing.

When posting images up to this blog I used to have go go back and forth between Preview (the picture viewer in OSX) and Firefox using Expose's "All Windows" magic. It was better than Window's solution, but it was still slow. Adding the second LCD I can land my browser on my MacBook Pro's screen and my photos on my LCD. It's then extremely easy to go back and forth between the two. I personally can't think of any photographic equipment these days that costs less than $220, so this LCD is a great deal in my opinion.

The only problem I've had with the LCD is the white balance. I've noticed that the whites on the LCD are definitely more neon-like brighter. That's made me think about the accuracy of displays, and I intend to look into calibration software that I can use to get my MacBook Pro and Acer LCD in sync with respect to white balance. My photos on the MacBook Pro look dark but they look great on my LCD. Likewise, if I adjust brightness when I'm viewing my photos on my LCD they look really bright (kind of washed out) when I look at them on the LCD (and on other LCDs).

I've also been spending a lot of time going back through old photo albums and pruning the "bad" photos. One of the nice things about being technically savy is that it allows me to feed my in born pack-rat tendencies. I hate physical clutter, and digital clutter gets to me too. But organized digital content is the sweet spot. In the past I've dumped ALL of my photos into a directory, even tho most of them are not properly framed, are kind of off with respect to lighting, or maybe a tad out of focus.

I've been shooting a lot of events, and with DSLRs you can create a lot of content pretty quickly. So I've learned about the whole post-processing aspect of digital photography and I now apply post processing to each event I cover. But my post processing in the past simply consisted of me rotating images by hand and deleting the completely out-of-focus. I've quickly chewed up disk space on my fileserver with this strategy and I'm now working on correcting that.

Over on www.bluncksports.com I'm posting my albums for all my games. As I cover a new event I post it over on the bluncksports.com gallery. During off days I'm going back through my photos I shot this spring of Maryland events and posting them. That's occupying a lot of time!

Moving 1.5GB of photos from my fileserver to my laptop takes a bit, and then the disk IO to pull those images into memory takes awhile as well. Sifting through them, cropping, and resaving them takes time too. Fortunately I've gotten through all of the basketball and I'm almost through lacrosse. Then I'll have baseball and softball and I'll hopefully be finished.

A few weeks ago I ordered a ThinkTank Airport International from my local Penn Camera office. I debated the International vs Security but in the end I went with the International. I gave up a little space, but I saved about 10% on the bag because I didn't feel like I needed the extra "security" that the security model provided.

I bought the bag because my current bag was just a small over-the-shoulder style Nikon bag that barely fit my 70-200mm lens. I bought a 400mm/f2.8 lens as well as a D2H body and there's no way I could fit 2 bodies in the original bag. Additionally, the 400mm/f2.8 lens costs several thousands of dollars and I don't want to break it because I'm carrying it around unprotected. I was happy that my bag arrived this week from overseas and I moved all of my gear into the bag.

I still have a little room to grow, but not a whole lot. I'm not very concerned though because I feel like I have 90% of all the gear I'll need for a long time. I currently own a D200, D2H, 70-200mm/f2.8, 400mm/f2.8, 50mm/f1.8, and 2X TC. The only lens I plan on purchasing in the near future is an 18-55mm/f2.8 DX and there's room in the bag for that lens. I also am considering selling my 2X TC now that I own the 400mm/f2.8 and that will free up some space.

With my new bag, new lens, and new D2H body in hand I was looking forward to my shoot tonight. I had my season credential in hand and with the photo bag I walked right past security without any problem at all. It was so nice having that bag. When I wore the bag over my shoulder I was always afraid I'd bend over to the side and the strap would slide off my shoulder. Or I was afraid that when I walked past a door frame I would catch the bag on the frame somehow and screw up a lens inside. With the bag rolling behind me and my lenses between 1" of solid insulation I felt so safe and protected. That bag was so worth the purchase!

I headed to the media room and pulled out the D2H and the 400mm lens and assembled it onto my monopod. I debated pairing my D200 with the 70-200mm lens and carrying that on a strap on my shoulder but decided against it. The 400mm lens is remarkably heavy and large even though it is AF-S. Since it was my first time out with it I decided not to press my luck. I left the D200 and 70-200mm lens up in the media room and headed down to the seats to take some pictures.

The first thing that struck me was how powerful 400mm is on a DX sensor. DX sensors have a built in 1.5X crop, and that turns my 400mm lens into a 600mm lens (albeit through cropping). Standing up in the stands my subjects at home plate completely filled my frame. It was really odd not being able to zoom out.

It was also the first time I felt "too close" to the action. Most of the time that I'm feeling too-something it's "too-far". But tonight I was "too close" for a few shots. My shots from 3rd base of the batter didn't allow me to see the catcher at all. That's ok but it took a little bit of adjustment.

One comment Al made earlier this week really resonated with me tonight: shoot from far up. He showed me a few photos he took of the Nationals earlier last week from in the 400 sections using his 400mm and they look really good. At that range he's far enough way that he gets the batter in the frame as well as some space around the batter. It's truly remarkable how powerful a 400mm lens is.

I shot the entire game using the D2H and 400mm lens. I started out at ISO 200 and aperture priority mode with group weighted continuous autofocus. The shots looked decent on the LCD, but since it's an old camera it's a little difficult to tell sometimes. I trust my equipment and myself so I'm sure the photos will come out alright.

I also saw Bob again at the game. Bob sits down in the front row and takes notes during the game. He's a true baseball fan and attends almost every game. During the last game he and I chatted while I shot next to his position. He owns an 18-200mm/f4-f5.6 VR lens and a D70 and we compared a lot of notes and techniques. It was good to see him again.

I also met another gentleman named Mark. Mark's a Canon shooter but he's considering switching to Nikon. He rented a D200 and a 70-200mm lens from lensrentals.com and was giving it a shot tonight. I told him about my experience on that body and lens and he was excited about it. If he switches he'll be the first person I know to go from Canon to Nikon. He currently has an EOS-1D and an 80-200mm/f2.8 IS lens.

Towards the end of the game I was up at 1600 ISO and my meter was telling me that 1/250th of a second was needed to properly expose the image. Since the D2H taps out at 1600 I decided to pack it in and head home. It was a great day, and I wanted to go home to catch up with my wife (she got some good medical news today!)

I'm anxiously awaiting my 400mm f2.8 to arrive, so in the meantime I have to make do with a 70-200mm lens.

With my season credential in hand I decided to stop off at Prince George's Stadium on the way home from Zenoss on Monday evening. PG Stadium is a great place to shoot for several reasons.

First: they engineered the stadium well for photography. The sun sets over 3rd base rather than in the outfield. Since most games are played at 7pm (or in the late afternoon) this makes for great lighting. I'm sure this was intentional: how could you sink money into building a stadium and not think about the position of the Sun in the late afternoon.

Second: the crowds are friendly. This isn't a high priced NBA event. It's a low-key during-the-week event that offers promotions to get fans to attend. Whether it's "Belly Buster" night (free hot dogs) or "Fireworks on Friday" the staff at PG Stadium are definitely trying to appeal to the family crowd. They keep the prices reasonable and that attracts families, and they're (for the most part) friendly.

Third: the proximity to the field is decent. It's not as tight as Maryland Softball, but it's not as bad as Maryland Baseball. You can cover a lot of the field with a 70-200mm lens, and with a 300mm or 400mm you're perfectly set.

Fourth: the staff is fun. There aren't any unions out at PG Stadium... It's all younger folks that are working for the summer or older folks that are looking to do a good job and get picked up at another stadium. They're friendly, professional, and seem to have their act together. Getting into the venue hasn't been a problem (unlike RFK Stadium).

Back in May the Baysox were my #1 target for summer shoots, but they turned me down because I wasn't shooting for a media outlet. Fortunately Jake has helped me overcome that by introducing me to the folks at the Baysox and helping me get a season pass. I wanted to cover the Baysox because on Mondays and Tuesdays I live in College Park MD and commute to Annapolis. PG Stadium is right along the way home.

I've been doing a lot of reading about sharpness on the D200 with the 70-200mm lens. Over at Nikonians.org there are some great forums for owners of various lenses and bodies to discuss techniques and share experiences. On a couple of posts people have remarked that the 70-200mm is not sharp on the D200 at 200mm and f2.8. A coworker (Jason Stevens) recommended reducing my aperture to f5.6 to see if that improves the sharpness. During my tests at the Royals game that certainly helped.

Tonight I decided to expand on my testing by going to f5.6 when the sun was still high enough in the sky and taking several photos. I was concerned about the impact on my depth of field. I love the out-of-focus effect that occurs through a narrow depth of field. And I was worried that by going to f5.6 I would have in-focus foregrounds and only slightly out-of-focus backgrounds. At f3.5 and f5.6 while shooting the pitcher from next to the 3rd base dugout it wasn't too bad. Above f5.6 the stands behind 1st base started to come into noticeable focus though.

The folks over on Nikonians.org and Jason appear to be correct: shooting at a smaller aperture (higher f-stop) on a D200 and a 70-200/f2.8 VR lens improves sharpness. This presents some challenges down the road.

With a zoom lens you're going to want to zoom in and out. At 70mm and even 100 and 135mm and f2.8 my lens is sharp. But if I go out beyond 135mm the sharpness degrades. So when I'm in the field covering an event I'm going to have to give some thought to how I manage my zoom with respect to my aperture.

If I'm at 100mm I can push the aperture open to f2.8 and achieve sharp photos. But if I'm at 200mm I need to reduce the aperture to f3.5, f4, or f5.6 to achieve sharp photos. I can see it is problematic to achieve this, but I'm going to give it my best. If you have any suggestions, experience, or ideas please feel free to leave comments.

Another change I made tonight was using Manual mode exclusively. Most of the time I've used aperture priority mode and let the camera meter for me. Tonight I used Manual exclusively for the first time, and boy did my shots show it!

I constantly overexposed. Ridiculously! While sitting behind home plate I'd be shooting the pitcher while he pitches. I'd be using 1/1000th of a second on f3.5 and the exposure looked good. Then the batter would hit and would start running to 1st base. I pan to 1st base to capture the action, and I'm hit with an enormous amount of reflected light coming from the billboards in the outfield. They'd completely wash out the shot.

I'm not sure what to do in that situation. Now that I'm aware of it I'm going to take a few more test shots of this and see what I can do to try to manage the change in light. I'm sure there's some kind of reasonable technique you can apply. Maybe it's having a second body?

many opportunities. But all in all I consider it a successful shoot. I was able to tinker around with my f-stops and lMy shots weren't too bad during tonight's game but they weren't great. There wasn't very much action (very few steals) so there weren't tooearn a little about sharpness on my D200, and I also started breaking ground on using manual mode (something Greg Fiume suggested to me).

This week Al is back and I plan to meet with him to talk about the DC Sports Box. We have to go through some incorporation issues, as well as some growth topics. Specifically we're talking over several "what-if" scenarios associated with incorporating: "what if we hire people? what if we need to fire people? what if we want to award ownership to people? do we want the company to own our photographic equipment?" There are a ton of issues at play when you incorporate, and you really want to give a lot of though to it before you sign your articles of incorporation or organization.

We're also going to talk about scheduling. As Fall approaches it's pretty exciting to look at the calendar and visualize the number of upcoming sporting events. A challenge for us will be to manage those events and make sure we put in credential requests and assign people accordingly. The worst thing that could happen is for us to miss the opportunity, so it's important for us to develop a system whereby we can communicate assignments in a concise and timely fashion. Using iCal's "publish" system, a WebDAV server I deployed, and Google Calendar I think we have a decent system we can use. The trick will getting other folks at the DC Sports Box to rely on it!

I'm very excited about this week: the MGN kickoff event for the Fall is Wednesday night, Al and I are getting together, and the Nats are back in town against Cincinatti. Lots of stuff going on now, and it's invigorating to be a part of it!