Football, Volleyball and Football

I would have had three days of straight football this week ending with today's college game but I opted to shoot a volleyball game on Friday to break things up and not get pig skin'd out.

Today I am shooting a college football game. I am hoping for some good pictures and I will also be keeping an eye out to find some feature art in the parking lot particularly body painting if I can find it.

I'll try to blog from the field if I have time before or after halftime. I may be too busy to do it.

Damn the iPhone, but it still rocks.

(Photo by Jonny Carroll) I can take a picture with a 400mm lens and hold it steady at slow shutter speeds. But for some reason in the picture you see of me trying to take a photo during a timeout of a football game i could not hold the iPhone steady enough to take a somewhat sharp photograph. Yes I know it's because the phone is compensating for the crappy light at the field thus the blurry photo.

My company 400 is going to the shop for repair. It's a work horse lens for me. I use it for sports and spot news. I take good care of the lens I guess the constant use of the lens wore out the parts.

Next update will be a soccer game on Friday then my vacation the following week. Maybe even some paintball.
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Borrowed 400 and

Well I am back with a borrowed 400 as I patiently wait to shoot the University of North Texas, Tulsa University football game at Fouts Field. The only thing that will drive me crazy at this field will be the shadow that will come across the field at around 7pm. Its not to big of a problem but drives me batty because it's at least a four stop difference.

I will try to post from the field before or during a break in the game.

It's an hour before game time. Time to get the game face on.

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Test 2 for text

Test test text text text text text text text text text text.

UPDATE
While not the greatest way to do it still its pretty cool to blog from the iPhone with a picture. But not as cool as the 32oz bottle of hot sauce which will gets inaugural opening in the near future.

Bee-ing patient

Recently I shot the picture of a bumblebee landing on a sunflower at a home in Denton. The thing is it took me at least an hour waiting for yellow and black stripped bug to land on that specific flower.

Several things I had to get to make the picture work.
1) The bumblebee had to be in the picture and it had to be in the right spot of the frame.
2) The light had to hit the bee and flower just right.
3) The wind had to stop blowing so the sunflower would stop moving messing up my focus.

The best comment I received was that the photo looked like a painting. This is probably due to the blueish/cyan background and that the bumblebee isn't sharp but instead shows the bug in motion.

Better lucky, than good.

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New Years resolutions, fire and the iPhone

This is gonna be short. First this is a test for my iphone to see if can write to my blog. So far so good.

Second my resolution this year is to write more on this blog. At least once a week.

Lastly I want to mention something about the tanker truck fire photo on my website. One man was killed in the explosion. And another was hurt. When I was told about it I wasn't sure I would make it out to the site. Remarkably, I did, even with both directions of traffic shutdown. The photo was selected as Editor & Publisher Photo of the Week and wasselected as Texas AP photo of the month.

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The Tools of Shooting Football

When I go out to shoot sports I want to be able to move around quickly and be prepared for any situation. This involves carrying little gear and being prepared for anything. Here is a run down of the gear I use to shoot Friday Night Football in the Great State (For all you people living in New Mexico, that's Texas). It gets very hot here in especially with field turf that just absorbs the heat. So I always carry a bottle of water with me, a hat if needed and sunscreen.

Here is a list of what I shoot with.
• 2 Nikon D2Hs
• 400mm f2.8 (below) or 300mm f2.8
• 70-200mm f2.8
• 16-35mm f2.8
• sb-800 flash
• monopod to hold 400mm
• Newswear chest vest: holding 16-35mm, flash, lens cloth, extra compact flash cards, rain cover for lens and camera, knee pads, pens and black sharpie maker, leatherman multi tool, four extra batteries, cell phone holder, paper, business cards. This chest vest saves your back distributing the weight on your upper body.

Now the 400mm is expensive and I tell people that if you are just starting out to purchase a 70-200mm f2.8. It's a long enough lens to get close action shots, and short enough to get the action when it gets close to you. It's not a cheap lens but well worth the price because you can use it too shoot sports or your kids graduation or family events. Plus because the aperture is f2.8 you can shoot in low light that you get in high school stadiums.

I dont use the knee pads to shoot high school football I do use them for college football. I've seen people use volleyball knee pads to construction knee pads.

Rain covers are essential. One you never know when it will rain. Two trash bags just don't work I've used them and while they are good while in a pinch its best to buy a quality rain cover to protect your expensive camera.

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Football

I am still planning on posting a photo of the gear I take with me when shooting Friday Night Football. But, I forgot I was traveling to Spain for vacation (to celebrate two years of being married) and when I got back, well I was still in vacation mode. So I promise there will be a full report this week (maybe). To tide you over, here is a picture of my and fellow North Texas alumni and DMN shooter Vernon Bryant before a football game.

There was a time when Vernon and I would eat buffalo wings and drink Texas tea before shooting a North Texas football game for the student newspaper. Those times are well behind us.

I'll also post a few pictures from my trip to España next week. The picture to the left is from Feria de Abril in Sevilla. Spain has a very rich culture and old culture. Most of the places we visited are older than the United States dating back to the 12th century.

I give a shout out to Jake and Annette Zapata who were gratious enough to let my wife and I stay with them for the week.



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Shout out to my grandfather

I'm wound up from Thursday nigh football and gearing up for Friday night football. And I simply can't sleep. So I troll the web searching for random things in Wikipedia and Google. I did this while watching the Military History channel and I got the brilliant idea to see if could find anything about my grandfather, Lorenzo Magaña who fought in World War II.


I know there is no way in hades that he'll ever see this but pictured above is what I found.

You too can look up or submit someone you know who fought in World War II.

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Gearing up for football

Inspired by a comment from Micheal Zamora (3X5 photo blog) to my posting about drinking lots of water to beat the heat and stay hydrated during summer football I plan on having some pictures of key items that I take with me to a Texas Friday night football game. It's not as hot here in Texas so water isn't an issue anymore. But there is still some gear you just can't live without.


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Comic Book Covers and Football

I just finished shooting some Friday night football and I still have pent up energy so I thought why not write some to wind down. By the way if you are shooting football in Texas or in any southern state, drink lots of water before and after the game. It is freaking hot out there especially on that fake grass. And to keep alert its best to stay hydrated.

Now onto the point of this blog.

Every year at the start of the football season my newspaper puts together a comprehensive section about the university, local high schools and area high schools football teams.

This year we decided pay homage to comic book covers for the 2007 Football Preview. I had plan on doing comic book covers last year after we finished the 2006 Football Preview. I was inspired by these television shows and movies about comic book heroes. I pitched the idea to the sports editor and he was excited about going forward. I then got a page designer on board who was really into comic books and who helped design the look of the section. The hard part was to come up with a Photoshop filter that would make the portraits look like comic book drawings but still like portraits. I did some research online and combined the best of what I read and came up with the filter I call TalleyHo. You can download the Photoshop action from the Bio page at my website.

When we color correct for the newspaper we sharpen our pictures because of the newsprint the paper is published on. So I left out the Unsharp Masking filter as part of the TalleyHo action. It was a bonus that unsharp masking the photo for the paper enhanced the TalleyHo action. For our paper we use the Unsharp Mask filter set to: sharpening 500%, radius 1.0, and threshold 5.

When shooting your portraits it is also necessary to overexpose the photo by about a 1 to 1 1/2 stops. TalleyHo loves highlights and dark shadows which adds to the comic book drawing effect.

I think this years preview turned out well and I am already planning next years section covers.

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Shooting video

I have been shooting video for my newspapers online edition for about a month now. I have to say it's been fun. I must admit I wasn't sold on using video to get stills for the print edition and to post the video online. But so far it's working out.

You can see all the videos I have shot for the newspaper HERE. You might have to sit through a short ad before the first video starts.

Send me your critiques. (And yes, I see the misspelling of protest. I'll have to get that fixed.) I'd love to read what you thought could of been better with each video. This is a new medium for me and for newspaper reporting the closest I can compare this to is documentary films. Only that my videos are less than 2 minutes long. With the exception of the Brave Combo video.

One of the problems I am running into is how time consuming putting together a short 2 min. piece is. The most video I shoot is about 20 mins. on average. The snow day video video took me 5 hours to shoot and edit for 8 minutes of video shot. So I am slow at this. In my defense there are so many variables. Like how are you going to show the story and what audio will you use and then when you finish you go back and clean up all the mistakes in editing.

I've been told that you get faster the more often you shoot and edit.

I was lucky enough to sit on a week long workshop put on by David Leeson on how to shoot and edit video. And five key points I have applied to how I shoot is:

1. Audio - You can have really bad video but if your audio is good and you have an audio base to build on whether it be natural sound (which I learned goes by nat sound in video lingo) or some type of music (royalty free of course) then you can salvage poor video.

2. Don't over shoot - As I said early I am averaging 20-25 mins. of shot video. I think that may be too much. The key is to shoot 6 to 8 seconds of one scene and no more. Also shoot wide, medium and tight. This helps when editing. You can use the tight shots to transition to those other two shots. And if your clips are 20 minutes long you have to sit through that when importing video to computer and then you have to go back through that video to see what you want to use. So keep the video clips short.

3. Don't follow the action - It will make it harder to edit later. I'm sure there are some exceptions. But generally don't do it, let things enter and exit the frame.

4. Avoid jump cuts - This is when you have one scene say for example a person is juggling and then the next scene is that same person juggling on a bike. There needs to be a transition of why or how that person got on the bike.

5. Show me don't tell me - This is not television video and there are some good TV videographers out there. But often times the reporter tells you the story and thats a different type of journalism. The readers doesn't care what I or the reporter thinks about whats going on. Let the subject tell the story.

Frame grabs from the video I shoot are not bad. The newer HD video cameras that are coming out have improved on that technology and therefore give you better frame grabs. Rather than give my poor explanation of what the two differences are here are the links to a wikipedia explanation of interlace which is what I get now I use and progressive what the newer cameras are using. Needless to say the progressive is the better of the two when wanting to get a frame grab. Or at least from what I can tell and have been told.

This is just the basics of what I know about video and editing. And I hope this a little in explaining video. I sincerely believe this is the future of journalism for print media. And only that future can prove me wrong.

Holy Crap

I finally finished my portfolio and resume and hope that it gets a thumbs up from the people i asked to review it before I turn it in. It took me too many days and hours to finish an important project like this.

So i suggest that you folks out their. No matter what type of job you may be applying for. Prepare you samples of work and resume. Because you never know who will come calling. And it will save you a lot of stress and a few all-nighters in the long run.

So wish me luck. Because I will need it.

G Payne in the house

Welcome to the Blog of Payne.

Which is basically a diary without the little lock and key. And the little pink flowers printed on the cover.

So what do I plan to write here?

Mostly I will write about the art of photojournalism and my adventures pursuing that art. I have to say I was inspired to start a blog because of the strobist.com blog and of my friend Shannon Drawe blog. My blog will try to be different. But mostly its about me and the tools I use to do my job when covering news, sports and the in between. Well, got to run I have to prepare a resume and portfolio and eat dinner, oh and the dog needs a walk.