The Rain Bowl

I woke up at 8:00 this morning, and by 8:02 I was down in my basement mopping water off the floor. We've had two straight days of rain and everywhere is flooding, including my basement. My back yard has several inches of standing water on it, with nowhere for it to go. I spent the whole morning bringing stuff up from the basement, and connecting a pump to help clear the water. Unfortunately, I also had a football game to shoot today....

Kickoff was at 1:00 but the rain became heavier at 12:30 and I decided not to shoot the game. The basement was filling with water again. Hoping it would be postponed, I tuned into the radio, only to hear the game in progress. By about 1:30 I had done all I could to stem the flow, so I wrapped the 300mm lens and camera in custom made rain gear (actually in Jewel grocery bags...) and headed out the door. In twenty-three years of shooting sports, I've never shot in such wet conditions. It was tough juggling the camera with an umbrella, with the rain sometimes coming at me sideways. One thing I've learned though, is that adverse conditions often create some of the best pictures. The field was saturated in many parts, with several inches of standing water especially along the sidelines. Tackles were great though, with water spraying out in all directions. I managed to keep the front element of the lens pretty dry, thanks mainly to the six inch deep lens hood. By the last few minutes of the fourth quarter, the rain stopped and I was able to shoot without the umbrella. In the end, Wheaton College beat the fourth ranked team in the nation. It wasn't pretty, but the pictures came out great.

When I returned home, I found my phone line was dead due to the rainstorm, so I had to edit the pictures here, then drive to the public library to upload them to the college for their website.

Now I've got to get back to that basement....

Processing RAW Images

Professional photographers talk about this subject a LOT, at least the ones I know.

Clients often ask why I don't just burn them a CD after a shoot and send it to them? Why do I charge extra for high resolution images? I came up with a web page that explains a little about what I do after a shoot is over. So far, the response has been good- most people didn't know there was so much extra work that goes on after a shoot. In the 'old days' of film, I'd drop off the color neg or transparency (slide) film at the lab, return in a day or two and see how they came out. If the pictures weren't quite right, there wasn't much I could do. Now with digital, we have the opportunity to tweak each image to perfection.

For the last six years, I've been using Canon's proprietary software to process my RAW images unto workable JPGs. Recently, with the encouragement of my friend Adam, who works for Adobe, I've been playing around with the new version of Adobe Lightroom a lot. I really like all the adjustments that can be made. It's powerful software and is especially good at bringing back highlight detail in a picture. it does a lot of things I like, as well as some I don't. I don't need the cataloging element, and it's taking me a long time to figure out how best to use it, but it looks like I may fully make the switch to Lightroom in the near future.

Update

(The London Eye)

Wow, can't believe it's already been 2-1/2 months since my last post. Better catch up a little here. I spent ten days in June and early July out in England, shooting mainly in the south of England and London. Work slowed down a little this summer, giving me some time to catch up on stock photography projects. After a brief family vacation/ stock photo trip to northern Michigan at the beginning of August, I went all out and bought a 400/2.8 lens in anticipation of a busy sports season this Fall. I finally got to use it this weekend for four soccer games. It's a heavy lens (almost 12lbs) so it's going to take some getting used to.



There now- all caught up! I plan on starting a picture blog for the sports shots I do this year. Stay tuned for a link.