Pro Shooter Series

I have been enjoying my time as a "professional" sports photographer over the last 2 years and want to give back a little. I am going to start a series on my perspective on shooting various pro sports. I know, who cares? Everyone has the right to express their opinions, at least the last time I checked, and I think I may be able able to inspire others that may be starting in this field or maybe even give my insight to those that may be more tenured. Here is what I am going to cover:

-Professional Baseball
-PGA and LPGA Golf
-ATP and WTA Tennis
-Track and Field

Stay tuned, up first, Baseball

Shooting Weltklasse Zürich

I have not posted since moving to Switzerland but we have finally got settled in and I am have all my good ready to go now. Since being here I have not spent much time shooting anything. In my second attempt to grab credentials to shoot professional sports in Europe, I got accepted. This one is bigger than the last European Skateboard Championships. I have now been credentialed for Weltklasse Zürich, which I had never heard of before this week while watching the Olympics. I heard the BBC sportscaster talking about "Zurich next week" and Googled it to find this event. What is it? Wikipedia defines it as the "one day Olympics". Basically all of the top track and field athletes from Bejing converge on Zurich and compete, revenge style. Since the inception of Weltklasse Zürich, they have seen 28 world records broken so it is not an event to be ignored. The stadium is new in 2007 and seats 30,000 people and is already sold out so grabbing track side seats should be great.

I am going to grab a late train to Zurich on Friday (events start at 1600) and will be shooting until late on Friday night. I will post some shots later.

D3/D300 Rant

I just responded to a local photographer's post about his yearning for a D3 and sent him this email. I though it would make an interesting blog post. Enjoy

I am sure I am preaching the the choir regarding the power of the D3 but I wanted to reiterate how great it is. I started shooting sports as a frustrated Dad about 5 years ago and ended up spending what I thought was a fortune for a D70. Next came lenses, my first "biggy" as an used 80-200 from Service Photo. Then I started renting from them and finally upgraded to a 70-200, which probably was not worth the $$. Anyway the bug continued with me headed to purchasing two D200's over the next two years. I thought they were the all be it, "I will never need anything else". When the first posts about the D3 came out I was thinking that I would never spend that kind of money on a camera. Well, I did. I ditched both D200's and jumped-on the D300.

What does all of this mean, not much, just thought I would show you some of the stuff I have shot with both. I shoot the D3 with the 300 2.8 almost exclusively. The D300 is always my "utility" camera with a wide angle or usually the 70-200. To be honest I do not go the D300 much, not because it is not a good camera, just more because I love the D3/300 combo. Recently shooting a Orioles game I nailed a pretty good shot of the runner sliding into third but being in the third base photo well was too tight for the D3/300 combo. This was shot at 1600 ISO, something I could not have done with the D200 w/o a boatload of noise reduction at best.

At a recent lacrosse shoot the sun set quickly and I found myself going from harsh shadows to a crappy high school stadium and the D3 was amazing. This shot is at 5000 ISO, something I never thought would have been possible. A parent just purchased a 4x6 of this shot about an hour ago, also at 5000. I actually fin myself scared to push higher ISO's, which I know sounds completely odd but it is what it is. As the night went on I was finding myself at 6400 and got this one. I also agree with your comments about the D3 and using a teleconverter. I find myself with the 1.4x on the 300 now, almost all the time since I can push the ISO up and have the speed I need. I have to be honest, I do not see a huge difference in photos with DOF at f4 or f2.8. This shot and this shot were at f4 with the exact combination I was speaking about.

Anyway, just some more food for thought and something to add to your frustration. Everyone can sit back and say "I can have two D300's for the price of one D3" and that is true. Since you already have a D300, who needs two more?

Mid-Maryland makes "Shots of the Week"

For the second time, Mid-Maryland Photo (aka John Middlebrook) made the Cal Sport Media "Shots of the Week". I am not sure how flattered I should be, maybe a slow week for them? Either way, their editors take the best shots of the week and highlight them for all to see, including Sports Illustrated, ESP, the Magazine, etc. This week they have three of mine highlighted from the Penn Relays in Philadelphia. It is cool to see your name in lights.

Next stop, double truck?

An Amazing Feet?

Attending the Penn Relays this week was a first for me and I have never seen anything run with such professionalism and organization. They had record crowds and perfect weather over the three day event. Almost 22,000 athletes attend and each day they had over 35,000 attendees in the stands the cheer on the high school and college athletes.

I took almost 5000 images in two days that I was in attendance and the editing and captioning the images for the ire has been taxing to say the least. I think I have spend as much time with my edits than I have doing the actual shooting. I MUST work on my post event processing process. Each time I do a photo shoot for the wire I get more efficient but I have a ways to go.

Here is a link to what I have published to Cal Sport so far and I still have to publish to Image of Sport.