Thursday, May 14, 2009

Action: Longboarding


This is quickly becoming one of my favorite sports to shoot.
The Buffalo Bill Downhill race, held on Lookout Mountain in Golden, CO was sweet!
Ok, so technically I didn't get to see the actual race, which was held on Mother's Day. I did however, have the opportunity to shoot for about 30 minutes on the practice day, where the boarders spent the day figuring out the course, hauling ass into one-another and stacks of hay on the side of the course.

Of the (pitifully few) shots I got, I like the black and white versions of nearly all of them best. I now have this odd habit of making a black and white version of each image, just to see what it looks like.





I was under the impression that these guys would be practicing for at least a couple hours after I showed up... but 30 min after I got my gear out, they were packing up. I got shots from two runs, from the exact same spot on the course. If I had shot the race, I would have done it from at least three different places, and I would have definitely spent some time on panning and blurring. As it is, I was at 150-200mm F4, ISO 100 and a miserably fast shutter speed. If I zoom into these shots, I can see the guys' eyelashes no problem... whether or not I like that, I'm not sure. Next time, I'll be doing some blurring.

I don't have many shoots planned in the near future, so the next month or so should be a bunch of personal work.

I'm also working on the "Masters of Photography" series over on my new WordPress blog (photographymasters.wordpress.com). It is essentially a self-assigned homework series to force me to look at the photographers and imagery of the past. If I don't think anybody will ever read it, I won't do it ('cause I'm a publicity whore these days), so I made a blog. The WordPress part is just to see what the differences are and it doubles as research for a client who wants to start a new blog (and have me do the pictures for it).

That's what I got! Make sure you're getting RSS feeds from both blogs!