Photography and Panning

For quite some time I have been wanting to do a little sports photography and started by photographing Kite Surfers a little while ago. My images weren't the greatest but I did manage to get some really good shot's more my good fortune than by good planning.

Anyway I wanted to look at my panning technique and improve on it and was looking for an opportunity to do just that without going to any great expense when a friend started chatting to me about RC Helo's (Radio Controlled Helicopters). Well being a guy fascinated by anything remote controlled (Yeah I'm just a big kid and no it's not a mid-life crisis) ever since they came on the scene.

I had to do a little investigating as I wouldn't mind having a go at this but can just imagine spending a fair amount of money only to obliterate the machine within minutes. I did a little research online and found that there is a local club with a field just up the road from my home where the members meet every Sunday morning. I was invited to join them as an observer to learn a little more about the sport. Yes it is a sport.

Well I trundled down last Sunday with my camera gear as I saw this as an opportunity for a few images. A most enjoyable day and the guys were all very friendly, didn't mind my zillion questions and the few photo's I took. It turns out that this is great practice for panning and sports photography as these helicopters are amazing, super quick and unpredictable for me which meant keeping the machine in frame was a major effort let alone keeping it in focus. I will include a number of unedited shots at the end of this blog (apart from adding my logo, downsizing and converting from RAW to JPG).

The sport is a lot more involved than I first thought with starter machines priced at around $500.00 and Radio's (Controllers priced anywhere from $200-$1000) then there is the requirement of membership to the clubs which carry the benefit of huge savings to Public Liability Insurance. Of course at the mention of Insurance the ears pricked up. Is the sport dangerous? - oh yes! rarely, but none the less there have been fatalities, not many casualties but one needs to remember that the blades of even the smaller Helicopters pictured below, can be deadly.

Some clubs require a level of proficiency before one is allowed to join and just as with life size aviation one may be required to obtain their bronze wings before membership is finalised. There are of course instructors and assessors to take care of the novices such as myself. Well the big kid in me is not satisfied yet so I'll return to take more pictures and of course ask another zillion questions (slight exaggeration) that I have floating around in my head.

Till next time, Take Care and Stay Safe.

Different Techniques

Ronnie and I are starting to develop a fairly good workflow which is helping us to process and grade or rate our best work, sorting the chafe so to speak. When we go on a shoot we tend to take an overabundance of photographs and it can take quite some time to filter them whilst looking for that ever elusive perfect shot. This week we have been practicing our new workflow and it seems to be quite effective.

In addition to the workflow I have been trying a few new or rather different techniques to not just take good photographs but to make good photographs as well. As with everything the quality of the new work is a bit rough and of course there will be those who hate it. Now there are a million programs out there to create fancy special effects with little or no effort so that would of course be too easy so what I'm learning is how to make the tools that go into making those special effects so that I can be a little different and make my own mark in the end.

For now I'll post my latest piece and I will say before posting it that the photo's are not great since I had no sooner setup my camera and was in the process of taking a couple of test shots to check lighting etc. when my subjects decided to call it a day, consequently this is made up of those test shots.

"Electric Para-Surfing" - Hope you like it.

Till next time, God Bless!

Sports Photography

Yesterday my Bonnie Ronnie and I decided to go for a drive up the coast and look for a few likely photography spots and we would stop in and have lunch with a friend in the Noosa area. What we didn't realise was that the Noosa Festival was on so that pretty much wiped out that plan as we arrived way too late to find parking anywhere.

However, on our way up the coast we did stop at a number of locations and we will revisit a few of them when lighting is more favourable. Instead we found some parasurfers in Caloundra and decided to take a few pictures of them, not having done much in the way of sports photography for a while and having left our 4-5.6/70-400 SSM Lens at home the shots were never going to be great but they aren't bad.

Here is a sample and others can be found on our Facebook Art page. They were all shot using the Sony a65 with 3.5-6.3/18-250 Sony Lens. 

The plan had been to have lunch in Noosa and visit a few of the local photography hot spots, pop into Peter Lik's gallery at the same time. Lorraine (our friend) told us how she would take relatives on holiday into Peter's gallery where they could purchase prints for a couple of hundred dollars but the last time she went in one could only order via catalog and the photograph her relative selected was priced at $200K. Interesting to note that Peter Lik is now considered to be one of the worlds best photographers and is completely self taught. Just goes to show that a great photographer can take and make good photography with ordinary equipment but with great equipment a great photographer creates awesome photography.

We had a wonderful day and spent the whole afternoon catching up with Lorraine whom we had lost contact with for over 20 years. We got so carried away that it wasn't until the lights had to be turned on that we realised that the day was over.

Till next time.