alittlenews

No one really likes problems but when you come up with a solution and overcome the problem you are better for it. This was the case when I photographed pro bikers Seth Kimbrough and Corey Martinez. These guys are fantastic bikers and I was totally amazed at their skills. Had I tried even one of the tricks they were doing I would still be in a cast, a full body cast!

Seth and Corey both grew up in and around Hartselle, Alabama and they became pros the hard way. There was never a skate park or any official place for them to practice. Both of these young men have helped to set up a skate park in Hartselle so kids growing up and idolizing them will have a place locally to go and bike or skate. Many of the ramps in the park were built and then donated to the park by one or both of them.

I had know about Corey for some time but we had never met. He and my oldest daughter are friends and my oldest daughter’s best friend is married to Corey. We finally connected to do this shoot but the only time available was mid-afternoon with a high blue sky. That was fine for action photos but not for the portrait. I really wanted some late afternoon, even dusk, light to do the portrait with. Since none of our schedules worked and Corey was leaving town for a pro event we had to shoot when we had the time available.

I had seen the guys pause on top of this flat topped concrete pyramid in the middle of the park several times while they were riding and it seemed like a great spot to pose them for the portrait. The problem was the light was far too contrasty to shoot anything but a back lit portrait which meant I had to light them. I had three Nikon SB strobes at my disposal. My basic lighting plan was to set two strobes on stands at roughly 45 degrees relative to the camera position. The concrete ramp slanted in such a way that I could not set the light stands anywhere on the slope. This meant putting them on the ground with a flash to subject distance that would be somewhere between six and ten feet from the subjects. Not good.

I tried it anyway with predictable results. The strobe exposure was more than a full stop under. I was shooting a Nikon D2Hs and a full stop underexposure with strong back light was just too much. What to do? I had used my Bogen Friction Arm to set up a remote camera on top of one of the ramps earlier so I grabbed it and used an SC17 shoe cord to attach another strobe to the camera platform on the Friction Arm. Then I clamped the strobe onto the stunt peg on the front tire of Seth’s bike. He is the one of the left. I set this strobe to fire via the SU4 optical slave function on the SB800. I also pointed the strobe straight up and extended the built in bounce card to give some fill.

The problem that I could not solve with the equipment at hand was the direction of this third light. Since it was lower than the faces it created hot areas on the neck and made some crazy shadows. I would have preferred not to do this but I could not use a larger bounce device and keep the strobe invisible. In the end, the lighting kind of creates a funky feel that goes along with the whole trick bike scene so it works okay for me. Basically, you run across all kinds of situations in photojournalism that require problem solving skills. You probably won’t ever solve them perfectly; however, the more problems you solve the better you get at solving problems. You can also take the solutions to those thorny problems and use them in other situations so the general quality of your work gets elevated. Everybody is gonna have problems. Applying creative solutions, a little hard work and some sweat will make you better and that means better pictures. Hey man, in everything give thanks, even for the problems. They make you better!

About the photo: You already know I shot with a Nikon D2Hs. I used the 17-35mm lens and obviously shot from below the guys and directly into the sun with an ambient exposure of approximately 1/250th sec at about f16. My ambient exposure is about 2/3 stop under the strobe exposure. The two strobes on stands were fired with Pocket Wizards and the third strobe was fired via its built in optical slave.

Photo copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Maybe I should say that the Alabama Jubilee used to be one of my favorite things. I have just spent 24 hours in the last two days covering the Jubilee which is anchored around hot air balloons. These things are absolutely great to shoot pictures of. It is one of those situations where a blind monkey could get a photo and a person with any kind of game can really nail some beautiful photographs.

And I got to fly. Local pilot Tom Lane who lives in Somerville, Alabama, took me and reporter Catherine Godbey up in his balloon, The Griffin II. I think that riding in a hot air balloon is about as close as a human being will get to walking on air. It is incredible! Just don’t drop the camera. It can be a long drop with a sudden stop which is usually pretty bad for the camera. Otherwise, hot air ballooning is just about as cool and experience as you can have.

This was actually my third flight. The first time I went up the weather was very overcast and we almost didn’t fly. I got some decent stuff but it didn’t sing like I wanted it to. Then, a couple of years ago, I got my second flight and the day was spectacular. Yesterday, the weather was decent but hazy which made for a few problems. Our pilot was one the last to take off so we were a bit behind the rest of the balloons. It made for great pictures of the balloons massed together in the air but the haze caused some frames to simply be unusable. All the problems melted away as we closed in on the other balloonists. The haze factor was eliminated leaving me with just smooth light to work with.

Then, Saturday night, I went back to Point Mallard Park for the balloon glow event which features the balloonists inflating but staying on the ground. At dusk, they fire their propane burners and light up their bags so that the balloons glow. It is really beautiful and the photo opportunities are just fantastic. I shot with my person camera, the EOS 5D for both the flight and the glow because I wanted the beautiful saturation and clean images I get with this camera. I was thrilled with the results. Except for the length of the day which began at 5:30 a.m and ended at 11 p.m. this was a wonderful day to be a photojournalist.

You can view a slide show of all the images I posted at decaturdaily.com and click on the link to the show. I hope you enjoy it.

About the photos: Everything in this gallery was done with my EOS 5D and either the 24-70 f2.8 or the 70-200 f2.8 all shot available light. For the balloon glow pictures, I used the incandescent color balance setting and shot real slow but still hand held. I don’t think any of the images were shot above ISO 400. I used the human monopod technique I detailed in an earlier post to steady the camera.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

I didn’t intend to do a series on my favorite things, but why not. It’s my blog after all and that makes me the boss, after a fashion. I don’t seem to be making any money at it so I can’t pay myself, but I guess the fact that you folks are out there reading reading is pay enough and that is pretty good wages. Anyway, on with the show. Since we are now talking about my favorite things, let me introduce you to Boss Hill. I guess he has a real name, but I have never heard anyone call him anything but Boss so we will go with that.

Boss has a big stew every spring at his home near Elkmont, Alabama. If you have never heard of Elkmont, don’t let it bother you. It is a little town about a stone’s throw from the Tennessee-Alabama state line just off of Interstate 65. It is a little southern town with all the fancies and foibles that go along with being a little southern town. Boss Hill is one of the celebrities of the community. I am sure that it doesn’t hurt Boss’ status that he doesn’t charge for his stew. You come, you wait in line, you hear some music and you eat free until your belly is content or until the stew is gone.

The real hook is that Boss makes goat stew. It is the only place I know of where you can have a bowl of goat stew. I have never seen it on a restaurant menu anywhere and there are some weird dishes on restaurant menus in the south. For those with a gastric uncertainty toward the goat stew, Boss also makes a more traditional chicken stew and beef stew but if you ever get there, at least try the goat stew. It is better than you think.

The real payoff for me is not the stew even though I really like to eat. The payoff is all the excellent people who show up that I get to photograph. There was one fellow who was a volunteer cook who kept up a non stop stream of conversation with anyone passing by whether he knew them or not. He parsed his conversations with stories of his wife, God bless the poor woman, who he claims is a bit of a hefty cook. I am pretty sure he was telling these stories because his wife was not actually present. The man himself seemed to have enjoyed a bit of her cooking over the years. If there were ever a tall tale to be told or heard, this is the guy to look for.

This is a political year in Alabama so there were any number of politicians who came to get a bowl of stew and to spread their message which always ended in a flier being passed and the statement, “I sure would appreciate your vote!” That is not one of my favorite things but it is impossible to talk about Boss Hill’s stew without the politicians. They are as much a part of the mix as the salt and pepper are in the stew.

Speaking of the cooking. The food prep starts at 4a.m. I was not there for the beginning. I arrived at the lazy hour of 7a.m. to begin my work and was chided by the cooks for being so late. There were five large cauldrons of stew boiling and bubbling by the time I arrived with a lively banter around the pots. If the stew could be flavored with words then these pots would be the best tasting stews in the world because the cooks, all long time volunteers with Boss, kept up a salt and pepper barrage between one another all morning. One poor man had the misfortune to have been born in the North which made him the target of more than a few barbs. He has lived in the South most of his adult life so he took it all in stride. When Boss Hill finally deems the stews ready to serve everyone present pauses for a moment to bow in thankful prayer and then the eating begins and my work is done. Except to sit down to a steaming bowl of stew myself.

About the photos: Well, what do you say. They were shot with Nikon D2H and D2Hs bodies and either a 17-35mm or 80-200mm lens all available light. It just comes down to finding light that is not too contrasty to produce an image. Oh, and I had to make sure not to spill stew on the cameras. That makes a mess.

Photos copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

Talk about your Cinderella story. Lubbock Christian University made an improbable run to the NAIA National Championship completing a sweep of University of Mobile yesterday in Decatur. Improbable because this is the first year that LCU has fielded a team and also, during the tournament, they fell into the loser’s bracket and had to win two games over an experienced Mobile team. Congratulations to LCU.

Shooting this championship, as I mentioned in an earlier post, is one of my favorite things and one of the things that makes working here nice. I love championships of any kind in any sport but the competition is so good with athletes at this level that it makes the experience even more enjoyable. Technically, there is not much to talk about. The only problem was the sun provided a high backlight on an absolutely clear day causing some harsh contrast but there was pretty much nothing I could do about it. I shot about three quarters of the time with a D2Hs using the 400mm f3.5 manual focus lens and the rest of the time using the D2H and an 80-200mm f2.8 lens. The exposure was around 1/3200 at f3.5, ISO 200. No problem with motion blur anyway.

I shot part of the games from a scissor lift that really got you up in the air. I don’t like to sway around all that much, especially while looking through a long lens. It causes motion sickness for me. It is a little like being out on the ocean bobbing up and down while looking through a lens. Most of the time I spent a little closer to the ground just getting high enough to shoot over the fence. Add the straw hat and a nice cold drink and all is right in the world!

Photos copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

For those of you who know your movies really well you will recognize that my title is actually the title to a song in the Sound of Music. Maria sings to comfort the children and she sings about her favorite things. Rain drops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens… you get the idea. Anyway, The Sound of Music is one of my favorite movies so naturally, it ties in to photojournalism. There are a few things every year that simply make me smile.

When we are dragging through January and February, my two least favorite newspaper months, I can always smile when I think of late May when the NAIA National Championship Softball Tournament is played in Decatur. The city has hosted the tournament for about ten years now and it is my favorite athletic event of the entire year. Don’t tell the boss, but I would even choose this tournament over the vast majority of the College football schedule. Really, don’t tell the boss. I do love shooting college football.

This tournament embodies to me much of the reason that I love photojournalism, emotion, action, sports and the human drama of victory and defeat played out on a scale that is at once grand and unpretentious. It is the national championship in the sport but it retains the flavor of pure competition. None of these young ladies is going on to play professionally. They are playing with all the passion and pride and little of the pretense. There is the pure thrill of victory and the pure agony of defeat. Still, it is played in a city of just over 50,000 with nary a TV camera in the house and precious few still photographers. It is a game. Better, it is still a game and has not been corrupted by TV money and dictates. Thank God!

Then there are the young people who play. They are really student athletes. Like I said, they won’t be going pro in sports. They will be professionals in life and they all know it. That makes them real and accessable. They are competitive but it tends to make them more human. I was in Wal-Mart picking up a gift for my wife’s birthday a couple of days ago and ran into three players who were in picking up some food. I asked them how things were going and they had not done well that day. The competitive fire was there but it soon faded into good natured laughter as we talked. Real people. Nice.

Photographically, the event carries the potential for great pictures almost any time. The action is top notch and there is usually some good reaction. My only complaint is the park where the games are played does not present good backgrounds. Store fronts and traffic are the backdrop if you shoot from ground level. There are scaffold towers that get you about fifteen feet up in the air but I can never get comfortable on them plus I can’t move around. It does clean up the background though. Then there is the normally nice weather in late May. It is the last, fleeting moments of spring time weather before the long march of hot, hot summer kicks in. Love it. You should come sometime. And don’t forget to bring a camera. I will be the guy with the straw hat and the beat up old 400mm.

About the photos: The top photo was shot with a D2H and an 80-200mm f2.8 through the fence behind home plate. You have to get real close to the fence and usually it is more reliable to prefocus than to autofocus because the fence can interrupt the AF. The lower photo was shot with a D2Hs and the old reliable 400 f3.5. The player lost the ball while looking directly into the sun. It was a foul ball but would have been an easy out under normal conditions.

Photos copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

First an apology; I have been too busy to update the blog much of the week so it has been a bit stale. The boss has been out on medical leave and we have been very short handed which means same amount of work with less people. Plus I have been doing a lot of after hours free lance work which is a blessing but it is draining. Some days have run on to what seems like the next day. Enough about me.

I thought I had done a pretty good reader profile on my colleague Jonathan Palmer last week but then he one upped the profile. Jonathan, I think I mentioned, is a very gregarious young man and, being from Kentucky, likes the whole horse thing. The Limestone Sheriff’s Department hosts an annual rodeo which he really enjoys shooting. Only problem is the rodeo is mostly a night event and the arena redefines dark. Jonathan was talking to the man who does photography for the Sheriff’s Department and explaining how great it would be to hang a couple of monolights above the chute. Jonathan can be very persuasive and the guy bought in to the idea.

Now Jonathan is not just a salesman, he is a hustler as well and I mean that in the positive sense of the word. After his shift at work was over he spent a couple of evenings helping the Sheriff’s Department set up and tweak the lights and they are being kind enough to let us use them. Now you have the background. Jonathan did not have the rodeo assignment but I told him he could tweak the schedule any way he liked as long as the jobs were shot. He worked the schedule so he could be at the arena to shoot the event he had spent so much time helping to light. Don’t you just know it, Jonathan is in the right place at the right time and ready when a bull leaps out of the stall and knocks the Limestone County Sheriff off the top of the chute. The fall caused the Sheriff a dislocated shoulder and some cuts and scrapes. Jonathan captured a four frame sequence using the strobes that he put so much work into without a thought to getting anything out of them. He was just being the nice guy that he is.

We ran two shots on our Sunday front and a four frame sequence on our web page. I have the two best shots here for you to enjoy. Our online edition requires a subscription so I can’t refer you there for a free look at the whole sequence but if you want to subscribe you can do it at decaturdaily.com if you like. Now you know that being a good guy does pay off. And, like Paul Harvey always says, “Now you know the rest of the story.”

Photos Copyright The Decatur Daily, Jonathan Palmer. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

There is an old saying that says necessity is the mother of invention. Necessity drove me to this little flash get up while assisting my friend David Higginbotham shoot a wedding. We were in a very large, dimly lit church shooting some pretty large groups. The Vivitar 285s bounced into umbrellas were not giving us enough light. In the blinding flash of a flash, inspiration struck and man did it hurt.

I quickly grabbed a pair of Nikon SB800s and set them to the SU4 setting so they would fire on optical slave. I then strapped them to the light stand just below the Vivitars. As you can see, you can also strap them to the umbrella itself using the other flash as a prop. This doubles your power per umbrella. If you are shooting with two umbrellas you are then getting four full power strobes bounced into umbrellas. You don’t lose the nice light an umbrella provides and you get basically double the power.

Since I first did this on the spur of the moment I have been able to use it for my photojournalism several times where I would have had to use direct flash in the past. The photos I have included in this post are not real good examples of photojournalism but they were shot for an education magazine we publish for the city school system and this is the photo they requested. It did need to meet the higher repro standards that the magazine has relative to the newspaper so some fill lighting was essential. The umbrella light was necessary so the double strobe set up was the perfect alternative. I am giving you an example with the strobes and without to show you the difference. Like I said, it is not the greatest example of portrait lighting I have ever done but the assignment and time of day conspired to make this pretty difficult.

You will find several situations where this lighting technique will help save your bacon. Maybe you need monolight power but don’t have a monolight budget. Maybe you have those precious lights but they are back at the office. Whatever. Give this a try. I am sure there are better ways to secure the second strobe and I know I have seen a double strobe bracket but, like the strobes you don’t have, it doesn’t help you if you don’t own one.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer

PS. Both photos are untoned so you can see the difference without any image manipulation from Photoshop.

We all know that everyone can shoot a picture. It is, after all, pretty simple to press a button. All of us who make a living doing this know that it is a bit more complex than that and that there is a huge gulf between a photographer and a snap shooter. There are several things that create that gulf aside from the obvious one which is talent. My friend Jonathan Palmer whom I featured yesterday has a friend at the Lexington Herald Leader who was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He has done a series of pictures and put them on his web site that he shot with his Iphone.

Now that is just ridiculous because his Iphone shots are better than what some folks are doing with gear costing many thousands of dollars. It just goes to show that a great shooter is a great shooter regardless of the gear he is using so put away the Canon vs Nikon debate and just focus on what works for you, even if it is an Iphone! The focus of this post and this series of posts is on helping us all get better fast so lets take the next step. Fortunately it doesn’t require the use of an Iphone.

One of the legends of photography, Henri Cartier-Bresson pretty much coined the whole concept of the decisive moment. He is legendary for many things but this is perhaps his greatest legacy and it is the one thing that can make you better in a real hurry. Concentrate on THE MOMENT. Although I don’t find THE MOMENT in every assignment I am convinced that every photo assignment has the one moment when everything comes together. This is even true of the mundane stuff. This is true of portraits, of ribbon cuttings, of sports events, fires, natural disasters and kids playing in the street. The key is staying mentally sharp throughout the coverage of an event so you don’t miss the moment. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I have missed the photo because I saw it happening but I was not ready. The camera was not at my eye or I had the wrong lens or I was just not paying close attention.

Sometimes just the slightest little change in expression makes the difference in a great picture and just another shot. If you really want to get better fast, dig your heels in and get determined to find that moment in every job you shoot. Here are some tips to help you do this.

First, keep your gear ready at all times. Have the exposure mode set properly, and if you are shooting manual, make sure your exposure settings are correct. Think enough in advance to know whether a long lens or a short lens is the one to use. If you are using strobes, make sure your batteries are hot and ready.

Second, maintain your mental focus on what you are doing. That doesn’t mean to be rude to folks who come up to talk to you but keep your conversations as short as possible so you can focus on why you are there. The other side of this coin is you have to not allow yourself to fall asleep mentally and this is tougher than being distracted by people talking to you. I almost missed a very important photo while covering an awards banquet one evening. Two of our most prominent citizens, both over ninety, one black and one white, got up and danced together briefly. The photo was a metaphor for these two pillars of the community and symbolized much more than the actual event itself meant. I had been just sitting at a table thinking how I wished they would just move it along and get this over with. Then they started to dance. Fortunately, people around me began reacting and I was able to get a couple of frames off before they sat back down. Hey, ninety plus citizens don’t typically spend a whole lot of time dancing. Anyway, I got the shot and it now hangs in a new elementary school named for both of them. Ironically, both of them passed away not long after that and they died within hours of one another. Life is amazing and we can shoot it if we are alert.

Third, and this is a result of the first two, predict what is going to happen and where it will happen and be ready. This increases your chances of a great photo exponentially. I know this sounds difficult but you would be surprised how easy this actually is when you are mentally awake and tracking with the event you are covering. Everything you shoot has a flow to it. When you are in the flow you can make nice photos with relative ease. It is tough when you just want to get it over with or when you are rushed to shoot and move on to the next job. Find the flow of the event and go with it. You will find even boring events more interesting and much easier to shoot. As you develop this skill in the boring events you will find it becomes automatic when things are really hopping.

About the photos: The portrait is of an outgoing county commission who had served faithfully for years but in his last year had run into some stormy waters. I though this frame captured his spirit and that final turbulent year very well. Nikon D2H with an 80-200 f2.8 and lit with a single monolight fired using it’s optical slave. I used a very low powered speedlight to trigger the monolight. The second photo is from an assignment on a guy who has taught in the same Sunday School class for fifty years. The little girl seemed unimpressed by his trick of winning the kids over with slices of apple. This was shot available light with a Nikon D1 (what was I thinking?) and a 14mm f2.8 Sigma lens which I find impossible to focus. The final photo is from a golf tournament putt off. The lady looking away is one of the competitors reacting to the crowds reaction to her opponent’s putt. I shot this with a 17-35mm f2.8 on a D2H and wished I had used some fill flash.

Photos copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

This will be the easiest reader profile yet since Jonathan and I work together at The Decatur Daily. Jonathan is a graduate of the University of Kentucky where he was mentored by legendary photojournalist Dave LaBelle. You guys bear with me while I take just a minute to brag on my friend. You will seldom meet a man with more energy than Jonathan. He always has a scheme running, and I mean that in the best way. He is always cooking up a photo project or working on some improvement to our photo site on The Decatur Daily’s web site which you can check out here.

Jonathan pushes me every day to get better and everyone needs a colleague like that. He also teaches me, especially about the internet stuff and he turned me on to SoundSlides. In fact, our online photo presence has been heavily shaped by Jonathan’s influence in terms of both the content and look that is on the site. Best of all, JP helps me bug our boss to buy us Canon. A man after my own heart! That is a plate full for a guy just a couple of years out of college.

I think that one of Jonathan’s greatest strengths, especially for one so new to the game, is his lighting skill. Usually lighting is one of the last things to develop so it is remarkable that his skills are as well advanced as they are. The photo of the fireworks is a good example of what I am talking about. If you have ever shot fireworks and mixed flash with it you will know exactly what I am talking about. The burst of fireworks all vary in intensity which makes a flash ratio nearly impossible to establish because each burst is different. Jonathan pulls it off nicely using an off camera strobe fired with a pocket wizard.

I chose the second photo because it shows another side of JP’s skill, this time in a spot news situation. This photo was actually shot the same morning as the devastating tornado I wrote about in some earlier posts. After shooting this fire which destroyed a historic home in Limestone County, Jonathan went to Pryor Field and hopped into an airplane and shot aerials of the storm damage. The thing I love about this photo is that it gets everything in the photo. You see the fire department’s ladder truck working, the burned out home and the ladies hugging. It pulls together the physical drama with the human drama and makes a really nice moment.

This is just an opinion, but it is one based out of a couple of years working with Jonathan, you should keep your eye on him. He has the perfect mix of skill, ambition, compassion and affability that makes a successful photojournalist. I hope he stays at The Decatur Daily for a long time but I would not be surprised to see him moving up in the photojournalism world rapidly, especially if some paper from his Old Kentucky Home comes calling!

For more of Jonathan’s work, check out his Flickr Photostream and his Sportsshooter member page. You can also visit Jonathan’s web site and blog and you will see first hand what I mean. Enjoy!

Photos copyright Jonathan Palmer, The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer (although they did hire Jonathan!)

I don’t know if it shows how young some of you guys are or how old I am, but someone left a request for a manual focus primer in the comments to an earlier post. It really hasn’t been all that long ago that there was no such thing as autofocus. Or has it? Maybe I really am that old! I know that some of my beloved children think I am older than Noah and a whole lot more conservative. But they are teenagers.

Back to manual focus. I sometimes think that the actual craft of sports photojournalism has been changed/diluted/ruined by the advent of autofocus. There was a time when a person who shot sports was truly gifted, especially with the fine art of focusing. I have been on the sidelines at big football games and shot near a Sports Illustrated shooter and wondered how the heck he was able to focus when he was blazing through a roll of film on every play. Now the AF handles all that pretty close to flawlessly. That means almost anyone can shoot sports action now, at least in theory. There are still truly gifted sports shooters and the truth is that AF does not make a great sports action photographer. Like any other feature on your camera, AF is just a tool. A skilled shooter takes a good tool and makes great photographs. An average shooter takes the same tool and makes average photographs. So, AF opened the door to more and more people being able to shoot sports but the truth is that AF didn’t really transform everyone into a sports shooting guru.

Rant over. Now back to our regularly scheduled post. Manual focus actually has some advantages over AF. The prime advantage to manual focusing a sports event is that manual focusing causes you to concentrate. The biggest difference I notice, aside from the number of sharp frames, is the difference in my concentration levels. When I manual focus an event I tend to be much more sharply focused on what is actually going on in my viewfinder. AF allows me to relax a little and that is not always a good thing. I do better work when I am sweating a little.

Another advantage manual has is it frees you from that center spot AF mark in your viewfinder allowing you the freedom to actually frame an image rather than being dependent on your subject staying in the designated focusing area. Yes, I know, there are several AF settings that purport to actually track a subject as it moves out of the center AF sensor but I have never learned to trust them when a real picture is on the line. I notice that my photos are framed better when I shoot manual. I can see equally well in the edges of the frame as I can the center so I don’t have to worry about the AF spot.

Obviously, AF has its own set of advantages which I don’t really need to go into since we all know and love them already. Suffice it to say, both Nikon and Canon cameras AF better than I can focus manually. It is no contest especially at night. I do okay in daylight events but night events are much tougher and always have been.

The question remains, how do you develop your manual focus skills? Tip number one: don’t try. The harder you try to manual focus a sporting event the worse you will do. If you need to practice, go out to a street and shoot sequences of traffic moving toward you. (Don’t stand in the street to do this or someone will be taking your photo as you are loaded into an ambulance!) A street where the traffic is moving a 35-40 mph is about right. Slower might even be better. Basically you want to disengage your brain and just react to what you are seeing in the viewfinder. It is a bit like a major league hitter who is trying to hit versus a major league hitter who just steps to the plate, sees the ball and smacks it. The more you think about it the worse you will do. In other words, “trust the force Luke.”

Tip number two: Make sure all your lenses focus in the same direction. I once carried a Tamron 180 that focused the reverse of the rest of my Nikon lenses. Drove me nuts! Sounds dumb but make sure they all work the same. It will save you mega grief.

Tip number three: Have a plan. If you think a play may be made in a particular area, prefocus in that area and then just tweak the focus as the players move there. I love to do this in baseball because the action can be somewhat predictable especially if you understand the game. This is also known as zone focusing. Zone focusing used to save my bacon shooting basketball in the days before AF.

Tip number four: Use lenses designed to be manual focused. The Nikkors of yesteryear, ie: the ones before AF, were wonderful lenses. They focus like a dream. I can’t even begin to follow focus with an AF lens in manual mode. They are simply not made to do that. I usually don’t even attempt to manual focus an AF lens. It is just no fun. If you have an older Nikon manual lens, it will work on your AF body in aperture priority and manual exposure modes. Try it.

Tip number five: You can do yourself a favor by limiting the photos you will have to shoot following focus on players moving directly at you. You can improve your odds by making the plane of focus more shallow by shooting at angles where the action moves parallel to your position as opposed to perpendicular to it. It is much easier to shoot a player moving across your field of view than it is to shoot a player moving straight at you.

Beyond those tips, you just have to practice and be persistent. Most of my best sports images have come from that beat up old 400mm f3.5 manual focus lens. I use it all the time and that is the key. I don’t have to think about it. I just pop it on and go.

About the photos: The top photo is from a Hartselle High school baseball game. The ball was hit to the right fielder and was fading away from him. He is diving to make the play on the ball. I shot with a Nikon D2Hs and the 400mm f3.5 manual lens wide open. The photo is just a tad soft and requires a bit of sharpening in Photoshop to make it workable. The second photo is from a tennis match and the focusing here is mostly incremental rather than a large differential so it is relatively easy to focus. This is also a D2Hs and a 400mm f3.5.\

Photos copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.