alittlenews

Halloween is one of those times when we have elevated darkness, scary stuff and just plain gross stuff and celebrate it.  So my contribution to your happy Halloween is a spider who is having her evening meal.  This particular beasty scared the daylights out of me one evening while I walked out my backdoor slam into her web.  The next night I was a bit more careful and observant and saw her again and she is a big one.  So, the third night I set up a Lumedyne beneath her web and staked out my back door.  When this monstrous bug managed to get himself stuck in her web the spider had her meal, probably for more than one evening judging by the size of it.  I used my Canon EOS 5D with a 24-70 and triggered the Lumedyne with a Pocket Wizard.   The image was lit from below but got a little fill on reflection from the white paint under the eaves.  Have fun and don’t eat too much candy, or any poisioned apples given to you by stooped old ladies in dark forests.

A spider hanging around outside my back door struck it rich nabbing a very large bug in its web. The spider spent more than an hour securing the bug then preparing its prized meal in the way only a spider can. photo by Gary Cosby Jr. 8/21/08

Photo copyright Gary Cosby Jr.

This is one of those rare occasions where I am co-opting my own blog to do something that is not about photojournalism.  Go Vote!  This is about the worst presidential election I can remember in my life.  But I will go vote.  Quick memo to both parties; please find a candidate that appeals to my value system even if they are only available in the primaries.  I just need an option that I don’t have to hold my nose to vote for.  I could not find one candidate I felt like could lead our nation in either party through the entire election process so go out and shake the bushes, no pun intended, and see if you can come up with a candidate, please!

Now, on with the show.  I want to give you some things to think about as you go to the polls.  First of all, we must have a leader who can defend our nation.  Far from war being nearly over, we have hit the tar baby and we will be stuck in conflict with the Islamists from here to eternity.  BTW, if you don’t know about Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby you need to do a little research.  So be prepared, no matter who we elect for president we will not be immune to attacks from terrorists.  When we eventually pull our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan we will give them breathing space and will be attacked again.  That’s just the problem with enemies who don’t know when they have had their butts kicked, they just keep on fighting.

Second, we must have a leader who has some idea about the economy that doesn’t involve printing more and more money and just giving it away to any corporation who doesn’t have enough sense to make solid investments.  By the way, did you know that some of the companies our government will be bailing out are not even owned by Americans and they are giving away our tax dollars to do it.  Yeah, that stinks.  And stop giving me economic stimulus checks.  All that does is create an artificial bump that eventually leads to more inflation because you are printing Monopoly money.  Stop it and be responsible with my hard earned tax dollars.

Third, don’t give me all this crap about a health care crisis.  The real crisis is an insurance fraud crisis.  Insurance companies are writing the laws and creating the problems to begin with.  How about a little responsible government where insurance company lobbyists are not the ones writing the laws and then handing them to our senators and representatives.  For that matter, how about a permanent ban on lobbyists of every sort.  My congressman and senator can’t even hear my voice because it isn’t backed up by millions of dollars. Bottom line, I want some responsibility in my government and not my government trying to be my doctor.

Fourth, where did all the conservatives go anyway.  Look for a man who will cut government spending and intervention (read here meddling as in the Patriot Act).  I have supported President Bush on the war but where was the so called conservative when it comes to economic policy?  Geez, I mean the man has spent more money than any president in history and we are now about FOUR TRILLION DOLLARS in debt.  Man, I am looking wistfully for some Reaganomics.  Hey, you guys in Washington, stop spending money you don’t have.  Period!!!  By the way, raising my taxes does not appeal to me and it should not appeal to you either.  Don’t vote for anyone who is trying to raise income taxes.  If they can’t get by on what we are already sending them then they don’t need to be there.

Fifth, look for a candidate who values human life.  Abortion is definitely a litmus test for me.  While I may be able to make some exceptions for women whose lives are in danger and that sort of thing, abortion should be the exception and not the rule in the United States and the ability to kill babies for no reason at all should cause every American to cover our faces in shame.  The last time I looked no one is making folks have sex and when that does happen it is a crime.  Killing the innocent is a national disgrace especially when it is done in the name of convenience.  Look for a candidate with compassion to both women and babies.  And it is most definitely possible to have compassion for the woman without abortion being part of the equation.

Six, pick a candidate who will respect our amendment rights.  Rights such as the ones granted in the constitution.  You know, all that stuff about the right to keep and bear arms, the right to be free from a government dictating religious beliefs and a right to peacefully assemble and, of course, the right to a free press.  Someone once said we had certain inalienable rights, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  That guy was named Jefferson and has nice monument in DC now.  Maybe our leaders ought to pay particular attention to our rights.  We are not a people ruled by a governmental elite with a proletariat populace.  We are a free and independent people who should not be constrained by an overbearing government but liberated by a government of the people, by the people and for the people.  Nice words that once meant something.

Sorry for the diatribe.  I will probably never do this again.  If you have made it to this point in the post you are probably as crazy as I am so let me give you one more thing.  When you look over that ballot, take a minute to pray and ask for wisdom.  Lord knows we need it and whomever is elected Tuesday is certainly going to need it too.  A really famous guy once wrote this line, “These are the times that try men’s souls…”  Those words have never been more appropriate since they day they were written than they are right now.  A little divine wisdom can only help.  Be blessed and do your patriotic duty and go vote for our next president and all the other offices who will provide our leadership in this very important time in history.

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

How to light a big room appropriately might be a better title to this post because it is something I am constantly faced with.  It would be nice to just turn on the camera and start shooting and never have to worry about light but the fact is that this is technically impossible in many situations.  We have to reproduce our photos on what is probably the worst medium in existence.  Newsprint is notoriously porous and of the lowest quality paper.  I always get really excited when we print a special section on a higher grade paper because the photo quality is going to be higher.  ( I know, simple minds…)

Choreographer Tonya Jones works through the opening number for the Morgan County Jr. Miss Pageant with this year's competitors Sunday at Encore. photo by Gary Cosby Jr. 10/05/08

Morgan County Jr. Miss candidates Ella Cauthen (right foreground) and Marian Rough (left background) work on a dance routine while rehearsing for the pageant Sunday at Encore in Decatur. photo by Gary Cosby Jr. 10/05/08

This means that I am always walking into large rooms that are too dark to allow me to adequately reproduce a photo on newsprint.  That means I am going to be adding light.  The trick is knowing when and how to add light to either preserve the atmostphere of the room or to completely destroy it.  I have two examples in this post of recent jobs that required me to shoot both ways.

The first is the Jr. Miss rehearsal.  It was held in a large, poorly lit facility and no camera, be it a D3 or a point and shoot would produce an image that was usable on newsprint.  That meant just destroying the ambient because the ambient basically would produce a green dungeon effect, not pretty in print!  In this situation I was faced with two options.  The first is to just point a strobe at the subjects and blast away.  Okay, well, that is actually not an option because I will never do that except in outdoor spot news situations at night and I will do every trick in the book to avoid doing it even then.  So that leaves me with lighting the room in a way that simulates at least the position of the available light.  Since I can’t crawl up into the rafters and hang strobes I will go with bounce strobe lighting.

For these shots I set up two Lumedynes on about 100ws each and set the light stands to give maximum coverage of the exercise area.  I tried it with the lights direct but the shadows were very distracting and there was a distinct light falloff from the front of the exercise floor to the back.  That was unacceptable so the bounce flash option worked very well.  I could have used a couple of regular hot shoe strobes on the light stands and set them to full power.  I might have had to bump my camera’s ISO up a bit but that would have been no big deal.  I had the Lumedynes and they are great for that situation.

Austin Cunningham plays and sings for a crowd gathered in Barry and Tammy Nance's home in Decatur. The Nance's served a Texas style dinner before concert honoring Cunningham's Garland, TX roots. photo by Gary Cosby Jr. 10/17/08

The other assignment was on home concerts.  This is a new thing where someone brings a musician into their home and invites over twenty or thirty people and has a dinner party with a concert following.  Interesting concept but having twenty to thirty people in just about any home means it is going to be crowded.  I didn’t even take a light stand in, just a couple of Vivitar 285HV strobes.  These things are really cheap, about $85, and produce a nice light.  I shot with one in the hot shoe bounced for the walking around shots.  When it came time to light the room for the concert I changed up a bit.  I placed one Vivitar on top of a fairly tall piece of furniture and aimed it at the entertainer zoomed all the way out.  I took the other Vivitar up on a balcony and used it to bounce off of a wall to just provide a little light on the crowd.  I balanced the strobe outputs to keep from overpowering the room so the lighting effect was similar to the room light.  This is what I do to get shots that will reproduce in the paper and keep it ethical in the process.

Austin Cunningham plays for a small crowd gathered in Barry and Tammy Nance's home in Decatur.

I know it is a minor point in the great debate of ethics but lighting can be deceitful.  In a reporting situation you need to keep everything as honest as possible.  Besides that, much of the time the light looks more natural and appealing when it is done well.  A straight on strobe is seldom accurate and often just produces bad photographs.

Photos 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.

Halloween is just around the corner and rather than show you what I shot after the fact I thought I would let you see it ahead of time and maybe help get your juices flowing.  Shhhh! If you are a reader of the Decatur Daily you haven’t seen this in print yet so keep it quiet!  The assignment was to follow a paranormal investigation team to a spooky, old house in Lawrence County near the town of Moulton.  I had done one of these “ghost busting” expeditions before so I had a certain level of expectation regarding the equipment they would bring.  Unfortunately, this group was a bit more low tech than the one I had done before.

Amanda Kelsoe, Keith Duncan and Denise Duncan pose in front of an old house near Moulton that they are investigating for paranormal activity. photo by Gary Cosby Jr. 10/18/08 Copyright The Decatur Daily, All rights reserved.

This translated into shooting in pitch black darkness with absolutely no artificial light except for the flashlights we were carrying.  The night was clear and a bit nippy with a beautiful star lit sky.  The house was not too remarkable from the outside but I knew my best, and perhaps only chance, to get a picture of the team was to do it outside before we went in.  I had a couple of strobes with me but did not want to use them because I had a ghostly image in mind.  I carry a small, pocket LED flashlight and wanted to use it to do the light painting.  I was able to do two exposures on the team before we had to go in.

Technically speaking, the portrait was done at 30 seconds, f4 at ISO 1600.  Oh, and I didn’t have a tripod.  Figures!  Instead of the tripod, I just opened my camera bag and nestled my camera on top of some other gear.  I anticipated having very little light so I brought my EOS 5D to the shoot.  The portrait was done with the 20mm lens.  I light painted for about 15 seconds moving the light continuously.  The first frame came out a bit overexposed on the people for the effect I wanted.  On the second frame I had just begun painting with light when the owner of the house pulled up in his pickup truck bathing the scene in his headlights.  I figured the shot was blown so I asked them to just get up and walk out of the frame.  I chimped the shot and realized it had worked exactly as I wanted so I didn’t even do another frame.

Now for the really hard part.  We went inside and all gathered in a room and then everyone killed their flashlights.  Now I am really in trouble.  Even a 30 second exposure is not going to produce and image in this ink.  I am a bit mystified as to why a ghost would not manifest itself with some light on but, ehhh, what do I know.  All my ghosts are Holy ones and He works in the light!  So there I am with nothing, NOTHING I SAY, to work with but dungeon darkness.  Then there is the owners girl friend who keeps feeling something tug at her jeans and then her sweat shirt.  And our ghost busters keep talking to the darkness asking any ghostly presences to manifest themselves in some way.  My skepticism is now palpable and I still have pretty much nothing.

Desperation.  I was ready to start making ghost noises just to get someone to turn on a flashlight!  Eventually, after about an hour of waiting and working, the flashlights came on enough to make a few pictures.  Barely!  These photos have too much motion blur in them for my taste but at least it is the type assignment where motion blur actually adds something to the ghostly effect I was hoping for.  I have one photo I like a lot and another couple of images that are okay but the rest are just, oh well, why mince words, the rest are just crap.

As I look back on the whole thing I realize that I am the one at fault for not planning better.  I based my equipment selections on a past experience where the paranormal group used some fairly decent video equipment including monitors which produce light.  They also “wired” the building which meant they used light to set up.  These factors biased me to expect some things that this team did not do so I was a bit under prepared.  I would have taken multiple flashlights and just worked them in as I could if I had been thinking right.  No strobes.  No, no.  Strobes would have just flooded the scene with light and that would have been the wrong feel.  It had to have some blur but it certainly needed some more light.  I was happy to leave there with at least a couple of usable frames and that is the bottom line.  Next time, should there be a next time, I will take multiple small flashlight I can set up around the room or have people hold and turn on and off for me.  Live and learn my friends, live and learn.

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

One of the good things about working in a small market is I have to cover far less violence than some of my brothers and sisters in large markets.  Still, stuff happens.  This has been a pretty active year for shootings and stabbings and this weekend I covered one of each.

Officer Chris Burcham listens to witness statement following a stabbing on 10th Ave SW in Decatur Sunday afternoon. One woman received a minor injury in the incident.

There was not much left to photograph by the time I got to the scene of the shooting.  I arrived at least thrity minutes after the incident so there was not much left except a pile of clothing cut from the victim by rescuers.  This leaves few options except photographing whatever is left.  Sometimes you can work people into the photo and sometimes you can’t.  This time, I couldn’t just hang around and wait for the crime scene tech to show up so I had to shoot the pile of clothes. essentially a still life.  When that is all you have you have to work angles and other things like the shadows of the officers to pull together some kind of a photo.

Shadows from Decatur Police officers fall across clothing stripped from a shooting victim by rescuers lies in the middle of 12th Ave NW Saturday afternoon. The clothing was removed during rescue efforts.

The next day we heard a police report of a stabbing with a large crowd in the street.  I didn’t leave the office immediately because the scene was not secure.  I waited two or three minutes until I was sure other officers were on the way to the scene before I left to go cover it.  As it turns out there was not much to it.  The crowd was more of a Sunday afternoon spectator crowd than an agitated mob and the stabbing was little more than a cut with a pocket knife.  We didn’t even publish a photo.

Never the less, there are times when you go into a situation when things are very tense.  Some neighborhoods you just don’t want to be in after the police, fire and EMS people have left.  The best policy I can tell you is to play it by your own gut instinct.  I have been to places where I either didn’t get out or didn’t stay long because I could sense the mood was very hostile.  Other times I have walked right in an taken pictures without much worry.  When I feel inside it is time to leave I am going to leave.  Safety is more important than the photo and you have to have some perspective on how important the event is.

This month’s issue of News Photographer magazine has a lengthy story about media people who were arrested by police while they were covering demonstrations outside the Republican National Convention.  Some of them were pepper sprayed and some were handled pretty rough even when police knew they were accredited members of the media.  Once in a while you will see stories about how media people become targets during demonstrations, riots and protests.  In other words, you can’t  just assume you will be safe while covering big events.  Maybe you are willing to risk a little more if you are covering the RNC than if you are covering a single incident shooting or stabbing on a neighborhood street.  Maybe too, the police are more on your side in that situation than at the big event.

My general rule of thumb has always been to get what I need and get out.  I don’t hang around waiting long after the police have cleared up.  There is just no benefit to it.  I shoot, work with the reporter and leave.  If I am working with a reporter and the situation seems unstable I will either stay with the reporter for a little mutual protection or, if I have to leave, I will make sure the reporter knows I am leaving so they don’t look around and find themselves alone.  Stuff happens and we have to be there to cover it just do your job with enough awareness that the stuff isn’t happening to you.

Photos 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.

Okay, disclaimer; I can’t fish worth a lick.  That’s southern speak meaning that I am most definitely not a fisherman.  In fact, my best day fishing was a couple of months ago when my dad and I took my seven year old and six year old sons out in his boat.  I was casting for my younger son using his Disney themed rod and reel that was literally two feet long.  I think I caught seven fish and let my son reel them in.  One was even a realtively nice, for me anyway, bass weighing a couple of pounds.  I have been fishing with my oldest son a few times when he was using the exact same gear as me and we were casting within a few feet of one another and he was pulling fish in and I was catching rocks and debris.  Like I said, I can’t fish a lick.

The winner and runner up in an FLW event on Wheeler Lake share a laugh together during the weigh in.

That said, I am coming to love covering fishing tournament weigh ins.  Yeah, I know, it doesn’t sound like much but some of these tournaments are for real, big time prizes.  I have done two tournaments this year, the FLW just this last weekend and the Bassmasters Elite early in the summer.  I got wonderful photos from both.  These guys put on a nice show but there is some genuine emotion be to shot too.  I was fairly amazed.  It goes to show that just because something doesn’t interest me, doesn’t mean that it isn’t interesting to someone.

Two FLW fishermen prepare for the weigh in removing fish from the boat's live well to take to the scales.

In fact, much of photojournalism is like that.  My area of personal interests is fairly limited.  I like woodworking, photography and some sports.  If it is much outside those things I am not too fascinated.  That makes work all the more challenging.  Getting excited about what someone else is passionate about can translate into excellent photographs and fishing really fires some people up.  If you have lived in the south you have seen the bumper stickers on rear windows saying stuff like “A bad day fising is better than a good day working.”  Okay, not my thing but it is someones.  Btw, check out the price of those bass boats someday and you will see where a bunch of people’s passions lie!

The winner of the Bassmaster Elite event yells with joy while holding two of his larger fish up during weigh in.

Back to the point, fishing tournament weigh ins have produced some really nice photos for me this year.  I have included three from this year.  The top two are from the recently concluded FLW and the very happy man in the third photo is from the Bassmaster’s earlier this year.  I know there is nothing technically challenging about these images.  There is really nothing for you to learn about technique or lighting or even equipment choices.  What I hope you learn is that just because you are not personally interested in something you are assigned to shoot you can still make really nice images by just staying visually alert and awake.  And, as far as fishing tournament weigh ins go, it is like, well, shooting fish in a barrel!

Hope you didn’t choke on that last one.  If you did then you have gone in hook, line and sinker for this post!  Okay, okay, enough!  Really.

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

Every area of the country has something that makes it special culturally and visually.  Once in a while those things cross and you have something pretty special.  Such is the case with the Old Time Fiddler’s Convention held annually on the campus of Athens State University.  Bluegrass musicians gather from across the southeast and play and dance and play some more during the convention which includes competitive events and innumerable jam sessions.

Visually speaking, you can always make some nice photos at the Convention.  It is just about all outside in that wonderful fall light and the campus at Athens State is very nice too so it is hard to miss.  Vendors set up booths so there is a wide assortment of handmade crafts, food and yes, musical  instruments for sale.  You can just wander around the campus and the parking areas and you will find the finest blend of bluegrass, old time gospel music and a sprinkling of country music being played at any time.  Essentially, you are hearing the music of the Old South, of a culture that is vanishing in the fast paced world we live in where the Internet rules.

Perhaps the best part of it all is seeing the mixing of generations.  You have fiddlers who are so old they can barely lift the bow to kids just barely old enough to lift the bow making music side by side.  It is a rare thing to witness today but it is what was once a normal part of life.  Old folks playing their music on front porches across the south with the young folks soaking it in and getting ready to take their turn making the music.  I can’t play any instrument.  I am just not a musical person but I can certainly appreciate what I see going on every year at the Old Time Fiddler’s Convention.

Then there is the buck dancing.  It is a peculiar dance form that is primarily done with the feet somewhat like the Irish dance but not quite as lively and not usually done group style like they seem to do it.  If you ever watched the Beverly Hillbillies years ago you could see old Jed doing a buck dance from time to time.  It is not a dance style that is making the rounds in night clubs, let’s just say it that way.

Photographing this is not so much an exercise in technique as it is an exercise in visual editing.  In other words, deciding what to shoot is much more difficult than finding a technique to shoot it with.  Literally, every time you turn around there is another group of folks gathered to jam together.  The problem lies in finding angles to shoot from.  Groups can be packed tightly together with large crowds gathered around listening in or singing along.  Just getting in to get a shot can be challenging.  The crowds are very large but also very polite.  There are literally more photo opportunities per square inch at the Convention than at any other event I have ever covered.  Needless to say, it is always a highlight of my year.

One of my favorite things to do in this type setting is to try and isolate a musician either by framing or, more rarely, by using a longer lens.  You can do plenty of shots of musicians standing in groups playing but that gives you too many loose shots with no center of interest.  What I usually try to do is frame one or two musicians through the instruments of other musicians.  This gives me a nice foreground/background relationship and helps create a visual center.  This is usually a wide angle shot but you can occasionally do it with a long lens.  The crowd makes it difficult to use long glass because someone is continually getting in your way.  I seldom use flash because the natural light is so excellent.  It seems the Convention is always favored with excellent weather.  That leads me to conclude that God must really like bluegrass!

PS.  This is a perfect assignment for an audio slide show which I fully intended to do until the day of the job.  As it turns out I had such a short period of time, something like 30 minutes, that I did well just to get my photos much less collect sound too.  In the future I will be doing some posts on using Soundslides to produce audio slide shows.

Photos 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.

Volleyball is the toughest sport for me to shoot.  I am close to the action, the ball moves fast and I am frequently tied to flash.  That means I have many, many more misses than hits when shooting volleyball.  You may be the same boat as me and if you are I have some tips that may help you.

First, and this is the easiest, most fool proof method of shooting volleyball, get high and focus on the net.  A great deal of predictable action happens right around the net.  If you get on a balcony or the top of the bleachers behind one of the teams you will have a clear view of the action around the net.  This will give you a safe action photo that you can take back from any game you may cover.  The second benefit to the high behind position is it allows you to cover action on the floor on the half of the court nearest you.  For those of you who like to be predictable you can stop reading now.

If you want to be a little more adventurous, drop down to the floor and shoot from behind one of the judges.  You can sit on the floor and cover both halves of the court and you will have a low point of view which may, or may not, work for you but you will never know until you try.  This position allows you to shoot some of the dives and digs that happen near floor level.  This makes for some cool shots.  The problem is two fold.  The action is unpredictable and it moves very fast and you can have an awful lot of legs between you and the action.  Obviously it is not as dependable a shooting position but it can give you more cool action and facial expressions.

You can also try shooting on the baseline behind one of the teams.  You have the same trouble with bodies between you and much of the action but when you get a shot it will typically be pretty nice.  You can shoot net shots but what I like to do from this position is look for action on or near the floor on the opposite side of the net.  Alternatively, this is a good place to use a normal to wide lens for players chasing balls toward you.  This happens once in a while but not often enough to depend on it for you money shot.

Vary your lens choice and look for chances to shoot with your wide lens.  It will only give you a single frame or maybe two frames at most but it can be a nice break from shooting with long glass and it will yield an image your sports editors are not always seeing.  You can go really long and shoot as tight as you can on places where the action is predictable such as serves and blocks and spikes around the net.  Obviously, a 70-200 is your best friend.

Maybe you will be lucky some of the time and can shoot available light.  This has happened to me; once.  The photos with this post were done available light at ISO 1600 using my EOS 5D.  I would not have tried this with the D2H.  There would have been too much noise.  Most of the time you will be tied to some kind of strobe set up unless you are covering college or pro games.  I like to bounce my strobes off the ceiling when possible when I am shooting volleyball because of the quality of light.  Unfortunately, this is not possible in all high school gyms.  You just have to be flexible when positioning your lights and try and cover the highest percentage of the court possible with even lighting.  Having f stop fall off is not something that is easy to deal with in post production so pay attention to your lighting and work it until you have it pretty well nailed down.

Photos 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.

One I drove and one I shot.  Guess which!  I have been on a road trip to New York to deliver my oldest son to begin a new job working in a limo business owned by my wife’s uncle.  Sound complicated?  At least he is working with cars which is what he dreams about while both awake and asleep.  I have never seen a young man so consumed with cars.  So this is a good fit.  The cross country part is where I actually took camera in hand and photographed a sport that I find even less interest in than I do in cars.

But this meet is a little different from your typical high school cross country meet.  This is the Jesse Owens Classic, a massive event drawing high school cross country teams from across the region.  I believe there were about 3,000 runners particpating in a series of 5K events set at the Oakville Indian Mounds Park a few miles outside Moulton, AL.  The kids ran the event just a stones throw from where the famed Olympian and truly great American Jesse Owens was born in a little share croppers shack.  Back in 1996, the county finally got around to building a museum and park in his name.  The Olympic torch run passed through the park which probably provided the incentive for the project.  Nevertheless, there is a nice park and museum there now honoring his memory.

Technically, the event is pretty easy to shoot.  As with most 5K events, you only have time to shoot the start and then hustle over to the finish and catch the runners coming in.  The races only last from 15-20 minutes so there isn’t much time for anything else.  I have done dozens of these races so I wanted something a little different than your typical starting line photo.  I looked down the first stretch of the race and realized there was a bottleneck at the first turn.  This meant that the runners would be bunched there and that might give me a nice shot.  When I walked down, there was a nice little rise just behind the bottleneck that allowed me to have a couple of feet of elevation.  Now I knew  I had my shot.

I wanted to try some other spots along the course but with the short races and the need to get top finishers I was really limited to what I could do.  The Indian mound would have made a nice vantage point for the last two turns of the race but it was closed off.  This may seem a bit trivial but it is holy ground to the indian tribes.  I have been up there a few times but it was usually to photograph some assembly of one of the tribes.  Not a place, at any rate, to just bounce around on for a few photos.

I also found an excellent photo of a young man praying out in the parking area as I walked between the turn and the finish line.  As it turns out he was of the Jewish faith and I shot some frames with a long lens.  Then it was just a matter of waiting for him to finish to get his name.  The photo is one of my favorite from the event because it shows a side of the cross country you don’t see just hanging around doing “race” photos.

This little story will give you a couple of good tips for shooting any kind of track event.  First, scout as much as possible before the race and pick you some spots.  If it is a 5K you will have to be really careful to pick spots that are close enough together to allow you to move between there and the finish in time to get your top finishers. Secondly, always keep your eyes open for the nice flavor photo.  Everyone expects to see running.  Give them something they don’t expect.

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

I hate banquet assignments.  Period..  That doesn’t mean that I get out of covering them.  No, no.  Banquets come every year.  They come at breakfast, lunch and dinner and I hate them all.  I don’t mean that I hate what they represent because most banquets are honoring the accomplishments of someone or some group and that is a good thing.  I hate photographing banquets.  They are all the same.

Making any kind of a decent photo from a banquet is a minor miracle and banquets are always too long and usually don’t present any obviously good photos.  Again, that doesn’t mean I can get out of covering them.  Banquet assignments are the ones I am most likely to sleep walk through meaning that I have to work very hard to stay visually awake.  After all, I don’t care who the speaker is, a speaker is a speaker is a speaker and a speaker at a podium is the same picture over and over again.  The only thing you can hope for is for a really nice reaction moment when someone gets their award.

I have actually made two nice photos at a banquet assignment, in the last 18 years, that is.  I made one of them last night and, ironically, both nice photos have come from the same banquet.  The other photo was done several years ago.  It has a somewhat iconic quality to it because it featured two pillars of the community dancing together.  The man was white and the lady was black and both were in their nineties at the time.  They only danced together for a moment or two and I go the photo.  It now hangs in a new elementary school that bears both their names.  In another of those ironic twists, both of them passed away on the same day a couple of years ago.

Last night’s banquet was the Minority Awards Banquet held at the Holiday Inn.  The room is always fairly dark during banquets which means I have to set lights.  In this case I shot with two Lumedyne strobes on light stands about twenty feet back from the diaz against the outside walls of the room which is fairly large.  I bounced them off the ceiling with both power packs set at 100 watt seconds.  This gave me an aperture of f4 at the podium at ISO 800.  The speaker was Representative Arthur Davis from Birmingham.  Obviously, with the economic crisis they are facing in Washington, the Congressman’s comments carried a bit more weight than your normal banquet speaker.

Our reporter Eric Fleischauer had walked up to the head table where Congressman Davis was seated to interview prior to the start of the banquet.  I thought I would go ahead and get a mug shot before thing began so I would have something in the bag.  When I got close enough to shoot, I saw that I would have a much better shot than a mug.  Congressman Davis was in a position that allowed me to shoot tight and he was focused on Eric which was good for me.  I took advantage of the situation and got several angles with the nice, soft light which seemed to compliment his demeanor.  When I stopped shooting I knew I had a nice image and could have left then and there except I still had to wait through the banquet to get pictures of the award winners.

I don’t know how the economic crisis will turn out but I do know that I like the Congressman.  He is a thoughtful and well spoken man that is easy to respect even though we would probably differ significantly on many issues.  I was delighted to leave a banquet with a photo like this one.  Had I allowed myself to sleep walk through the job, I would never have even seen the photo.  You just never know what you are going to get when you show up on an assignment and that is what keeps me coming back day after day.

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