Maui 2009

Surfing at Honolua Bay or disk golf in an upcountry eucalyptus forest, these are some sports you don't find in San Antonio. 

 More Maui photos to come...

The Art of Frank Weir - Texas Beyond History

"A burial party lays a loved one to rest at Loma Sandia, about 2700 years ago. This interpretive painting by TBH artist Frank Weir accurately depicts some of the archeological evidence documented at this ancient cemetery site. Other elements reflect the local landscape and climate. The scene is set on a winter day, just as a "blue norther" arrives, an auspicious moment for a funeral."   (Artwork copyright Frank A. Weir, Text copyright Texas Beyond History) Click for full image.

I was at the San Antonio Menger Hotel last night and spent some time looking at all the old pictures on the walls. I started thinking how the rarity of old film based photos compares with the overabundance of digital images today, particularly as the future life of digital images depends on iterative updating of the media upon which they reside. For instance, if you have any images stored on 'floppy' disk or early CDs you might want to see if you can even read them on your current hardware.

This brings me, in a roundabout way, to the University of Texas website Texas Beyond History and the artwork representing the past. It's one thing to take a photo of a current event, but it's something else to dig the artifacts out of the ground and build a visual history from what you find.  There are a number of talented artists on this site that do just that, but I want to point to the works of Frank Weir, not only because they are evocative of what life must have been like back then, but also because he's my uncle and it's the least I can do for all the cool art work he's given me over the years. 

Please take the time to check out some of these links...

Texas Beyond History

Frank Weir Artwork on TBH

Other Work by Frank Weir

Now if I just had inherited a small percentage of his artistic skill.... ;-)

Boerne-Champion Soccer vs Abilene Wylie

I took the opportunity to shoot some soccer in daylight at the recent tournament hosted by Boerne-Champion high school. The team usually plays at 7PM, so even though it was an overcast day, it was better than being under stadium lights. Soccer is/was my sport so it was great to be there, vicariously wishing I was playing or even refereeing...yeah, even did that for 15 years at the amateur level.

A good tutorial on shooting soccer can be found on the Canon Professional Network by John McDermott, a Sports Illustrated soccer shooter for over 30 years.

Boerne-Champion Soccer

(backgrounds, backgrounds, backgrounds....ugh, clean backgrounds are critical to great shots and I think there's only one decent background at the Boerne High School stadium. ;-)

Boerne-Champion JV Football Selects 2008

Boerne-Champion Basketball & Nikon D700

Boerne-Champion Basketball 

I shot both the varsity girls' and boys' basketball teams Monday, 29 December, during their 2008 home tournament.  Both teams won handily, with the girls beating Stony Point and the boys beating the Eagle Pass Winn Mavericks.

The new gym is really well lit for a high school facility, but when shooting volleyball with my Nikon D300 I still ended up with either lots of low-light, high-noise artifacts and/or slightly blurry shots due to having to use a slow shutter speed.  This was shooting at ISO 2000, shutter around 1/250 and either 70-200/f2.8 or 50/f1.8 glass.

I was really looking forward to trying out the the new Nikon D700 for the basketball games and it was almost as good as I expected. The D700 uses the same sensor as Nikon's $5000 D3 at a much better price point.  I was able to shoot at ISO 2500-5000, shutter around 1/400 to 1/500 using my 70-200/f2.8 zoom.  Auto-focus acquisition was a bit slower than expected, probably due to the limited light coming through the 70-200.

The nice thing was my ability to get much sharper images than with volleyball, though even this camera isn't a miracle worker at ISO 5000, so some noise does start to show on the web images, though prints are a bit more forgiving.  I'll probably limit myself to ISO 3200 next time and see how that works.

It's a somewhat interesting problem.  A good photo needs a clean background so I tend to shoot from a low position, but the gym lights are very bright when shooting upward, while the players often create their own shadow. Sometimes the camera just can't get it right and I spend way too much time post-processing the images before posting them for sale. ;-)

I'd love to be able to set up lights in the gym, which mitigates the somewhat flat look you can get with low-light, high-ISO, images, but I don't see that happening anytime soon, so I'll continue to enjoy shooting the D700 and hopefully even improve on some of these enjoyable images.

Boerne-Champion Basketball 

Everyone have a safe New Years and feel free to say hi if you see a tall guy with grey hair wandering around the court with a camera or two (or on the sidelines of the soccer field, as the one sport I was actually competitive in starts in January. ;-)

I'm back... Boerne-Champion Basketball Tournament -- 29-30 Dec

Well, things have stabilized a bit in Mexico for me so I'm back here sorting out some estate issues.  I'm going to try and shoot at least one game of the Boerne-Champion Basketball tournament on 29-30 Dec.  We'll see how good the new Nikon D700 really is, as long as I can do my creative job of actually making the picture. ;-)

If your son or daughter is playing in the tournament and you'd like me to try and focus on them a bit, drop me an email or catch me at the evening games and let me know their team and number.

Looking forward to soccer, then baseball and softball.  Spring sports will be great!

Just a reminder, since I shoot mostly 'spec' I have to limit the number of games I cover unless my print sales justify more coverage.  If you or a group of parents would like me to shoot a particular game, please let me know and I'll try and schedule it.  Custom coverage is also available with a confirmed session fee, just like doing senior or family portraits.

Questions or suggestions, please email me.  I really want to meet your needs and exceed your expectations.

Happy New Year...

December Update

Sorry I haven't been posting much. On December 4th I had a family emergency develop down in Mexico, so I'm still down here helping out. I hope to be back before Christmas and maybe shoot at least one Boerne Varsity basketball game.

More to come...