Photographing a golf tournament: Proper camera settings, composition and ideas

If you are a regular blog reader here, you know that I have photographed many different sports over the years, but until yesterday I had never actually photographed golf. You would think that, living in California where we have year-round golf, that I would have done this already, but nope. Not until yesterday.

My son recently added golf to his list of school sports, and he and the team asked me to come out and shoot images of them at a local tournament. I decided that this would be another great chance to break out the new Sigma 120-300mm 2.8 lens and put it through it's paces.

Here is what I brought with me on the course:

Canon 1D Mark IV (it really helped to burst at 10 frames a second to capture all aspects of their golf swing)
Sigma 120-300mm 2.8 lens (although a 70-200 would have worked as well)
Gitzo GM5561T monopod (since I wasn't about to handhold the big Sigma lens for 3 hours)
Lexar 128GB 1000x CF card (more than I needed...but what the heck!)
LowePro ProRunner 350AW bag

I also brought a Canon 5D Mark II and a 24-70 lens but never ended up using those.

After arranging a golf cart (which I really needed to follow 3 different teams throughout the 9 holes), I was off and shooting.

I shot most of the images with the lens wide open at f2.8 to separate the golfers from the background. It was nice having the 300mm reach so that I could stand back and still get nice tight shots of them.

Like any good photography, your foreground and backgrounds are important. In the image above, I wanted to show the golfer in the background but include some of the birds that were on the course in the foreground.

Most people would shoot images of the golfers from the front, but I thought that it would be interesting to include a shot from behind them. I did this on this hole for two reasons:

1. I liked the straight fairway with the trees and blue sky in the background.
2. The late day sunlight was coming from behind them and it would not have been a good shot from the front. 

I did my best to include shots of the kids, teeing off, hitting from the fairway, and using their putters on the green.

As you can see from this image, the sun was very low in the sky and shining right into their faces as they teed off from the 7th hole. This made it difficult for them to spot the ball, but I was happy to have this golden light. And hey, it is all about the photographer, right?

I really wanted to get some shot of the kids hitting out of the sand traps, to get that shot with the sand spraying all over. I positioned myself in front of my son to get this shot. Not as much sand as I was hoping, but hey, it was a really nice shot that put him on the green. (Photographer's note: most of my "picks" were images which include the golf ball in the shot. This helps tell the story, just like including the puck in hockey images and the ball in football or baseball.)

Going back to the foreground and background topic, I positioned myself with the flag in between myself and the golfer so that the viewer would know what was happening. If I did not include the flag, you would not know that he was chipping onto the green.

Most of the images that I took were centered in the frame, but I know better than to do this in every shot. I knew that Connor was putting up this hill, so I focused on him (fixed focus - not servo) and then repositioned the camera to have him far to the right of the frame. I then waited for the ball to move to the left of the frame and shot this image.

I had a challenge with the first pair since my son is left handed and his partner is right handed. This meant that whichever side I shot from, I would have the back side of one of them.

Waiting is part of the game too...

I saw that the golfer was going to hit from behind this sand trap, so I got low to the ground and shot this photo, just showing his upper torso with his club high and the grass flying.

Finally, towards the end of the day, I got my shot of the sand flying from the sand trap. I know that he was not happy being in the sand trap, but I was happy to get my shot. :)

A photo of the short game of golf.

These last two shots were tough since the sun had already set. You can't tell from these shots, but it was actually pretty dark. I had to crank up the ISO of the camera to 2000 and brighten these in Photoshop.

And then, as I was driving the golf cart to the last hole, I turned to my left and saw something coming over the hills in the distance. I thought to myself "Is that the moon?" and sure enough, it was.

I was so blown away with this opportunity that I waited a couple of minutes for the moon to rise over the hills and shot this image. Even though I was there to shoot golf, this was one of my favorite images of the day. I love the composition of this image, with the moon not completely above the hills, framed by the trees, and with some of the golf course in the foreground. If you look closely, you can even see a couple of the golfers in the distance. (Photographer's note: Since I did not have a tripod with me, I had to shoot this on my monopod. I set the ISO to 500, f/stop to 2.8 and then stopped down to -2 in exposure compensation to keep the moon from blowing out. I knew that this would darken everything else, but I also knew that I could brighten up the trees and grass in post production.)

Monterey Bay: The California Coast at it's best!

Last Friday, after being on the road for a couple of weeks straight, it was time to spend a nice day with the family and we decided to visit the amazing Monterey Bay along the coast of Northern California. We are so spoiled to live so close to this beautiful scenery and really do not go there often enough.

I was shooting images with my 5D Mark II, my son was shooting video with my backup 5D Mark II, and my wife and daughter were shooting with their iPhones. Hey - the family that shoots together stays together, right? So off we went along the coastline on a beautiful sunny afternoon.

As you can see from this image, we had great weather for our day trip. Can you imaging living along this coastline and seeing this view from your (very expensive) home everyday?

I saw this seagull hanging out on the top of this rock and moved into a position so that the different colored flowers would make a nice foreground, framing the gull. (Photographer's note: I shot this at f5 with the focus point on the gull, so that the gull would be the only object in focus, drawing the viewer's eyes to the bird and not the flowers.)

After shooting the image with the gull, I then focused on the flowers to get some nice shots of the foliage. On this particular shot, I got lucky (yep I admit it) and captured the flowers and the bee in perfect focus. If you look at the image below, which is a closer crop from the same photo, you can see the sharpness of the insect and the flowers.

(Photographer's note: The great thing about shooting images at 21 megapixels, is that I can crop in on an image like this and still have enough resolution to print an 8x10 of this shot. Since hard drives and memory cards are cheap, and since you can reuse your memory cards, I encourage you to shoot as high resolution as you can.)

I shot this image of the coastline because I was drawn to the different shades of the rocks, with the dark blue water in the background. Mother nature really is amazing.

And further down the coastline we came across this outcropping of rocks and the sea crashing against them. Like the image above, the varying colors (this time of the water) caught my attention. 

The power of the Pacific Ocean!

There is a ton of wildlife along the Monterey coast. Here is a cute Sea Otter snacking on some crab for lunch.

We drove along 17 Mile Drive, which goes from Monterey to Carmel, CA, and made yet another stop to see more coastline. I shot this image using a wide lens (Canon 24-105mm) and then noticed that there were some seals sunning themselves on the rocks below. I went back to the car and switched to my Canon 100-400mm lens so that I could get a little closer to these guys.

After switching lenses and zooming in much further, I noticed the baby seal trying to make his way up the rocks to join the others. I think he was waving at me in this shot. :)

Too cute!

After much work, the little guy made it up onto the rocks and joined the others.

Taken from 17 mile drive, this is the famous landmark in the area, called the Lone Cypress. You used to be able to walk out to the cypress tree until some nutcase decided to try and light it on fire. Now you can only view the tree from a viewing point just off the roadside. This is located very close to the famous Pebble Beach Golf Course.

Towards the end of the day we decided to walk along the beach in Carmel. From the image above, you might think that it was night time, but it was still very light out. I saw the sun peeking through this tree and decided to shoot this manually to darken the image and silhouette the tree and the people. I took numerous shots from this point but liked this one the best since it shows the couple walking out to the beach hand-in-hand. (Photographer's note: I shot this image at f16 with a shutter speed of 1/1600 sec at ISO 320. I then made minor tweaks to the exposure in Photoshop and cloned out a couple of other people who were in the background and distracted from the couple.)

Just before leaving, I thought that it would be nice to take a family portrait. Since none of us was dressed for the occasion, I decided that our shadows would tell a better story. So...here we are, Annette, myself, Ali and Connor enjoying the last hour of sunlight in Monterey County. :)

Ingrid Michaelson in concert: A private Las Vegas performance

Last week I was lucky enough to attend a private concert with Ingrid Michaelson in Las Vegas. If you don't know who she is, try taking a listen to this song and then you will say "Oh, I know her..." If you get a chance, you should see her play, as she puts on an amazing show.

She started by playing the Ukulele, assisted only by another guitarist.

And then switched over to keyboards for most of her other songs.

What I really liked about Ingrid, is that she would tell funny stories in between songs. I really hate going to a concert where the performer plays and sings, but shows none of their personality. She is nothing like that. This is a shot of her talking to the crowd, telling a funny story about her nationally televised stumble during the Thanksgiving Day Parade.

And then it was back to singing...

I moved from my seat, which was fifth row center, to a position just right of the stage so that I could get some other shots of her from a different angle.

These last two images were taken during her amazing performance of REM's "Nightswimming" where she uses a looping pedal to add her own background vocals. This was the last song of the evening and it was so good that I was actually hoping that she would not do any other encore songs. The song was so amazing that I don't think she could have topped it. The crowd went crazy at the end of the performance!

Check out her performance of this song being performed live at the Nokia Theartre. The video quality is not great but the audio is excellent. You can see it here.

Shooting a soccer game at night: Capturing the action

Friday evening was the last soccer game for the seniors at Prospect High School, and it just so happened that I needed to shoot an image of a soccer game for one of the videos we are doing for Target. So...off I went to capture some photos.

This was one of the first images that I grabbed, while the last of the sunlight was still hanging around. Having that little bit of evening light definitely helps to freeze the action. This was taken at ISO 320 at f2.8 and still gave me 1/800 sec. I shot all of the soccer images with the Canon 5D Mark II and the Sigma 120-300mm 2.8 lens. I was also using the brand new Lexar 128GB Professional 1000x card. I could have shot more than 20,000 shots on this card. Too much fun!

Once it got dark, I was forced to change my ISO to 3200 and shoot wide open at f2.8 to get somewhere between 1/200 and 1/500 sec.

This is a shot of our good friend, Jamie, after she scored a beautiful goal by heading the ball into the net.

The celebration commences...

The expressions on these girls really tells the story. You can see the exuberance in the white team and the despair in the dark team.

(Photographer tip: I find that, especially when one team is wearing white jerseys, the camera is often fooled by the overhead lights, and over compensates for the field lights. In order to keep the images from being over-exposed, I shot in aperture priority and used the exposure compensation to bring the images down by 2/3 stop. I knew that I could always brighten the images in Photoshop, but that I could not fix the images if they were blown out.)

I like this image because of all three girls surrounding the ball in almost perfect symmetry.

This was my favorite image from the evening. I love the fact that this was captured at the peak of action with her red hair high above her head.

For those of you trying to take pictures of your friends and family at a soccer game, I recommend the following:

* Shutter speed of at least 1/500 sec (much easier during the day than at night)
* Focus mode: Servo (when the camera changes the focus dynamically)
* ISO: high enough to get you the recommended shutter speed
* Shoot in either shutter priority or aperture priority (depending on your conditions and which you prefer)
* Get as close to the field as possible
* Have fun

911 Memorial in New York: Photos (day and night shots) to honor those who lost their lives

After a full week in New York City, I finally finished all of my presentations at the big photo dealers in town (and NJ) and had a chance to go shoot some images. I have been to the city so many times, that I am always looking for new locations to capture. Well...for this trip, it was a no brainer. I wanted to go see the 911 Memorial on my last trip, but could not get tickets. I went online and was happy to see that they are now readily available (even same day). I reserved my ticket for 3:30pm (giving a voluntary donation which was well worth it) which would let me capture images in daylight and in evening light. I figured that 2 1/2 hours would be sufficient to capture some nice images.

The names of every person who died in the terrorist attacks of February 26, 1993 and September 11, 2001 are inscribed in bronze around the twin memorial pools. The first names that I saw when first approaching the pools, were these names along with Ladder 24 and other members of NYFD.

It is a very solemn place, with so many people coming to pay their respects to those who are no longer with us.

These pools are part of what will be an 8 acre park within the 16 acre World Trade Center.

This image really spoke to me. I am not sure if this gentleman was praying, looking up to pay respects or simply looking up at the skyline. But the fact that he stands out from the crowd and has this look pretty much says it all to me. (Photographer's note: I did retouch this image to slightly darken all the other people to draw more attention to the one gentleman. And, I did lighten his face by a quarter stop. These edits are all very subtle but help to draw the viewer eyes to tell the story.)

At 5:30pm, the sun had set, the sky started to get a little darker, and the lights came on. This made for a much more dramatic setting, not only for photos, but in general. The memorial closes at 6pm, but I would recommend visiting late in the afternoon so that you see it both in daylight and darkness (depending on the time of year of course).
 

So simple and yet so pretty.

This is one of my favorite shots of the evening. I shot this image to show the inscribed names, but also include the fountains, the museum (which is still being built) and the construction in the background. Once again, the lighting in the evening made this image so much stronger than the daylight shot. (Photographer's note: I shot this image at f13 so that the foreground and background would be in focus. It also gave me a nice long exposure to blur the water. The ISO was set to 100 to give me the cleanest shot and the shutter speed was 2.5 seconds. And yes...I was on my Gitzo tripod.)

Another view of the fountain and museum.

I framed this shot to get the fountain in the foreground and the American Flag in the background.

One of the new World Trade Towers during construction. It is amazing to watch the progress of this building on each of my trips to NYC. I can't wait until they are finished, so that we can once again have what was taken away from this nation.

OK...if you know me...you know that I always push everything to the limits. Right? Well...I was shooting at the memorial with my good friend, Matthew Sweetwood (President of Unique Photo in New Jersey - and all around great guy) and we ended up being the last two people at closing time. This should be no surprise to anyone who knows me and how I love to shoot at night. So, all these security people came up to us and said that we had to go. But I saw this as a perfect photo opportunity. I asked if we could take a picture with all of them to show that we closed the place. They were not sure if this was a good idea, but then their sergeant showed up and I asked him if we could do this. After some persuading, he gave us the OK. I set up my tripod and shot this picture. Love it!

A tribute to a fallen leader at Micron: Steve Appleton

Today is an incredibly sad day at Micron / Lexar. Their CEO and leader, Steve Appleton, was killed in a small airplane accident this morning. 

Steve was a really great guy who helped turn Micron into a world class company; one that I am proud to be affiliated with for a long long time. He will be missed by us all.

At the young age of 51, Steve lived life to it's fullest. He loved to fly airplanes and ended up dieing doing what he loved.

I am still sitting here in shock...