Photography has been such a great thing for me. Not only is it a great way for me to be creative, it also gets me out of the house. This past weekend I went to Mt. Trashmore to see the lumberjack competition and a friends bachelor party at a local night club.
I found out about the lumberjack competition from my dad. He gave me a call the day before to tell me about and told me it would be good practice for action shots. In my mind, I figured I was already pretty good with action and timing. I should listen to my dad more often because it was tough, really tough. I had no idea what I was looking at and the action was really quick. These guys are like machines taking out these logs. I now know just how hard photojournalists must work when they get tossed into a new situation and have to make interesting pictures that explain what is going on. I could not get the depth of field I wanted and could not de-clutter my backgrounds. Overall I took one hundred and fifty shots including some of the event tents and spectators. Of those I felt only three or four were any good. I had missed focus on a few critical shots because the wood was disappearing faster than the camera could lock onto it.
The best shot of the day was not of any lumberjacks, but of a family and their kite. Donna and I were walking down the hill and I turned around to look at some kite fliers. The sky wasn't too dramatic, but the silhouettes looked really interesting. I knew what I wanted and concentrated on the final image in my mind, brought the camera to my eye and waited for the right moment. I was a proud papa when I got home and saw it on my monitor. I really had captured what I wanted. There was no fussing about whether I should keep it or send it spiraling into the pixel netherworld.
Later that day, I met up with some friends for a bachelor party celebration. We decided to go out to Central 111, a real cool looking night club in a very unassuming shopping center. Inside they play techno/house/mashups, serve hookahs, and have people dancing all over the place. The lights are low, the music is loud, and the strobes are, strobe-y. My primary objective was to have a great time and dance to some techno. Second thing was to make everyone look really cool and awesome in my photos. Thirdly, push the technicals to the back of the brain and "see" the end result to have one unified look of the night. I think I accomplished all three quite smashingly. I went with a muted high contrast style.
Bonus of the night was to try out the typical shutter-drag-swirly-light-club photos of a dancing girl. I showed some previews from the camera and gave her a mini-moo card. I was surprised to see her pose for me. Initially I thought I'd get kicked out of the club for taking pictures of the girl. They turned out pretty good for a first crack at this style.
I am still working very hard on getting it right in my head before the shutter ever opens.