Kristina Baskett - U of U Gymnastics

Confession time!

I don't know much about gymnastics other than I love to watch it during the Olympics. I don't know the rules, I don't know the traditions, I don't know what makes a good gymnast good. WHAT I DO KNOW is there are some people that are just FUN TO WATCH.

There are some gymnasts who, when they finish their routine, they may or may not get high scores, but I find I just don't care. There are others who, if I could watch them "all over again", they would totally make my day.

One such gymnast is Kristina Baskett. I saw her last night. I was touched. I can officially say, I love this girl! She has grace and style and an excellence that earns her top scores in one of the highest scoring teams in the nation. I could watch her all over again and enjoy the experience more and more each time.

Now admittedly, at some 30 rows up, we didn't have the best seats in the house (how I would love to be down on the floor!), but I had my trusty sports shooter Canon 1D Mark III with a long Canon 100-400 f/4-5.6L IS lens. It's a relative slow lens (which meant shooting higher ISO than I would have liked), but the length of the lens let me get some decent shots even from high above.

On to the pictures!


The very first thing that I noticed right off the bat watching Kristina was that I love her lines. My daughter asked what I meant by that. My answer is the way she holds her body. Everything seems to be on purpose. Fully extended, or bent whichever way, it's like poetry in motion.

Just ... take a look!


Even while her arm is fully extended (seemingly drawing attention to that part of her body), even her feet and toes are purposely posed.


Again, watch the fingers and toes.


And what a gymnast! Such grace AND power! Pardon me for not expecting her to leap so high that I cut off her fingers! (but again, fingers, toes, leg position)


And talk about fun to watch! :)


Wow, I would love to be where those photographers are sitting!


Well deserved hugs from her teammates!


Shoulders, hands, toes. I love watching her!








She won me over with her smile!


Super girl! She flies!!! :)


I could almost swear she caught me looking at her!


I'll say it again. I love her lines!


So much fun!






More well deserved hugs!


Top scoring gymnast of the evening!


Go Kristina! GO UTES!

Do you agree with me? I think she's definitely worth watching. I would love to see her again. I'll be routing for her!

Cool video link I found: Meet Kristina Baskett

More pictures of Kristina and many others can be found on my website.

Utah State Capitol - Before / After Lightroom

I love Adobe Lightroom and use it on all of my images. But most of the images I produce are probably closer to straight out of the camera with small tweaks rather than highly modified representations of the image.

Well, tonight I was playing around a little bit with the gradient adjustment layer in Lightroom and thought I'd show off the results of a before/after edit session. It's still nothing too fancy, but it's certainly different from the original:



Both of the above images are from a single raw image processed by Lightroom. The one on the left is just a standard conversion of the capture. The one on the right contains a few more tweaks:

- A couple of gradients were used to lighten the center and darken the top and bottom.

- Another gradient adds some blue to the sky

- Yet another gradient adds some yellow to center of the image (from the capitol building on down)

- While the first includes some Clarity and Saturation, the second uses a lot more Clarity and a little more Saturation.

The images were then brought into photoshop to resize and place them side by side.

Whatdya think? Do you prefer the more hazy picture on the left? Or the brighter, more well defined picture on the right?

LDS Draper Utah Temple at Sunrise

Two nights ago I visited the LDS (Mormon) Draper Utah Temple and took pictures at night. While I liked the pictures, I really missed having something, anything at all, up in the sky. So I returned back to the temple this morning, just before sunrise, and took these pictures:



















More pictures of the Draper Utah Temple.
Pictures of other LDS Temples.

LDS Draper Utah Temple

I had a chance to drive up to the LDS (Mormon) Draper Utah Temple this evening and take a few pictures. It was pitch black outside, perhaps not the most ideal time for picture taking. But I'll be sure to return for more pictures later. In the mean time, check out the ones I got:













Future images of the Draper Temple (and others) will be available on my website here:
LDS Temples

Working with a model - Shona Barnthouse

Standard portraiture from the point of the photographer, often involves providing a lot of direction ... look this way, chin up, face towards me, hands in your lap, etc. But working with a model, especially an experienced model, can be relaxing and often is just downright fun! The main difference being that both of you have some concept as to what is involved in "creating the image".

I recently had the privilege of working with a model. While her needs for this photo shoot were simple (nothing more than a head shot or two), we still had a bit of fun playing with a couple of different styles. Below is a collage of several of the head shots we came up with during this session:

Blowing a kiss

One of my favorite images from the photo shoot the other day is somewhat abstract in that the model's face is not in focus. Instead, the tips of her fingers as she was blowing a kiss were what I focused on. And using f/3.5 at that close range meant that very little was in focus beyond the tips of her fingers.

For this image, I used a Canon 580EX II on camera as master (but not contributing to the exposure). Another 580EX II on a light stand with an umbrella on it as my main light. And a third 580EX II with a green gel on it pointing at a white background.

Canon 5D Mark II plus Canon 85mm 1.2L Lens

Wow... what a combo!

I picked up the Canon 85mm 1.2L lens the other day. Yesterday was my first real chance to use it. And I must say... what a combo the 5D Mark II with it's 21mp resolution and the Canon 85mm 1.2L lens make. Just take a look at this image and the 100% crop below it and draw your own conclusions:


(21mp image - reduced size to fit here)


(100% crop)

All I can say is ... I'm in love with this combo. I've never had or played with a sharper lens.

Playing with video on the Canon 5D Mark II

In playing with this new camera, one thing is for sure ... video is a game changer!

It's a whole new world. And it's not as simple as it sounds! Especially if you're playing with shallow DOF and needing to put the focus on a specific individual out of a group of people. I didn't discover the AF controls for the video until I read the manual. There are three modes: Quick AF, AF Live and AF Face Recognition.

Quick AF slaps the mirror back down, uses the normal AF focusing points to quickly focus and then brings the mirror back up. Obviously you can only do this at the start of a video otherwise Quick AF would interrupt the video.

AF Live lets you place a square anywhere on the image and it will use contrast detection to focus (it does this at the time you press the AF-ON button). You need to keep in mind that the camera may decide to totally de-focus and refocus the lens. Not necessarily a good thing if it's in the middle of an action sequence.

AF Face Recognition lets the camera try to pick out a face in the scene and focus on the face. The trouble you may run into here is if you have multiple faces in view, and one of them is more important than the others to keep in focus. The camera may not pick the face you want. It also may move back and forth between faces on its own.

Manual focusing is always active -- assuming you have a lens that lets you focus while AF is engaged (all of my Canon lenses let me do this). The trouble is, if I hold the camera far enough away so I can see the LCD to determine what is in focus, then I'm more likely to bounce the camera around while I'm recording.

Like I said ... video is going to be a challenge. And shallow DOF only makes it more so.

Here is a video from yesterday's birthday party where I was using AF Face Recognition to focus the camera.


Click here for a high resolution version of the video.

New Camera: Canon 5D Mark II with Canon 24-105 f/4.0 L USM lens

So I picked up a brand new camera yesterday. This camera is SO new there are probably only 20 of them in the state of Utah at this point in time. Canon unleashed this new 21mp beauty on the world yesterday and the good folks at Pictureline contacted me first thing in the morning letting me know that they already had one in stock. Woot! :)

This new camera has several unique features:
1) It is a full frame camera (meaning the sensor is the same size as the film used on 35mm SLR)
2) The sensor has 21mp resolution - that's 3744x5616 pixels!
3) It is even capable of shooting full resolution 1080p HD video (I believe that is 1920x1080 pixels at 30 frames per second).

As I had to work during the day, and had Pictage User Group meeting at night, I really didn't get much of a chance to play with the camera yesterday. I'm hoping to remedy that over the 4-day Thanksgiving holiday weekend!

In the mean time, here are a few of my first images. This image was shot this morning on my way in to work:

Click for full resolution

Straight out of camera jpeg:
Click for full resolution

Or here is a 100% crop of the image to show the detail:


Here is a straight out of camera ISO 6400 shot:
Click for full resolution

And here is a video shot in room light with the camera last night.

Click here for full resolution video (and click the monitor button on bottom right for full screen)

(note: at the end of the video I purposely defocused the lens to see what it would look like)

I haven't decided yet how (or if) video will make its way into my workflow. But it is interesting to see such high resolution video and even more so from an DSLR!

Look for more posts in the future as I play around with the camera some more.

St. George and Las Vegas

This past weekend we had a chance to visit St. George, Utah and Las Vegas, Nevada, courtesy of my son, Devon, and his swimming and marching band competitions.

Taking advantage of the fact that we were there, two of my daughters (Cassie and Brandy) and I visited the temples in each of these two cities, cameras in hand. And here are some of the images that I captured while there:

St. George Temple






















Las Vegas Temple