Full galleries for the games below are located at:
Webb School of Knoxville vs Farragut High School (January 25, 2010)
West High School vs Knoxville Catholic High School (January 26, 2010)

OK, I’ve had a few people ask me about strobing basketball and I haven’t updated this blog in ages, so I thought I’d show a couple of sample setups with some sample images. Real quickly here is what is involved in each setup.  The typical setup is a Canon 1D Mark III with the EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS attached and a Canon 1D Mark II with the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L attached.

Setup 1: Studio Strobes

Elinchrom BX500Ri x2 or alternatively you can buy the To Go Kit which includes 2 lights, 2 light stands, 2 softboxes, as well as a Skyport Transmitter.
Elinchrom Wide Angle Reflector x2
PocketWizard FlexTT5 x2 (These aren’t needed, but I use a Two Camera setup and since I already have them, I use them.  You could get another Skyport Transmitter instead if you wanted to use two cameras and don’t want to switch transmitters back and forth.)
PocketWizardMini TT1
Manfrotto Super Clamp x2 (You could use light stands, but they tend to get in the way and you’ll need to make sure they don’t get knocked over by somebody on accident.)
Extension Cords and Gaffer’s Tape
Miniphone to Miniphone Cable (Only needed if using the PocketWizards)

Setup 2: Speedlites

PocketWizard FlexTT5 x2
PocketWizardMini TT1
Canon CP-E4 Battery Pack x2 (You can do without them, but they really do help to speed up recycling of the flashes.)
Canon 580EX II Speedlite x2 (I actually use a 580EXII and 550EX.)
Manfrotto Super Clamp x2 (You could use light stands, but they tend to get in the way and you’ll need to make sure they don’t get knocked over by somebody on accident.)
Universal Umbrella Bracket with Swivel Mount x2

Ok the first setup, is the setup I used Monday night at Farragut High School. I had an Elinchrom BX 500 Ri on each side of one half of the court and was bouncing of the ceiling. The biggest advantage to this setup in the power and action stopping capability of these lights.  The biggest disadvantage is the time it takes to setup and take down and having to wait for the lights to recycle. This setup allows me to shoot ISO 400, 1/250th, and between f/2.8 and f/4.5 depending on the location of the player.  The first image you see shows the placement of the strobes and the second image is how one of them is mounted.  I bounce them off the ceiling and have the pointed towards the center of the court.  I have experimented with having the strobes at different power settings (full, 3/4, and 1/2) and have found that bouncing at full power gives the best results.  Even at full power, these lights have a recycle time around 1.5 seconds, which is still pretty decent.

In the next two examples (1-1 and 1-2) you can see that it does a good job of providing even lighting towards the middle of the court.  However, in example 1-3 you can see that the downfall to this setup is when getting players around the three-point line close to the baseline, their backs will be a little hot (backlighting) from the strobe closest to them.  Of course with the Skyport setup, I have 1 light in group one and 1 light in group 2.  I can fire both by setting the transmitter to All or I can fire an individual group.  Of course changing on the fly isn’t the most practical, but it’s an option if you need to get a shot of a particular player from the three point line near the baselines.

The second setup is the setup I used on Tuesday night at Catholic High School.  I had both setups with me, but opted to use the Speedlites.  The advantage to using Speedlites are in the fact that they are smaller, require less setup and take down time, and have faster recycle times.  The biggest disadvantage is  that there isn’t enough power to bounce them, so the shots are more direct and also more susceptible to hot spots from a strong back light.  Typically my shots where ISO 800, 1/250, and between f/2.8 and f/5.6 depending on the location of the player.  I also experimented with different power settings for the flashes, but since I am using the PocketWizard TT1/TT5 setup, I found that using E-TTL II with the camera using the Averaging algorithm (instead of Evaluative) and FEC set to +2/3 works the best.  Again I’ll follow the same examples as above.  The first two images will show the setup followed by three example shots.  Two will be near the basket and one from the three point line near the baseline.

When I originally started this post, I had planned to go back to Knoxville Catholic for their game against Webb on Friday night since my assignments were all earlier in the week and use my strobes so you could see a comparison of strobes vs speedlites in the same gym.  Well a line of snow and freezing rain storms came in, thus the game was canceled.  I do prefer to shoot with my strobes over speedlites, so I’d rather go back to Catholic and shoot strobes than to shoot at Farragut or any of the other schools I’ve shot at before and shoot Speedlites.  Webb vs Catholic is a big rivalry game too, so I’d rather go on one of the less crowded nights.  I’ll probably update this post when I make it back to KCHS.

In addition to Facebook, I’ll be posting the Photo-A-Day photos in my other gallery at http://photoaday.justinacuff.com/ http://www.justinacuffphotography.com/category/photo-a-day-2009/. (After I finished I decided to migrate it over to my WordPress blog.) I still may post some additional ones here or on my photography site, but that site will be the final destination for the photos unless I change my mind.

To all ya’ll that still read this blog (Hi Mom and Dad) or have subscribed to my RSS feed… Happy New Year! This year, instead of resolutions, I’m going to do a project. This is nothing original, as it has been done by many people, but I going to try and do a Photo-A-Day project in 2009. I’m not sure where I’ll post them, but I’ll be figuring something out soon enough. The next post on my blog will probably be where I am posting them.

The rules are simple. Every day I will commit to taking one photograph and sharing it. The camera does not matter. It may be one of my digital SLRs, one of my point and shoots, or even with my camera phone. I may not get around to posting each image every day, but I will commit to taking an image everyday. I know there are just going to be some days that I am unable to get to a computer. I’ll try to get no more than a week behind. Some photo’s may have commentary, others may just be the image itself. All photos posted are eligible for critique and/or praise.

Technorati Tags: Cades Cove, Hyatt Lane, HDR, photography

This past weekend was a really busy one, but fun filled. It started on Saturday by meeting up with Bryan and Meredith, Justin S, Derek, Dale, and Ann for some backpacking in Big South Fork. They all go to Brentwood Hills CoC. It was kind of an interesting itinerary. Dale’s truck was left over near Bandy Creek Campground. We meet up at Leatherwood Ford. The plan was to camp out just below the Angel Falls Overlook, but first do a day hike from Leatherwood Ford to Bandy Creek, stopping by Angel Falls. The length of the Day Hike was right around 10.5 miles. I didn’t take my GPS this time, so about the only thing I really have to go on is estimating by pace and time. Our campsite was two miles in on the trail. We took a couple of tents to claim our spot. We would carry the rest of our gear when we finished the day hike and returned back to Leatherwood Food. It got cold and started to very lightly rain… and I had left my rain jacket in the car, so I was pretty miserable during the day hike and anxious to get back to the car. After getting our gear, we proceeded to hike back to camp. It is a really flat trail, so that helps when carrying a 31 lb pack after hiking 10.5 miles. After we setup, we started cooking dinner. Shortly after dinner, it started raining again. I opted to take shelter in my tent. I usually have trouble falling asleep when I’m out camping, but this time, I was out pretty quickly. I’m sure I was probably the first one out.

My plan was to leave around 8:00 in the morning since I needed to get ready for the Nature and Travel Photography Field trip later in the afternoon. Derek and Ann also had to go back to Nashville and be there in time for a Habitat for Humanity Dedication for a house their group had worked on. When I saw Derek walking around, I went down to see when they had planned on leaving… if soon I’d hike out with them, if not, I’d just hike out alone. Came to find out he had gotten sick. We originally had planned to have a church service, but in Derek’s condition, it was decided that the best thing was to get him back to the car. I helped him pack up his stuff and then went to check on Ann. She had just gotten up and was starting to pack up. However, she really didn’t have a backpack that was big enough for her stuff. On the way in Dale had helped her carry her stuff (I assume), but since Dale wasn’t camping, he left after dinner. What we decided to do was I’d hike out with Derek and carry some of Ann’s stuff and Bryan would hike out with Ann and carry some of Ann and Derek’s stuff. Then Bryan would go back to camp and hike out with Meredith and Justin later.

So that was a long story, with no pictures… but the moral of it is, it helps to have the right gear, whether it be a rain jacket or a large backpack.

Ok we now for the part of this entry that doesn’t require much writing. A few of us meet up at UT before and drove to Townsend. We then meet up with everyone else at the parking lot just before you get to the Y. As part of the field trip, we only went to two places. The first was Middle Prong on the road past Treemont. The second place was one of the first parking areas you come to after you pass the road to Treemont on the way to Cades Cove. Through work, I have access to a couple of pieces of equipment that I probably won’t ever buy. One is a Canon 40D that has been converted to Infrared and the other is a 600mm f4L lens.

http://gallery2.justinacuff.net/v/photography_certificate/nature_and_travel_photography/field_trip_1/

Technorati Tags: Big South Fork, Great Smoky Mountains, Nature and Travel Photography, photography, photography class, field trip

You may remember that a couple of my previous posts had pictures, but now they are gone. This is because I just wasn’t happy with the new built in WordPress Image Gallery. So instead I have removed them and placed a link to their appropriate album in my Gallery, as does that link. I might come back to it later, but there are some things that desperately need to be fixed before I do. Anyways, now on with the post.

This past weekend, I had some free time on Saturday morning, so I decided I was going to start it off real early and make some photographs just for the fun of it. It had rained the night before and wasn’t supposed to rain on Saturday, which means the day will be pretty clear. My first destination was the Miller’s Cove Overlook on Foothills Parkway West (the road up to Look Rock). Miller’s Cove is the first overlook you come to, so it really isn’t that far of a drive from Knoxville. I got there around 5:30 and just kind of waited. About 10 minutes before sunrise, a group of about 8 people on a workshop showed up as well. One of the first shots I got before they showed up, happens to be one of my more favorite shots from all day. It may be a dark picture, but that’s part of what I like about it. The next picture is one of the better sunrise shots. There really wasn’t a whole lot of red in the sky that morning, so I really had to push it to get this picture.

After that, I headed into Cades Cove. Cades Cove is one of those place that I usually prefer to go to either really early in the day or really late at night. If you go outside of those times, you are probably going to be stuck in a traffic jam that rivals some of the worst traffic jams in Knoxville. The cause of these traffic jams are often stupidity with a side of selfishness. Cades Cove is an 11 mile loop that once you get on, is difficult to get off. If people would just follow the rules, it wouldn’t be so bad. The main rule is, don’t stop in the middle of the road, use pull-offs. There are lots of pull offs to accommodate people, but they seldom use them. Instead they stop in the middle of the road and it is usually to take a picture of a deer. Deer are really abundant in Cades Cove, so you can just imagine how this is. The two things that really get me is people who stop in the middle of the road when there is a pull-off 10 feet in front of them and those that stop in the middle of the road and use the pull-off to take their picture. Anyways, enough with my Cades Cove rant. I got there just before 8:00 and wanted to get my pictures in while the light was still good. They were all typical shots that I’m happy with, but I’ll get better shots on a different day.

This next image is definitely a place I will go back to in the fall. I’m happy with the shot as it is, but I’m certain it will look 20 times better with the fall colors. It’s also an area of the park that really doesn’t get busy like Cades Cove does. To get here, you turn down the road that heads to Tremont.

Technorati Tags: Photography, Great Smoky Mountains, Foothills Parkway, Miller Cove, Cades Cove, Tremont, Meigs Falls, The Sinks, Sunrise, Waterfall, Little River Road

* Shoot a properly exposed picture (manual mode) of a normal scene, not a back lit, not a front lit, not an overly light or excessively dark subject. I don’t care what aperture or what shutter speed, just properly exposed. Take notes.
* Shoot a series of five shots showing purposeful overexposures and underexposures (-2, and -1 stop, normal, +1 stop and +2 stop). Pick a shutter speed that places your aperture in the mid-point of your available apertures, say f 8. Then hold your shutter speed constant and change your apertures to get the over and under exposure your want. This is called bracketing. You can do this with shutter speeds or a combination of shutter speeds and apertures changes. Remember each full aperture change equals 1 stop. Shoot these pictures as soon as possible.
Note, do the aperture or ss change by actually changing the value of the aperture or ss, not by watching the meter move. The goal is to learn your aperture and ss values.
* Find a subject that is in motion, such as a moving car, child on a bicycle, or running water. Running water from your kitchen sink or outside garden hose does not work very well. Look for naturally flowing water. Stop, or freeze the movement of the water with shutter speed control (running water will be frozen at any shutter speed at or faster than 1/60 second. You don’t have to use the fastest shutter speed, just fast enough. Remember to keep a happy meter by adjusting your aperture.
* Now blur the movement with shutter speed control. Use a relatively slow shutter speed. Use shutter speeds starting at 1/15 sec to as slow as you can go. The limit will be set my how bright the ambient light is. When the light is bright, it is difficult or impossible to use really long shutter speeds, such as ½ or one second, but go as slow as you can while keeping your meter happy. You will find that you get to use the longest shutter possible when you set the aperture to the smallest you have, such as f22. You will need to hold the camera absolutely still for these shots. Use your tripod if you have one.
* Show shallow depth of field (such as near subject in focus and background out of focus) with aperture control. Use large apertures (large hole, small numerical value, such as f2). Get really close to your near subject and also have your far subject (viewable in the same frame) fairly far away, greater than 10-15 ft.
* Show great depth of field (near and far all in focus) with aperture control. Use small apertures (small hole, large numerical value, such as f16 or f22)

Well I’ve decided that I am not happy with WordPress’s gallery. I’ve removed those pictures and instead here’s a link to it in my gallery.

Technorati Tags: Photography, photography class, haw ridge, worlds fair park, sunsphere, fundamentals of digital photography

I should have posted this last week, but I got kind of busy with the baby day stuff at Laurel, so I didn’t get around to it. In the meantime, I upgraded WordPress to 2.5, which includes a photo gallery. Previously I had experimented with using a plug-in called WPG2. It worked good when I first installed it, but I think and upgrade to Gallery broke it and I don’t really care that much to go in and see what is going wrong.

As with most of the classes I am taking, this assignment was very informal. It was to pick a subject and photograph it many different ways. I actually picked two subjects, but that was just because they are in the same area. On April 13th, we are taking the youth group hiking. I know the Smoky Mountains the best and I am familiar with Big South Fork, but both of those areas are kind of far away and the Smoky Mountains will be crowded. I know there are hiking trails at Norris Dam State Park, so I loaded up my camera gear to run by Norris and pick up a trail map and hope there was something to photograph. In the southeastern part of the park, there is a Rice Grist Mill and the Crosby Threshing Barn in the same area. I chose these as my subjects. Also that weekend, I had a 40D we had modified to make it sensitive to infrared. I’m still trying to learn infrared. These were my first attempts. It was very cloudy and overcast that day, so the infrared pictures aren’t quite as good as they could have been.

Well, I’ve decided I’m not happy with the WordPress Gallery, so I’ve removed the pictures and instead will give you a link to it in my gallery.

Technorati Tags: Nature and Travel Photography, photography, photography class, travel, Norris Dam, Norris Dam State Park, Rice Grist Mill, Grist Mill, Crosby Threshing Barn

The Nature shooting assignment is wide open for you to bring in any landscape/nature images. You are also welcome to develop an idea based on the Nature photographers that we discussed.

The first three images you will see are Panoramas that I have created in the past. The first is from the Brown’s cabin in North Carolina, the second is at the Grand Canyon, and the third is from Cataloochee. The next two are also from Cataloochee. The final two are from Norris Dam State Park. Unfortunately, this weekend isn’t the best weekend to do this assignment because of weather, but as you can see from the last two images, sometimes you just have to make do with what you’ve got.

Assignment 4

Technorati Tags: Contemporary Art Photography, photography, contemporary art, photography class, nature, Cataloochee, Norris Dam, Grand Canyon

The plug-in I use for displaying the pictures direct from my gallery website has stopped working. Instead of trying to fix it for now, I am just deactivating it and linking to the main page of that particular album.

1) Compose and photograph a formulaic narrative composition – subject’s face is hidden or turned away from the viewer.
2) Compose and photograph a closed narrative composition.
3) Compose and photograph an open narrative composition.

The order in which they appear isn’t exactly the same order of the assignment, so to clarify:
1-7 are the closed narratives. It is part of a series I call “Urban Legends, Myths, and Internet Hoaxes”.
8 and 9 are the formulaic narratives.
10 and 11 are the open narratives.

Assignment 3

Technorati Tags: Contemporary Art Photography, photography, contemporary art, photography class, narrative, open narrative, closed narrative, formulaic narrative, urban legend, internet hoax, myth, WPG2

This assignment is a little broader than the first assignment. It was to emulate the style of one of the photographers we studied in street photography. At first I tried out street photography at night. Since I was in Gatlinburg for Winterfest, during the Kutless concert, Jon and I went to take some pictures around Gatlinburg. Although I got some pictures I was happy with, I didn’t really get the sense that they accomplished the assignment. To finish the assignment, I decided to pick Cindy Bernard and her “Ask the Dust” series. What she did was photograph movie locations. I didn’t have a whole lot of time (nor the funds) to do extensive traveling to locate different locations, so I checked to see what movies might have been filmed around Knoxville.

I queued up Road Trip, October Sky, and Box of Moon Light in my Netflix account and waited for them to come. As they came, I tried to locate the scenes that were filmed in and around Knoxville. Road Trip was the easiest. It says they come to The University of Tennessee. In it, they visit a fraternity house which I think is the Sigma Chi house. The next movie I watched was October Sky. The only scene I photographed was the Jacob Building in Chilhowee Park. The science fair scene was filmed there. The Tennessee Theater was also used in the film, but since I did that in assignment 1, I decided to skip that.

The final movie was Box of Moon Light. I really recognized a lot of the scenes from that movie, but just decided to focus on 4. The first was a random burning couch. I immediately recognized that as being on Central Ave. The second scene had Knox Jewelry and Loan. I wasn’t quite sure about this one, so I googled it. Based on its exterior, the only results that would seem to fit were Broadway and Magnolia. Since the one on Broadway was also really close to my old house, I knew it wasn’t the one on Broadway. Since I was going to go to the Jacob Building, I figured I would look out for it on Magnolia. Sure enough, it was on Magnolia. The next scene was a little tricky. It had the obvious Quality Inn sign, but none of the locations seemed to have that antenna tower you could see in the background. I used Google Earth to verify before traveling out. Then I remembered, there used to be a Quality Inn over by West Town Mall. Sure enough, the Quality Inn is now a Howard Johnson Inn. The last scene, was just a little bit further than the rest. The 411 Motel is on Highway 411 just south of Maryville. To get the shot I needed, I really need to be there an hour and a half later, but I just couldn’t stay that long.

Assignment 2

Technorati Tags: Contemporary Art Photography, photography, contemporary art, Cindy Bernard, October Sky, Box of Moon Light, Knoxville, Lee Friedlander

In addition to doing make up course work for an incomplete I took a couple of years ago, I am taking some photography classes. After hearing Jon talk about the Photography Certificate offered through UT as a non-credit program, I looked at it and thought it would be kind of cool to take that. By the time I started to register, the required Fundamentals class was full. From the sounds of it, I am already pretty comfortable with the topics and techniques that is covered, but I’ll still have to take it to do the Photography Certificate. Since that class was full and the Certificate program requires 5 electives, I looked over the possible electives and selected the ones that are most interesting, most applicable, or most challenging. Not all electives are taught each quarter, so these might change if I can’t enroll in them because they are full. (Since it won’t be a last minute decision, I should be able to register for them.) The electives that I want to take are Portrait Photography, Lighting Essentials, Wedding Photography, Nature and Travel Photography, and Contemporary Art Photography. Portrait, Lighting, and Wedding are the practical electives. Nature and Travel is the one that I probably enjoy the most. (I am registered for it this quarter, but it doesn’t start until March.) Contemporary Art is the one that should be the most challenging. I thought about taking the Sports or Photoshop classes, but decided to go with Contemporary Art since 1) I could register for it this term and 2) hopefully it will help me improve on the artistic aspect.

Since I registered the day after classes started, I had missed the first class and assignment. That was also the day of the crazy ice storm so several other people missed it as well. The second class was just a review of the first class and she postponed the due date for the assignment until last night. The assignment was as follows:

Pick two:
1) Photographic “flatness” creates relationships between things that did not exist before. Select a scene a photograph it form different vantage points to create different relationships between the subjects.
2) Focus can produce a hierarchy of importance in a photograph by creating one plane of focus which seperates the main subject from the remaining content. Take a series of photographs that explore this use of focus.
3) There are two people on the street. They are completely unlrelated, but they happen at one instant to be next to each other. By taking a photograph of them in the same frame a relationship is created. Produce two or more images exploring this.
4) Explore the notion of time in photographs. Find a scene which includes movement and take photographs of increasingly longer duration, ranging from 1/1000th of a second to minutes. About five or six photos in all.

Since I had been sick, I really didn’t get to get out much. Even though she said two, I went for three. The following images are what I showed in class. They are a mixture of images that I shot specifically for this assignment and previous images that I thought would qualify as examples.

Assignment 1

Technorati Tags: Contemporary Art Photography, photography, contemporary art, photographic flatness, focus, photography class

One thing I noticed this year was the the attendance seemed lower than usual. They were fewer college kids, fewer Laurel members, and also fewer youth group kids. In past years the cookout had been in the afternoon or the evening, so I had usually scheduled a trip to get some hiking in before the cookout. This year, since it was at 12:30, there wasn’t time to head up to the mountains before the cookout. I figured I wouldn’t be able to get any hiking in after the cookout either, but I decided I was going to try and take some pictures with my dSLR. Speaking of my dSLR, towards the ends of the cookout, some of the LYF group kids wanted to take some pictures with it themselves. I was a little nervous, but I figured they would be careful because they knew they were handling something expensive. You can view the rest of my pictures, as well as some of Philip’s, Lydia’s, Connor’s, Alex’s, and Sean’s pictures here.

I was wrong about the amount of time I would actually have. I figured there would be a lot of traffic leaving the Smokey Mountains, but I hadn’t expected as many people heading into them, since it was later in the day. It took almost 2 hours from the time I left Caroline’s house until I got up to Morton Overlook. That was about 25 minutes before sunset. Figuring I would have no time to get much of anything if I went up to Clingman’s Dome, I decided to just go ahead and get a spot at Morton Overlook. Morton Overlook is a popular place to photograph sunsets since it looks west. The Chimney Tops are also very prominent when looking out from Morton Overlook. Not only did it take a long time to get up to Newfound Gap, it took a long time to get back down. Traffic was backed up all the way to the Chimney’s picnic area from Gatlinburg. I guess my average speed was 5 miles per hour since it took just about an hour to get from the Chimney’s picnic area to Sugarlands (which is about 5 miles apart). After Sugarlands, I was able to get on the bypass. I got home later than I wanted, but all in all, I got some really good pictures that I am happy with, so it was definitely worth the hassle. You can view the rest of my pictures here.

Technorati Tags: christian student center, laurel church of christ, cookout, smoky mountains, fall colors, chimney tops, morton overlook, sunset, photography