2013 Project 52, Week 34: Flushing, Queens, USA

Week 34: August 20-26

While we have not often ventured off of the isle of Manhattan in our two years here, we have at least gotten to identify a few spots off the island that we like to frequent. Chief among them has been Flushing, Queens: aside from being a veritable Chinese/Taiwanese food mecca (indeed, Andrew Zimmern recently did an episode of his new show, Bizarre Foods America, on the borough of Queens that spent some a good chunk of time in Flushing), it is the home of the US National Tennis Center (and the US Open) as well as the allegedly professional baseball team, the New York Metropolitans of the National League.

I got the chance last year to go with friends to check out the US Open's Open Practice Day, which is an amazing opportunity for fans to crawl all over the grounds of the Tennis Center and watch world-class players prepare for the tournament; last year we saw Tommy Haas and Andy Roddick practicing. I was happy to get a chance to take Sharon to check it out. We got to watch Venus Williams practicing this time around, as well as a few lesser-known pros.

Venus Williams practicing on the US Open Tennis center grounds

Afterwards we walked over to the Flushing Meadows Corona Park adjacent to the Tennis Center. The many public parks offerings in New York are such a great perk of living in the City. They have been a well of photography opportunities for me this year to whence I keep returning. and Corona Park was no different. We gravitated towards the Unisphere and the fountains surrounding it:

11mm (DX) : ISO 800 : f/11 : 1/4000s
The iconic Unisphere

I'll be making a note to myself to come back either in the fall or winter to see how the park changes over the seasons. And I think I would like to go around to as many of the parks as I can- I'll see if I can work that into the rest of the year's Project.

2013 Project 52 entries:

Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 | 

Week 8 | Week 9 |  Weeks 10-13 | Week 14 | Week 15 | Week 16 | 

Week 17 | Week 18 | Week 19 | Week 20 | Week 21 | Week 22 | 

Week 23 | Week 24 | Weeks 25-27 | Week 28 | Week 29 | Week 30 | 

Week 31 | Week 32 | Week 33 | 

2013 Project 52, Week 30: Pogopalooza

Week 30: July 23-29

And now for something completely different, again.

I keep saying and thinking to myself that I want to try out sports photography, but my chances and my selections have been mostly travel and landscape and sort of street photography types. This week changed up the pace entirely. Sharon heard about Pogopalooza through the Gothamist blog, told me about it, and a plan came together just like that to go see something (hello, Extreme Pogo) and someplace (Thompkins Square Park) new.

There were a lot of fun shots that came out of this day: about an hour and a half and 200-plus photos to sift through, and I have around 8 photos to share, starting with this one.

50mm (DX) : ISO 200 : f/4 : 1/500s

Sharon noted as we looked through the weekend's photos how higher speed photos freezing the action can yield the human body in some crazy contortions. I remember as the event was going on that I tried to think about capturing forms and freezing the action, but it was a lot to try to process all while shooting away. More practice can hopefully help develop that recognition and a confident trigger/shutter finger.

More after the jump.

2013 Project 52, Week 17 - #fyeahbaseball

Week 17: April 23-29

Sharon and I jokingly made up a rule for ourselves upon moving away from Birmingham that we would always live in a city with a Major League Baseball team. She was born and raised a Phillies fan, and while I was a latecomer, I will never not be a Cardinals fan. It's now a month into the baseball season, and by dint of work trips and of living in a city with Major League teams, and I've already managed to attend two games and see four different teams in person. For a baseball fan, this is a giant perk of "big city living".

Taking photos at a ballgame is tricky; in my mind I have glorious images of iconic baseball moments that I want to recreate, but sheer logistics (namely: location, location, location/distance) bring me back to earth pretty quickly. I'm not saying I have to have the latest and greatest of equipment, but I might give my left kidney just for a chance to sit in the photographers' nest along the sidelines of the field with my own, usual equipment.

Unlike in Baltimore, where I had a bit more freedom to move around the stadium and shoot, I encountered a Citi Field seating configuration that didn't allow for people to approach the field level areas so easily. And while I was allowed by an usher to run down the steps in between innings to shoot Cole Hamels going through warmup pitches, I inexplicably only went halfway down the steps and got not-as-close-as-I-could-have. I... had a massive brain fart. The opportunity was there for the taking. I don't even understand it, myself.

Cole Hamels has what I think is a pretty distinctive pitching motion, mostly because he's long, lanky, and both very effective and well practiced. I wish I had a closer shot of him, but I'm happy with this capture of Hamels, mid-pitch. The pitching form, however ruinous on a person's body in the long-term, is a beautiful thing, especially when performed by one of the pros.

150mm (DX) : ISO 400 : f/5.6 : 1/1000s
Cole Hamels on the mound for the Phillies

I don't know if I'll be able to make it to Citi Field this June when my Cardinals visit the Mets. If I do, I will take another shot at getting close through my lens to a player I'm interesting in capturing.

2013 Project 52 entries:

Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 | 

Week 8 | Week 9 |  Weeks 10-13 | Week 14 | Week 15 | Week 16 | 

Pitchers and Catchers

[Programming note: I've needed to write something not drenched in photography technobabble. So here's this.]

Catching a game at Busch Stadium in 2007 in our... younger days

I played Little League terribly for two years [not coincidentally, it was after this that my parents took me to an optometrist for the first time]. And though I was briefly obsessed with baseball in the way kids do over the things in which they're involved, I quickly moved on to other more or less absorbing activities and interests. My upbringing in Alabama, where Football is King, insured that baseball became an afterthought.

Fast-forward to May 9, 2005, at Busch Stadium ("Busch II") in St. Louis, where my best friend and roommate, Adam, had dragged me. I tagged along to hang out, not to pay attention to one insignificant game in an excruciating 162-game season hosted by a team I knew little about. Having abandoned baseball in elementary school, I came to the ballpark that day a sports fan with allegiances to no team. (In retrospect, I was ripe for the picking.)

2013 Project 52, Week 4 - Winter Sport

Week 4 - January 22-28

And now for something completely different:

50mm (DX)  :  ISO 800  :  f/4  :  1/1600s

50mm (DX)  :  ISO 800  :  f/4  :  1/1600s

50mm (DX)  :  ISO 800  :  f/4  :  1/1250s

Mere minutes after I finished saying that I wanted to get some work on sports/action photography, I walked a few blocks from our front door to Central Park to check out Winter Jam 2013, a wintersports festival set up by the tireless NYC Parks Department. I parked myself by the Red Bull mini-slope, shook off some long zoom rust, and tried my hand at shots of the skiers and snowboarders as they went on run after run.

[Thoughts and lessons learned after the jump.]

Sports Photography

The Roll Bama Roll blog (also of SB Nation) posted this video ostensibly for the front-and-center placement of my beloved Crimson Tide football team winning the BCS Championship Game. It was produced by the FStoppers blog and featured interviews of the Sports Illustrated staff photographers discussing their craft and the experience of shooting a big game. Highly recommended, not just because it combines two loves of mine, but because it really gives a look into the world of the sports photographer (the sixteen-year-old in me is saying "cooool!"):

Fstoppers Original: How Sports Illustrated Photographers Shoot Football from FStoppers on Vimeo.

A differently bloody Sunday

Over on Battle Red Blog, the fantastic SB Nation Texans blog, they had a Twitter poll question: After Matt Schaub, the Texans's franchise QB, who do fans consider the #2 QB in the Texans's short 10 years of existence?

The choice came down to

1. TJ Yates, the rookie third-string QB who was thrust into duty after injuries knocked out Schaub and his backup, Matt Lienart, and who led the Texans to their first-ever playoff berth AND playoff game victory, only to be thoroughly undone by rookie jitters and the Ravens's defense; or
2. Sage Rosenfels, he of the record, largely in a year of subbing in for an injured Schaub.

It's an easy choice for me, a long-suffering (OK, 10 years is a short time for a professional football franchise, but they've have mostly bad years of those 10) Texans fan. It's Yates and it's not close; and it comes down to one word:

Rosencopter.

Observe:

I watched this game. I watched this happen on live TV. Sharon watched me scream at the TV. It was not a pretty thing or anything I'm proud of...