Dane Creek Folio Covers

Canon 5D, 15mm f/2.8. ISO 100, 1/125 @ f/5.6.

I'm preparing for a trip to Death Valley, NV next week, and coincidentally I was chatting with Eleanor Brown about the American Southwest. The conversation and the upcoming trip reminded me of my trip to New Mexico three years ago for the spring visitation day at the Trinity Test Site.

The day we were there the weather was cold, grey, and generally awful. There was no good morning light, and the site itself is pretty stark. Honestly, from a photographic perspective, the site is pretty uninspiring. Of the shots I took there this is the only one I really thought worked. That's our Geiger Counter in the foreground, showing 0.18 mr/hr.

If you are planning a trip to New Mexico in the spring or fall it's worth checking to see if the Trinity site opening day is around your travel dates. They open the first Saturday in April and October, so this year that should be April 3rd and October 2nd. Your best bet is to spend the night in Soccoro, NM (there's a nice Holdiay Inn Express there) and then drive to the Stallion Range Center to arrive and get in line by about 7:30. Do not do the caravan tours from Alamagordo!

Have you ever visited Trinity, or one of the other sites that were part of the Manhattan project?

Canon 5D Mark II, 70-200 f/2.8L with 1.4x. 280mm, ISO 800, 1/250 @ f/5.6.

Something a little different today from the Olympics. We were at the Men's Gold Medal curling game (yay Canada!) and had seats that were nice and close to the ice. The above photo is of Mr Kennedy and Mr Hebert, the best front-end in curling today. What I like most about this photo is the composition and cropping to keep the Olympic logo behind them, and how the logo is right under their feet. It's always nice to see something like that at the event, take photos, and then find out later during processing it worked!

One other note about the photos I took at the Olympics: manual mode on a camera is awesome. It is very easy to fall into the trap of only using aperture- or shutter-priority mode on the camera, but when you are under fixed lighting conditions manual mode is a must. I did some test shots prior to the actual curling events to lock on my shutter speed, aperture, and ISO, then saved them as "C3" on my dial. I did similar tests for shooting the crowd in the stands and saved them as "C1" on my dial. I could then shoot with complete freedom knowing that the exposure would be exactly the same across all my images. If I changed subjects, a quick flip of the dial meant I had exactly the right settings ready to go.

It made post processing a breeze as well: in almost every case a direct cut-and-paste of exposure settings could be applied to all the images.

Have you ever used manual mode on your camera at a major event? How did it work out for you?

Canon 5D Mark II, 70-200 f/2.8L with 1.4x. 220mm, ISO 800, 1/250 @ f/5.6.

We attended the medal rounds of women's curling today at the Olympics. Curling is a sport near and dear to my heart, as I've curled for several years at the Granite Curling Club. It's actually a pretty boring sport to photograph though. You have to spend a lot of time and energy trying to capture the little things players do between shots to add some variety to the photos. Otherwise you wind up pictures of butts, sweepers, and some yelling. Especially when you don't have on-ice access like we had for the 2007 USCA Junior Curling Championships.

One shot to get, however, is the faces of the team that wins the gold medal. Even if it isn't Canada, like you hope. It's hard to be too sad when you see the look of joy on the faces of the winners.

Have you ever shot the finals of a sporting event? What kind of images did you get that captured the moment of victory (or defeat)?

Canon 5D Mark II, 70-200 f/2.8L with 1.4x. 235mm, ISO 800, 1/320 @ f/4.5.

I was up at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver today for the men's qualification round ice hockey game between SUI and BLR. It was win-or-out for the two teams, and they played a very tight game that was was still a 2-2 tie after overtime. That meant it was time for a shootout.

The above photo is the game winning save by the Swiss goalie. It is so nice to be able to attend a sporting event where they do not mind people bringing in "professional" photography gear. While my priority was to watch the game, rather than photograph it, it was still nice to be able to whip out the camera for a few shots now and then. The only thing I couldn't use was my monopod: I had it out prior to the game, and someone from the venue came and asked me to put the monopod away so I wouldn't offend all the official photography people that had gone through a ton of work to get a press pass :)

Have you gone to the Vancouver Olympics yet? If so, what's your experience been like taking pictures?