WTF: I'm a big deal in Latvia

Every so often I indulge myself in pretending I'm well known. That my work is lapped up by visual hungry eyes across the world and that their words (and possibly donations) of gratitude just haven't made it to me yet.

Then I wake up and do my job, but I still have a smile on my face, whether I'm widely known or not.

But...I guess I'm catching on in Latvia.


Is Latka from Taxi viewing my blog?

Within the last week I've had 24 pageviews from somewhere in Latvia. Which is kind of sad, because I've only had 38 views from a country that contains every single person I have ever known. What the hell people?

I don't have a lot of knowledge on this topic, but I'm curious if other bloggers have similar experience. I know when I had a regular web site I didn't get any weird international hits.

So...Latvians (is that right?) make some comments; let me know what brought you to the shining bastion of my weird, pointless blog.

On to some photos.

Had yet another portrait to do for sports. The sports editor calls them features, when he means portraits. "A feature on B'wood wrestling" to me means a non-game time photo. Like practice or something, so I kind of expect there to be something going on, but sometimes there isn't. Because to him feature means portrait. Then I am screwed because I wasn't thinking of clever portrait ideas, but now I have it figured out. :D No more tears.

So for the Brazoswood Wrestling...feature, I had an idea to do a really spotlighted photo of the kids he wanted. So I made a snoot (a narrow tube that limits the light coming out of a flash). It was kind of easy, I just cut the middle out of a box of cereal and taped it back together.

The shots worked almost like I wanted, except I wanted the light higher, but there was no way to do that.



I also had to do a group shot of three girl wrestlers. I was going to do it the same way, in their stances or whatever, but one of them wasn't cooperating. So it turned out a little lame. But they thought it would be funny to do the No Evil Monkey poses, it didn't make the paper though. :(


Mimicing the three wise monkeys of Japanese proverb; Mizaru, Kikazaru and Iwazaru. They see no evil, see no evil and speak no evil.

I read up a little on the monkeys, not the lame "Hey, Hey" band of monkeys, the proverb ones.

Apparently there is a fourth monkey. The "Do No Evil" monkey. Can you guess what he covers??

That's right. His crotch.

WTF: Let there be Light!

As I explained to students in my photo classes, without light there is no photography. Any light is better than no light, but good light makes all the difference in how a photo looks.

Since I got here I have wanted to play around with the paper's pocket wizards (fancy equipment that lets you set off a flash by radio waves), but we were missing the cables. The order went through and they got here not too long ago.

Awesome. I've only really played with off camera flash a couple times, not counting a bunch of basketball games I shot for the Clare Sentinel. That was a mix of fun and frustration, because those strobes would go off whenever anyone in the gym took a picture. There were a few times someone would be taking pictures every five seconds, so it was messing up my shots and really pissing me off.

But now I have fancy toys all to myself, Holly doesn't use them. :D So I've been lighting almost everything. Mostly I shoot sports, because I'm on the night shift, and now is the time of basketball.

Yesterday I shot wrestling practice and basketball, today I shot a wrestling meet.

There are a few gyms around here you don't need to light, they are nice and bright. But there are some that are ridiculously dark.


In the bright gyms it's fun to use the light to provide a nice pop to the players. It just kind of accents the image, giving it a little pazazz.

Wrestling is a sport I've never used off camera flash to shoot, but now that I have I'm never going back. It's SO much better. For the majority of the time their faces are buried on the ground, so they are dark. But I set up my light on the mat to the side and kind of low, so it gave a nice dramatic effect. :D Plus it gets rid of all the gross coloring from the lights in the gym reflected off the mats. Fantastic.




The biggest thing I love about having the light to play with is it makes me think. Sometimes shooting becomes instinctual, especially if you have other crap on your mind, you just kind of go through the motions and hold the button down.

There is nothing wrong with snapping off a ton of pictures to get one good one, I do it frequently, but sometimes I get a tunnel vision and don't try anything else.

Yesterday when I shot wrestling practice I was using the light as a main light, because it was pretty dark in there, except for a garage door that was open. So I started playing around and used the light coming through the door as my main and the flash for some fancy backlighting.

Rim light, mofo!

At least in the sports shooting I feel like I'm operating at my normal level.

Got a note from the head honcho at the paper today when I came into work. Felt good.


I've never been comfortable shooting sports. Which kind of made me good at shooting it, because I kind of panicked and really wanted to do good. Now that I've won awards and all that I feel like a super bad ass and am not worried any more.

But using lights you have to choose your shot. You might be able to squeeze a couple shots in a row from the flash, but most of the time it's a one shot deal. Which makes it a lot harder.

So, now I'm nervous again. :D