Carl Auer
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
|
John, do not get me wrong, I absolutely hate strobing games. I hate lugging an extra bag around, I hate having to get there very early to set up, test, and make adjustments prior to the games. I use two strobes, so I hate switching at half time if I am only shooting one school, and I hate tearing them down and then dragging them back out to my car, especially when it is -20 outside. I hate the fact that I have two bodies that will burn through 8 shots a second and I am stuck at 1fps because of the strobes. I hate making selects from 100-150 shots than 300-400. I hate being a split second early or late with my anticipation. I hate the fact that for some reason one of my receivers does not like to be close to a bluetooth device and will strobe over and over again until the bluetooth is far enough away.
But, what I do like, is the fact that when it comes down to it, direct or bounced, the images are so much cleaner at ISO 400 than at 800, 1600, 3200. Yes, there are shadows cast by direct strobing, which can be overcome if you get your strobes as high as possible. Bouncing does do one thing that not to many people realize. It will lengthen your flash duration. So, if your strobes are borderline, at say, 1/640th duration, which is fine for direct, but if you bounce them, that duration could go to 1/400th, 1/200th, even longer, depending how far your strobes are from the ceiling. That is one reason I stopped bouncing. Even though my strobes were 25-30 feet up, there was still 25-30 feet above them, and it was just enough to piss me off with the flash duration.
But, when a parent comes to me and wants to order 5 24x36 posters for the seniors, and without hessitation I can say, sure, no problem, because I know my shots are at ISO 400 and the blowups for these posters will be fine, but if they were at ISO 1600, even with noise ninja, or neat image, they are not going to look as good as I want them to.
As for your reoccuring questions in this thread:
What does MaxPreps bring to the table:
MaxPreps brings a lot to the table if you really dive in to it. They issue most of their shooters cards to hand out, polo shirts, hats, jackets to identify you as a MaxPreps shooter. So, they give you marketing stuff, for free, to help bring attention to their website and your shots. Over the years MP has worked with USAToday, ESPN the Magazine, Sports Illustrated and other publications both in print and online. So, if at the beginning of the season you shoot a game, post it to MaxPreps, and suddenly one of those kids you shot is selected as a McDonalds All-American, or turns into a most sought after recruit by division one schools, MaxPreps will shop your images to these publications. In fact, at the end of 2007, SI was contacting MaxPreps on a weekly basis to license images. These may not make it into the magazine, but they could end up on the website, SI for Kids, or other SI/CNN interests. So, they bring the possibility, more so than without them for most shooters, of national coverage for you and the schools you shoot. That is a great marketing tool for you if you are looking to contract with a school. "Yeah, last month Sports Illustrated licensed a photo a week from MaxPreps, so you never know..." But you also need to remember, MaxPreps is not a "shoot only for us and make millions" company. It is really meant as a supplement to what you are doing now. When I started out, I would only shoot football for them. This was back when there was a 2 week moratorium on anything posted to MaxPreps. I would shoot all the shots of my schools team that I needed, and as much of the other team that I could get. Post my teams shots to my website, where I knew there would be traffic, and posted the other team to MaxPreps. I did no marketing beyond giving their managers a handful of MaxPreps cards to give to the kids after the game. I ended up picking up a sale here and there, and while at first it was nothing to write home about, I started getting emails from schools requesting me to come shoot a game through MaxPreps. I would get emails from parents of these other schools who were over seas with the military thanking me for posting the shots since they were missing their kids games, and if it was not for MaxPreps, that traffic would never have occurred.
Just this week, I have shot 4 games over 2 nights. Prior to one game, I had an email request for me to shoot a game at a rival school, and at the varsity boys game Tuesday I had parents asking me if I would come to their school, that they loved my football, or I would here, "Cool, that MaxPreps guy is here." Then last night I had 3 parents from the visiting team come over and all but beg me to be their booster photographer. If the school was not 20 miles away, I just might have said yes, but all of that exposure was through MaxPreps, and all I did to gain it was wear a polo shirt with their name on it and hand some managers some cards.
And, as for cherry picking images, you are right, I did cherry pick those images I posted. I could easily of opened up my download folder and picked from the 200 shots from that game any number of perfectly exposed shots, but that would have included a perfectly exposed ref butt, or a soft image because I miss focused, or that lovely, why the heck did I think that would be worth shooting from that angle shot, or any number of junk files, or some of the not so fun to look at shots like sportraits, or huddles, or an inbound pass or whatever. But if you go into the MaxPreps galleries and look at the basketball shots, 99% of those are going to be with strobes, and probably 90% will be direct strobed, and of those at least 1/2 will be with a 2 flash set up, either Vivitars or Nikon SB whatevers. A majority of the MaxPrep shooters are SS members, and a majority of them are shooting 2 to 3 games a night at 2 to 3 different gyms, so being able to set up quickly and tear down quickly means using something that will give you good light and is small. You may not like the look, but, it is what they have found works, and honestly, from their rules on strobing basketball, and their workflow for crops, noise reduction and more, I truly believe has made me a better technical shooter.
Edited on Feb 14, 2008 at 03:24 PM
|
