Sports: A Few Shots.

A few sports photos from the past few months. A very random selection, but some of my favorites.

A portrait.

I shot this a few weeks ago of local portrait/event photographer Tony Maddox. I found him to be an engaging subject, more suited to a casual portrait. The lighting in his viewing studio was great, as you might expect for a photographer. He took a series of photographs of children when he visited Africa last year that will be published in his new calendar, and the Simi editor wanted a portrait that would incorporate some of those photographs. 

I mostly like the shot - and it nicely includes all the right elements, but I'm worried it's a little too cliche. Thoughts?

Debutante Ball

I shot these the other day - this is a perfect place to showcase the more creative shots that didn't make it into print. Great visuals, but the lighting was less than ideal.

And, as promised, here are two older favorites.





Thanks for reading.

A Beginning

So here's a basic introduction, nothing fancy. I'm 21 years old, I'm on my third year of shooting for the Acorn Newspapers in Ventura County, California. I live with my photographer/motorcycle dealership manager fiance in a little townhouse we bought at the west end of Simi Valley. I have one cat and eight goldfish.  

I've been shooting since I could hold a camera (my parents met in the Moorpark College darkroom) and I studied there under the same wonderful professor, John Gray, from about 2003-2007. I was one of the last students there to learn in wet darkroom using hand-mixed chemicals in metal trays. The scent of photo fix would cling to my clothes and skin for weeks. Hence the name of this blog, photo fix. It's also my personal photo fix, as it gives me a place to put all the interesting orphan images from my shots with the Acorn. Photos that don't get published in print or don't really work for the newspaper medium. 

I use a Canon 20D, and about 75% of my photos are shot with a 17-85 mm zoom. I like wide. 

Another 20% are shot with a cheapo 70-300 mm zoom, and the rest are a rented 70-200 whitebody or 100-400. These are mostly football. I'm not a big fan of flash, so I usually try to shoot with available light. This results in lots of very noisy images, since I'm almost always shooting inside. I use Imagenomic Noiseware and Photoshop CS2 or PS6, depending on whether I'm editing at work or home. 

When I'm not shooting for work, I love to pull out my old Nikon FM or better, an old Yashica twin lens reflex. It was my father's.

I still have a lot to learn, especially in terms of lighting. But I'm getting there. 

Those are the nuts and bolts. As for the rest, I hope the photos speak for themselves. I'll try to put up a few recent shots each day and some from my past three years for the Acorn. 

Let's begin with one from a few months ago - September, I think - shot at a gymnastics fundraiser. 

If you know your photo history, you'll think immediately of the Aaron Siskind photos of the boys jumping in the air. As soon as these kids started jumping, I though of those shots. The kid making the face just made it better.

Thanks for reading.