Do you shoot?

Yeah, that's my bad. It's 5.6 when I'm zoomed in, 3.5 when I'm not. My lens is stock and goes from 28-135mm.

As far as the focus is concerned, I mean I set my lens to MF rather than AF and adjusted it myself. I always shoot photos with the camera set to manual mode (my old roommate said he'd kill me if I ever shot in the auto/green mode, so I listened up). Whenever I shoot at night, using autofocus always makes it way too dark. Switching to manual and putting all of the subjects in focus myself (and keeping all of my other settings the same) helps correct the problem.

This one I remembered being way too dark with AF and just switched to MF to fix the problem:

 

http://audreydodgen.com/

You really know what you are doing. I love the picture of the guy in the scarf.

 

Aww, thanks. That was a really fun project to get to work on. We'd been shooting on the campus of a local oil & gas company that is always decorated to the nines for Christmas, and we made a quick stop in a neat part of downtown OKC when we were done.

Matt, I've never run into a situation where my exposure changed based on what focusing mode I was using. I'd like to know more about that.

As for shooting in manual, I shoot that way about 2/3 of the time, and in aperture priority the rest. The biggest issue, I think, is not to blindly let the camera make decisions for you, but to recognize situations where you need to force exposure compensation to get the exposure you're looking for.

Guys, I could seriously talk about this all day long, so feel free to tell me to can it when I get to ranting.

 

It was a great shot beacuse I know how tough it is to catch light like that in the setting you had.

 

All good advice. The good thing about digital is that even an untrained scribe like me could shoot like a pro within weeks of being handed a camera, sans training, with the admonition "go to it." I got to where I loved it and being a writer who understands sports, you know when to be ready, especially with football. I miss shooting, sometimes.

 

Great images from Dustin Snipes (www.dustinsnipes.com), whose work I just adore.

http://www.sportsshooter.com/contest/clip/winning_image.html?id=1450

 

How do you do that? That's a lot of post-production, no?

 

That is a sick photo.

 

He's got a great shot of his lighting setup on his blog: http://dustinsnipes.com/blog/2009/07/05/portrait-baseball-player-matt-hobgood/

Dustin's really great, and looking at his work always inspires me. If you're interested in getting serious about off-camera lighting, you should check out Joe McNally's The Hotshoe Diaries. Great, great book on using small flashes.

Also, check out the strobist Lighting 101 guide... http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/03/lighting-101.html It's a wonderful way to get started shooting off-camera.

And this doesn't have to be crazy expensive, either. My favorite light to shoot with is a fully-manual small flash that costs about $160. Love it.

And yes, Matt, that photo is sick. Dustin does that style a lot, with two softboxes lighting from behind for that shiny kind of wrap. It's gorgeous.

 

Also, I learned to light off-camera shooting basketball. Two speedlights somewhere in the stands, pointed at the top of the key... good stuff.

 

I broke in with the rule that you crop to where the action is, if everything is upper body crop to it. My current ME is not a big fan of this, but his rule is if you absolutely have to cut a limb off do it at a joint.

 

When I got hired as the SE of a medium-market weekly in 2010, we had a staff photographer, but they basically told me I had to figure out how to take photos. Two years later, I'm glad they did. It's a fun skill to have, if nothing else, and it's not hard to pick up.