the relays

May 4, 2013 by Mark Shaiken | Leave a comment

The 2013 Kansas Relays are history now but if you have never seen the event, mark your calendar for 2014. Maurice Greene, a past competitor at the Relays said: ”In America, we have three major sports – baseball, football and basketball. They get the most coverage. Then there’s things like golf which mop up most of what is left. But track and field? We are way at the bottom of the totem pole.” Sad but true, but in no way does that dampen the spirits of the competitors or the excitement of the event. Jackie Joyner Kersee said: ”It’s all about your happiness. The rewards are going to come, but my happiness is just loving the sport and having fun performing.” And perform they do. The goals are simple: be the fastest, jump the highest or the farthest, throw something the furthest. The true beauty of track and field is that these three simple goals are the same as they were centuries ago. To be sure, the athletes compete against each other and sometimes push human reality,and in doing so they compete against a clock and measurements, chase a finish line, a record, a distance, or a period of time flying in the air, and for a brief time, they fly and challenge the wind.

Changes are coming to my website and this blog with the help of the folks at Cremalab. Stop back shortly and see the changes as they unfold.

Thanks for stopping by my blog. . . . Mark

Posted in sports

rites of spring

April 9, 2013 by Mark Shaiken | Leave a comment

“I had always planned to make a large painting of the early spring, when the first leaves are at the bottom of the trees, and they seem to float in space in a wonderful way. But the arrival of spring can’t be done in one picture.” (David Hockney). My arrival of spring can’t be done in one picture either. For me, one of the rites of spring has always been the end of winter’s longing for the sports of spring – baseball, tennis, soccer, track (shots to come shortly) and these days some sports to explore such as roller derby (yes roller derby – great fun if not a bit edgy). Like spring, each signifies a change – a passage like the rites of spring – from indoor basketball, or snow bowl football, or crashed ice skating to the symmetry of baseball diamonds and tennis courts and soccer fields and boys of summer who must first make it through the spring. Ok, enough of the english major analysis. I cannot show spring in one picture, so here is an array of some spring sport shots from my recent endeavors.

Don’t hold back. Happy rites of springtime everyone — let’s get it on!

Thanks for stopping by my blog . . . Mark

Posted in Kansas City, sports, To me

freestyling

March 17, 2013 by Mark Shaiken | Leave a comment

I made it to Northwest Montana again this March and I set up a freestyle skiing shoot with a couple of the guys for a morning at Big Mountain in Whitefish, Montana. Packing for the shoot took a bit of thought. Stay light, but bring the lights. I brought my D4, 4 SB900 Speedlights, 4 PocketWizard Flex TT5s to trigger the lights and a fifth to sit on the camera with a PocketWizard AC3 to allow me to adjust output from the camera. I mounted everything on a Four Square bracket and jammed the bracket in the snow / ice with the lights trained up to where the skiers would jump. All of this fit in my Gura Gear bag along with two lenses – a 24-70mm and a 14-24mm lens. The shutter speed was well above the sync speed of 1/250 second but with Flex TT5 hyper sync, it was no problem. The speedlights really made it possible to light the skiers while they were airborne and get a good exposure at a high enough speed to make it all work. Oh, and I don’t ski — a little bit of an obstacle and it certainly added some unnecessary drama as I walked (perhaps trudged or slogged is a better way of describing it) through snow and ice to arrive at the jump site where the guys were getting ready. I fell only once on the walk out, and fell into a snow bank / drift only twice on the hike back to civilization. I must admit that I had thoughts on the walk back of heart attack, death, insanity slipping in, but the images made it all worth while. And, here are some of the images:

enjoy the end of winter, everyone. Thanks for stopping by my blog . . . Mark

Posted in Speedlights, sports, techniques

intensity . . . emotion

February 16, 2013 by Mark Shaiken | Leave a comment

Arthur Ashe observed: ”You are never really playing an opponent. You are playing yourself, your own highest standards, and when you reach your limits, that is real joy.” In the faces of the competitors you can see this — the intensity and the emotion as they push to reach their limits. High school, college, pro — the level of competition does not matter. The look is there. Chase that look in the shot and just maybe you are chasing the essence of what is really going on in the game and why they play . . . and why we shoot. Right?

thanks for stopping by my blog… Mark

Posted in Perspectives, sports

crashed ice. TT5s, and speedlights

January 27, 2013 by Mark Shaiken | 4 Comments

It was a weekend of Red Bull Crashed Ice competition in St. Paul, Minnesota. If you don’t know Crashed Ice, you don’t know adrenaline. Check it out here. Red Bull can really stage an event. Totally awesome and a bit mind boggling as 115,000 hearty Minnesota folks, much stouter than me, showed up for the finals on Saturday night. I arrived with the idea to use two speedlights to shoot the skaters, and trigger the lights with PocketWizard Flex TT5s. Red Bull was cool with the use of speedlights and I was grateful for RB’s progressiveness. Not all sports promoters allow lights. The TT5s worked wonderfully, and even the Eneloop batteries cooperated despite some pretty chilly conditions in St. Paul, especially when the sun set. The sport creates lighting challenges as the ice is very reflective and I didn’t want to trigger the flashes in the direct path of the skaters. The skaters race down a course at speeds of upwards of 40 miles per hour so timing the shots was a bit of a challenge and concentrating helped keep my mind off of the tingling in my exposed skin and toes. The course winds past the Cathedral of St. Paul and the structure provided a dramatic backdrop for some of the shots. The TT5s allowed me to easily sync at shutter speeds well over 1/250th second. I also used one SB900 on camera after a bit of an unexpected technology issue at the finish line: I was perched above the ice 20 yards past the finish line…. turns out that on occasion, the skaters stop their run by crashing into the wall where I was standing. I was fine, but the impact sent the speedlights flying off the Manfrotto bracket I used so I switched to “on camera” for a shot or two after retrieving a speedlight, a TT5, and batteries that escaped their chamber, all of which went airborne for a small distance. Anything for the shot! Here is how some of the shots came out.

Thanks for stopping by my blog. Mark

Posted in Speedlights, techniques

above and below

January 19, 2013 by Mark Shaiken | 1 Comment

“Keep moving,” we are told so we do not get locked into one perspective for a shot. Try different angles, try orienting the shot for landscape and then portrait and try different ways to frame the shot. Try a wide angle lens in close to the subject. Look for a new way to depict an old scene. All good advice often found in books on creative shooting and landscape photography.

In sports shooting, these creative options might be lost if the shot is framed with the subject directly in front of the lens. The image could be so much more interesting if these perspective lesson are applied — frame the shot so the subject is below or above the camera. If the subject is below, the perspective adds a sense of power and dominance. If the subject is above, a sense of drama and emotion is imparted. Similarly, with a wide angle lens in close, the scene spreads out behind the foreground subject giving a sense of depth, distance and size. So lay down on the court or the mound or the running track or the field and shoot up at your subject, or go above the court and shoot down, and remember the wide angle!. Here are some examples, many lit with SB900s triggered by PocketWizard Flex TT5s and controlled by an AC3:

thanks for stopping by my blog and happy 2013 … Mark

Posted in sports, techniques

zazzle store

December 16, 2012 by Mark Shaiken | Leave a comment

We are in the final plans to open a virtual “store” on zazzle.com to test the marketing of some of my images, stylized, on different products including tee shirts. The images below will be in the first test group. They all represent photos I have taken that were then post processed in Photoshop CS6 and then in either Topaz Adjust 5 or Alien Skin’s Snap Art 3, or both. I am searching for a “look” that will work on shirts and here is the beta group. The images, and now the shirts, reflect a little of my outdoor photography work and some of my favorite places in the country (Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Colorado, Montana, Hawaii, and Washington to name a few). More information will follow as we finalize the “store.”

Have a happy and safe holiday season … Mark

Posted in for sale, techniques

sports to the max . . .

November 6, 2012 by Mark Shaiken | Leave a comment

Sports, action, competition . . . and it feels like the trio have taken me from Tehachapi to Tonapah taking shots of athletes of all levels in action in all types of sporting endeavors. Great fun. During a match, no flash, just high ISO, high shutter speed, and great excitement. For the sportraits, speedlights, speedlights and more speedlights, triggered by PocketWizard Flex TT5s. Here are some of my travails over the last few months. I hope you enjoy . . . I have.

Peace Baby!

Thanks for stopping by my blog . . . Mark

Posted in Speedlights, sports

sports variety

August 15, 2012 by Mark Shaiken | Leave a comment

More exploration of sports and sports related shots, this time the grit of boxing, a bit of fitness, high school track, and a baseball theme. All were taken with a Nikon D800, and except for the fitness shot (borrowed Elinchrom lights for those shots), all were lit with one or more SB900s in a FourSquare, triggered by PocketWizard Flex TT5s, my current lighting set up of choice. There is great variety to be found in sport and sports portraits. As Michael Jordan said: “Just play. Have fun. Enjoy the game.”

thanks for stopping by my blog, . . . Mark

Posted in Speedlights, sports

. . . the D800, Flex TT5s, and some more sports shots

July 17, 2012 by Mark Shaiken | 1 Comment

I continue to explore sports shots lit with speedlights. Here are some equipment comments and some recent examples from a few recent shoots. Except for the soccer shot, I used my FourSquare and SB900 speedlights in high speed sync triggered with PocketWizard Flex TT5s; and for all the shots I used my new D800.

D800 lore: OMG!!!

More Thoughtful D800 lore: ISO: I have shot up to ISO 3200 and I am satisfied with the low levels of noise the images contain. Perhaps the D700 was better on this front, but what the hey, ISO 3200 is still pretty special, and it can go higher still with acceptable images. Focusing speed: 3D tracking with 51 focus points in continuous focus = heaven. Maybe it is not as good or fast on the focus as a D4 but it is thousands of dollars less and it is still both good and very very good. Megapixels: 36.3 megapixels = amazing. It is hard to say much more except as D800s come into circulation, try one and see what 36.3 megapixels can do. At some point early on, Nikon put out a white sheet warning that with so many megapixels, you might have to use a tripod more often because the slightest shake or quiver would be much more apparent. I am going on 57, and while I am still steady, I am older than in my D80 days and yet, I have not experienced anything like the white paper warning portends. Tripods are great; but not any more needed on the D800 than on the D700 than on the D300 etc. etc. Storage: I find the images are very lush, but the files generated are huge so, while not a downside in my book, it is something to be aware of. NEF raw files come out of the camera measuring some 45 megabytes each and if you do any Lightroom or CS6 work on the image, the file size will quickly exceed 100 megabytes. So, if you do the math, every time you have a 100 image shoot, you will start with 4.5 gigabytes of files, and if you work on just 25 of them, you will have almost 6 gigabytes of images. That’s a whole lot of storage issues but storage is cheap. Frames per Second: fewer than a D700 or a D4, or any of the family of D3s. For sports action shots without flash, this could be an issue. With sports speedlight shots, it is a non issue since the camera is still much faster than speedlight recycling time.

Flex lore: I know there is disagreement as to the Flex TT5s but I enjoy them and they are very reliable for me, with the following three basic reliability observations: 1.) follow the directions – they are very important. turn the units on top to bottom: so, on the transceiver that sits on the hot shoe, it must be turned on first, and the camera second; on the unit attached to the speedlight, turn the speedlight on first and then the transceiver and wait for the flash to fire its own test shot; 2.) use the antenna – meaning flip it out of its holder so it is extended out from the unit; 3.) battery power is very important; when the AAs start to run down, the units will likely start to fail. I use Eneloop rechargeables so I am a little green and because they maintain a steady amount of power that they deliver the failure of the unit is delayed until much later in the charge capacity, at least it seems that way to me.

The FourSquare: explore the link. It is a very cool light modifier. Dave Black uses it. David Tejada uses it. ”Nuff said.

And, some shots: