A few shots from Saturday's tournament

[OneManArmy]

Full gallery: http://tracymilburn.com/public/img/p...ts/star/200412

[IndyJeff]

Backgrounds, backgrounds, backgrounds. Watch your backgrounds, I know sometimes it is impossible to do anything to clean them up but always arrive early and look for spots to shoot from which can minimize background clutter. If it would have been possible try to get an elevated view of the matches. (Hint: a step ladder)

I did like what you had, in general. There were some that seemed late, maybe just a tick after the peak action. My absolute favorite tho was unfortunately shot from their backs and no face in them at all. (Don't these guys know to keep facing the camera? LOL) Nice stopping action and color looked ok from what had to be a nightmare to shoot in.

One suggestion tho, if your going to post pictures to a gallery and offer them for sale, post all the pictures, editting out the bad ones of course, and don't apologize for not having someone's photo in the gallery on your website. Make it as easy as possible for someone to find themselves, maybe different galleries listed by times they took place, i.e. 10am-11am matches, 11am-12noon matches etc. One way to do this is simply take a picture of someones wrist watch or a clock hanging on the wall to keep track of time on the card.


On the first page of galleries your image numbers range from 169 to 432 yet there are only 12 images. Did you only have 12 keepers out of 263 images? That is a lot of possible lost sales if there were more good ones than 12.
If it is a matter of available webspace, I suggest you drop the present site and look into printroom.com or something similar.

[OneManArmy]

Jeff, thanks for the comments. I realize sometimes it's hard for peopel to critique shots of action when they have no idea what's taking place. I have no desire to ever shoot fooseball or baseball (soccer's ok though, just no time at the moment).

Originally Posted by IndyJeff

Backgrounds, backgrounds, backgrounds. Watch your backgrounds,

I really had absolutely no control over that; this was a fairly small, crowded room. There was no background choice; just a bunch of people. I did mention it was a BJJ tournament didn't I?

Originally Posted by IndyJeff

I did like what you had, in general.

Thanks, I was very pleased. The 20d is a phenomenal camera, esp. for the price. This being a new camera, I was afraid about turning up the ISO despite hearing how good it was, and most of them were shot at 400. Next time I'll definitely turn it up to about 800! Most are very sharp, and I would rather have shot at around 2.2 or so instead of the 1.8-2.0 in order to get a wider DOF.

Originally Posted by IndyJeff

There were some that seemed late, maybe just a tick after the peak action.

Sure, not all of them are perfect shots... it's a gallery, not a portfolio. The gallery is mainly there as a service to the martial arts community in my area, but also to sell some prints if anyone wants any.

Originally Posted by IndyJeff

Nice stopping action and color looked ok from what had to be a nightmare to shoot in.

The color was much better on the right side of the room. ON theleft side there was sun shining in and hitting a huge mirror, causing the camera to underexpose a bit. I tried to think of a way around it, but my vantag epoint had to be in the middle in order to cover both mats (there was two matches going at all times) and I had to be on the side where the winners hands' were raised up; so I just tried to shoot out of the sun, and that worked fairly well, but I can definitely tell the better shots were away from that overage of sun.

Originally Posted by IndyJeff

One suggestion tho, if your going to post pictures to a gallery and offer them for sale, post all the pictures, editting out the bad ones of course, and don't apologize for not having someone's photo in the gallery on your website.

I didn't really apologize, I was just letting people know that if there were no pictures of them that there very likely were, just not up in the gallery. I was trying to "leave no competitor behind" (LOL!) and have someone think "Oh, no shots of me" and move on, thus resulting in possible lost sales.

Originally Posted by IndyJeff

Make it as easy as possible for someone to find themselves, maybe different galleries listed by times they took place, i.e. 10am-11am matches, 11am-12noon matches etc. One way to do this is simply take a picture of someones wrist watch or a clock hanging on the wall to keep track of time on the card.

Excellent idea - I'll try that next time!

Originally Posted by IndyJeff

On the first page of galleries your image numbers range from 169 to 432 yet there are only 12 images. Did you only have 12 keepers out of 263 images? .

No, that's just photoshop the way it numbered them. Unfortunately I was in a rush to get them up (due to inquiries from people about the gallery, not realizing how much work this takes) and I used photoshop's automated publishing tool. I'm going to write a Java program to take all my pictures and build HTML pages for me in the next day or so, then I'll have total control ove rohw those are built. I HATE all those stupid links down at the bottom, inexperience web users can get "lost" in that gallery. I'll work on that this weekend.

To answer your question about keepers, I took about 400 shots, and there were I think around 300 keepers, and about 140 or so of those were "good enough" to put on the gallery, and I think maybe 50 of those are "really good" shots. WHat do you think about that stastistical spread, is that good, bad or ok?

Thanks again

[OneManArmy]

BTW, I'd like to thank my assistant for helping with this tournament; he held up the coffee filter so I could get a good white balance. Here's a recent photo of him from the last event I covered; he's the guy making the Lozer sign at me:

[ssim]

I know that this type of shooting is difficult. I have never shot a tournament but have done a couple large Tae Kwon Do groups shots with some candids in a workshop that they were having.

I spent some time looking through your gallery, not just the ones posted here. Colors are great but I find that alot of them are too soft for perhaps anything larger than a 5X7. I know that this is probably a direct result of shooting in available light trying to stop the action.

[transcend]

Set up gallery on the website, and you won't have to use the atrocious photoshop gallery maker. Pretty easy to set up, and offers amazing gallery creation, control and I believe rights management through some contributions.

[OneManArmy]

Originally Posted by ssim

I know that this type of shooting is difficult.

yeah not just cuz of the light but also the large mirror on the wall the sun was bouncing off of; that was my biggest issue. Also I had to cover two matches simultaneously at all times.

Originally Posted by ssim

I spent some time looking through your gallery, not just the ones posted here. Colors are great but I find that alot of them are too soft for perhaps anything larger than a 5X7. I know that this is probably a direct result of shooting in available light trying to stop the action.

Definitely not too soft for 5x7, at least not most of them. I've printed larger than 5x7 with less sharp. You're right, a number of them were soft in a couple of areas because of the reason you listed. I shot mostly at 1.8; I think next time I'm going to bump up the iso to 800 to get around 2.0 or 2.0 Again this was my first time with this new camera. Thanks for the comments

Originally Posted by transcend

Set up gallery on the website, and you won't have to use the atrocious photoshop gallery maker. Pretty easy to set up, and offers amazing gallery creation, control and I believe rights management through some contributions.

No I used Photoshop since I was in a hurry... I wrote a Java program today that will generate galleries for me. It works really nice! Check out the new look... thanks again

[OneManArmy]

OOPS! I zapped the images... they're back now.

Take a look at the new photo gallery layout here: http://tracymilburn.com/public/img/p...s/star/200412/

I like that layout much better.