The British University American Football League (BUAFL) began in November, which sees competition between 56 university teams split into 8 divisions in 4 conferences.

The Hertfordshire Hurricanes started their campaign away at Essex University in Colchester on 8th November.

The season started well for the ‘Canes as they ran out 20-0 winners. All shots were taken on either the 5D MkII with 600mm f4 prime or the 20D with 70-200 f2.8 L zoom.

Both teams have a group of cheerleaders who put on a show at half time. Unfortunately, as I didn’t know what to expect or how little time their displays took, I wasn’t really set up with the best equipment, but managed to get a few reasonable shots. The one below is of the Essex Cheerleaders, the “Flames”

Posted under Photo Shoots

We managed to get away for a week in October for the half-term break & returned to our little self-catering flat in Overstrand. The flat is in a large detached house just a few minutes walk from the beach, so we spent much time there with Tess. The weather was fantastic with sun on several of the days we were there. We even managed t-shirts on the beach on our last day, not bad for October.

All the shots here are HDR or High Dynamic Range, which means they are a combination of several shots taken at different exposures & combined in software.

All shots were handheld & made up of three photos taken at a stop apart. They were combined in Photomatix & then saved out & completed in Photoshop.

We had the AGM of the Letchworth Garden City Camera Club last month & I managed to get myself onto the committee in the position of Secretary. One of the other newer – & younger – members also got on the committee so the ‘progressive’ members are hopeful of the club moving forward. There are a few members with ideas on how to improve the club & take it further into the 21st century, so we’ll see how it goes.

I did manage to persuade the club to reduce the subscription fee for the unemployed as I felt the discount they had previously wasn’t sufficiently lower than the normal membership fee.

We had our first committee meeting two weeks ago. It lasted around two & a half hours but was relatively painless.

Among the topics discussed was the idea of a website redesign which I & 2 others will now look at. Watch this space.

Last month I took on commission to photograph the baby daughter of a colleague.

I took my portrait gear round to his house & set up a studio in his living room. The kit consisted of the 8X7 Lastolite Hi-lite background which I illuminated with 2 180W studio strobes on stands. The main lighting came from my two  Elinchrom BXRi 500 flash units with softboxes. They were fired with the built-in Skyport remote triggers.

The kit went up OK although it was a tight squeeze in their living room. I used the vinyl trail which attaches to the bottom of the Hi-lite with velcro. The shoot went great, baby Tegan was a joy to work with. We managed to shoot for just under an hour & she didn’t moan, complain or cry once. We came away with a DVD full of shots which I understand the parents are very happy with.

Putting the gear away was a very different matter. Folding the Hi-lite is a definite skill which I have yet to conquer. We watched a tutorial on YouTube after failing miserably. We watched it quite a few times but I still ended up just bundling the whole thing into the back of the car. I finally managed to stow it away about a week later.

I went up with the family to Nottingham in August in order to see where my eldest would be studying from September. As usual, I took the camera. Although the trip wasn’t about photography, I did manage to sneak a few shots in.

The first two are of what  they call ‘trams’. Quite a novelty for me as the only ones I’ve seen are in Europe. The first one was a panning shot to emphasise a bit of movement as the tram drove past me. The second was a zoom burst; hand-held on a slower shutter speed, shot is taken whilst zooming the 24-105 F4 L.

A couple of views; I’m not sure what the domed building is but it’s right in the city centre. Unfortunately, there was a big fairground ride in front of it so I couldn;t get a shot of the whole building, so focused on the roof against the blue sky.

The second shot was where we parked. The original shot was taken at a focal length of 32mm so had converging verticals which I corrected in Photoshop.

Time for some fun as the youngest wasn’t too interested in the uni facilities or the shopping opportunities (apart from the sweet shop). This was the fairground ride in front of that lovely domed building.

The first shot was taken sufficiently slowly to get some panning movement. The second one was ratcheted down to 1/20sec in order to get lots of movement to make an abstract shot.

Then, as we walked from the city centre back towards the uni, time for a few snatched architectural abstracts. The first shot is a detail shot of the car park building above. I’m not sure what the windowed building was.

Posted under Photo Shoots

Five times a year we have an internal print competition at the Letchworth Camera Club. Thursday just gone I entered 3 colour & 3 black & white prints into the comp which is voted on by 6 members.

Unfortunately, my colour prints didn’t come in the top six but my black & white entries did rather better. The following two shots were awarded first & second, the  footballer winning the best shot.

The American footballer was taken at Hatfield University last week during Sunday practice & the B-17 & crew were shot at Duxford over the summer.

At the AGM the previous week, I managed to get myself voted in as new club secretary!

I recently made contact with the Hertfordshire Hurricanes American Football Team who are Hertfordshire’s University team. They play their games during term time which means a winter season, which is great for fans of British American football as you can follow the game throughout the year.

They said they were happy for me to pop down to Hatfield Uni to meet them & take some photos, so I arranged to go down to one of their first training sessions of the season. They train on Tuesday, Thursday & Sunday. The weekday sessions are evening under floodlights. I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to try out some photography under floodlights, as I’ve never done this floodlit sports before.

Coaching staff said they were happy for me to wander round the training ground taking shots & these are some of the results.

Due to the poor lighting conditions ISO had to be ramped up. All the shots here were taken at ISOs of between 2000 & 6400. Although noise is greatly increased the 5D MkII does have good high ISO quality & a run through with some post production Imegenomic Noiseware has produced some credible results.

It was an ideal opportunity to play with shutter speeds. So I slowed them down a little to accentuate movement & here’s a few results:

Of course, there is more to sports photography than action shots; I always like to catch personal studies of players concentrating, lsitening, watching or just day dreaming.

I’ve not taken any photos for about three weeks now. It’s the longest time this year that I’ve not done any photography. The reason is very simple; I’ve been too busy.

I’m currently sorting out a new shed. Since we started a family I’ve been shoved out to the bottom of the garden in an 8 by 6 shed. It’s served me well for about 18 years. I have my computer & do all my photo processing & documenting down there.

I decided the time was right for a new shed. One with much more space, so I had one twice the size of the old one delivered a couple of weeks ago. It will have more space & a larger desk which will be home to my Wacom A3 graphics tablet. I’m using all my spare time currently re-wiring it, painting, insulating & generally sorting it out.

I’ve also not had the time to post other work done this year which is sitting on my laptoip ready to be uploaded to the blog.

I hope it doesn’t take too much longer as I’m itching to get back out there with the camera.

Three weeks without shooting any pics is way too long.

On the 11th July this year I took one of my regular visits to Duxford for their summer airshow.

The following are some of the ground shots I took during the show. All these were taken from the flight walk pre-flying.

I wanted to do a little more manipulation on the shots than normal to try & give it an ‘authentic’ look. The middle shot is a cross processed shot, all done in Lightroom or Photoshop.

The second two below were done using a Photoshop Action I downloaded.

Hopefully, I’ll stick some flight shots up on another post.

On the 12th July I went to the Watford Cheetahs for their last home game of the season to see them take on the Bedfordshire Blue Raiders.

As usual, all shots taken on the 5D MkII with 600mm L F4 & 20D with 100-400mm L

The Blue Raiders ran out eventual winners in a 22 – 14 victory which wasn’t decided until late in the fourth quarter.

I like to include shots which tell the story of the game as well as just the pure action, so usually my sets will contain things like the coin toss, spectators & players on the sidelines & the refs

And I usually include a few shots of the teams shaking hands.