Into the great wide open...... (first shots with a wide angle lens - and what have I been up to this week)

    I love living a block of the beach in Carlsbad, Ca. It's a rough life. Beautiful sunsets are so common it's easy to take them for granted. But tonight I was out playing with a new toy, the 14-24mm/F2.8 Nikon. This lens has an amazing reputation, it's so damn good that Canon shooters invented an adapter so they could use it. And after using it a bit, I can see why. The lens is absolutely phenomenal. There are so many full reviews on this lens out there that I won't bother adding one, but I will say that you shouldn't be afraid of the size of it. Based on all the comments out there, I thought it was going to be some huge beast. Not true at all. Yes, the front element is massive, round and quite ... distinctive, but it is smaller than the 24-70mm and roughly the same size if than my 17-55mm/f2.8 DX.
  What I learned with my initial walk around is that the lens is technically awesome. It will shoot anything. But I have a lot to learn about using a wide angle lens. Lines get weird, perspective gets distorted, things curve at the edges, little changes in camera level and height make huge differences. Not sure yet how I wound up with the tilted horizon in the shot above, the camera was dead level...I am not yet worthy of this lens. I cannot use it to anywhere near its' full effectiveness. But it is going to be fun as hell to learn.
    Also, this should come with a warning label like car side mirrors- "objects in lens may be closer to lens than they appear..."

  He reached out shortly after this frame and was able to tap me in the head. I don't have any pics of the awesome spider web I was going to shoot, because I wound up having to clean it off the front element after not realizing I was that close to it. (note to self.... be careful using this lens at fire performances.....)

    So new lens rocks. I also did a test shoot with Shannon, aka Brass Honey, a fashion blogger who I hopefully will be shooting for on a regular basis. I say hopefully, because even though she seemed anxious to get the pics in time to do an upcoming post, she hasn't used any of them yet and she's posted twice since they were available. I haven't heard anything from her and was hesitant to post any of them so as not to steal her thunder, but now I guess I will post a couple and let the rest of the world (aka- the two actual people who read this and aren't just spammers and link trolls like vampire stat) decide if they are any good. I actually was pretty happy with how they turned out. Bright mid-day sun, nothing but excalibur and an on camera speedlight to work with (didn't have the wide angle to play with in time)

The corporate mascot wound up with the balloons after the shoot, so it was a win in his book. Liberty station was a great venue to shoot around, I was especially happy to notice this wall, that looks better than many expensive studio backdrops I have seen.

Finally, have to end with Labor Day weekend. I mentioned at the start of this post that I have come to take the awesome sunsets here in Carlsbad almost for granted, and that is true most of the time. But  I feel really lucky to live where I do, I get the perfect lab almost every evening that lets me play with the famous "golden hour." Well, tonight it was particularly golden, so I will leave you with a few shots from the beach. These were taken slightly drunk with my water proof point and shoot, but are a pretty good example of how awesome the golden hour is here on a somewhat regular basis, living a block of Tamarack Beach doesn't suck at all, no sir! It's well worth the hellish commute to Coronado every morning. 

Seriously. Those were available light with a vintage 2009 point and shoot. One of these days I need to get Excalibur and the new wide angle down to the sandbox for a sunset shoot, maybe even some actual models. I am spoiled living here. Loving life. In fact, the only way I think it could get any better was if someone actually started paying me to take pictures. Otherwise, life is awesome. Have a great rest of your holiday weekend, more gear reviews and stuff coming soon-ish. 

How to photograph waterfalls. Tips, techniques and styles for shooting moving water.

   Went away on a family vacation last weekend and stayed at a beachfront resort in Oxnard, Ca. The hotel pool and spa area had several small waterfalls throughout their landscaping, so when the family took a nap I had some free time to basically play around with shooting moving water in various ways.

(1/10 @ F16 ISO 100)

   There are pretty much three options for shooting moving water. On one side are really fast, hyper realistic shots that capture the stillness of something normally moving, trying to catch the individual droplets that make up the flow. At the other end are the dreamy longer exposures that allow the water to blur into a milky sort of smooth flow that gives the images an otherworldly quality of exaggerated motion. In between these extremes lies the attempt to capture a realistic, natural balance that shows the flow in the same form the eye is used to seeing it. Take a look at these shots of the same waterfall for a general idea of each method.

Dreamy

(1/10 @ F14 ISO 100)

Realistic

(1/125 @ F4.5 ISO 100)

Hyper-realistic

(1/4000 @ F2.8 ISO 800)

    Equipment- what you want to shoot will determine what gear you need, but you don't really need specialized gear to get any of these shots as long as you have good light. For the realistic shots you  don't need anything other than a camera (Oh yeah- and a waterfall or some form of moving water- don't forget that part- I guess that element is pretty vital.) For the extremes, you need a bit more, but not much. As long as you have a camera that you can put into shutter priority mode (think this is called Time Value on Canon, other camera types please feel free to add comments below) you can make experiment with either extreme. To really play at the ends of the spectrum you want a camera that you can take full manual, the higher the max shutter speed the better, the faster your glass the better and the better high ISO capability the better. (but in all fairness, the same can be said for any style of photography) It is the photographer that makes the picture, not the camera, but the better tools you have at your disposal the greater range of options you will have when trying to get the shot you want. You may find yourself wanting either a neutral density filter or strobe depending on the lighting you have to work with. Also, if you want to go deep into the long exposure milky textured side, you need a tripod.
 
    Since I was on vacation and traveling light, Excalibur got to sit this one out. All the images in this series were shot with a Nikon D3200 in full manual mode, 17-55mm F2.8 lens.  All were handheld. I did have a travel tripod with me, but the hotel staff and guests were already giving the lone guy running around the pool/spa with a camera and zoom lens funny looks, so I thought the tripod might have been a bit over the top, and a lot of the places I wanted to shoot from would have required me to put the legs onto someone's beach chair. I did the best I could using anatomical bracing -which limited how slow I could take the shutter. Pixel peepers will see the motion blur on the slow images. So- even though you won't see the result here, let me say again, for the really slow stuff bring a tripod and some form of remote release device. Also, images shown here have minimal post processing, I pulled some of the noise out of the higher ISO shots, added a little bit of definition and edge sharpening to the fast ones, and did some basic exposure adjustments, but nothing major.

    That's the preamble. Now for the actual shooting. I'll start with the middle ground. I thought this would have been the easy one. Find running water. Point camera. Shoot. You can go into manual and to town making the most technically excellent running water shot you want, but you should be able to get something useable just by simply pointing and shooting on auto. I wasn't going to spend a lot of time on the middle ground. Looking at my images as I pick things to post; however, it seems like I may have brushed over this too simply when shooting. It may actually be more difficult to do "natural" shots simply because there is no way to really define the term. What is natural to one person may not be the way another sees it. That's part of what makes the world so beautiful, and capturing it so hard. So I have to play some more with the middle ground next time. For the remainder of this post, when I say natural, assume I mean "as similar as I could get to how it looked in motion to my eyes." Here is my favorite "natural" shot from the group.

(1/200 @ F2.8 ISO 100)

      After the realistic shots, my first instinct was to crank the shutter up and stop time, because I always love the high speed camera footage on shows like myth busters. At first I tried just using a slightly faster shutter speed, didn't get what I wanted, so I kept bumping it up until I did. I found it took a much higher shutter speed than I expected to get something obviously different from the "natural" style.

Not quite there yet

(1/250 @ F2.8 ISO 100)

Still not there but closer

(1/500 F2.8 @ ISO 200)

This is more like it

(1/2000 F2.8@ISO 800)

    So you can see the progression of shutter speeds giving more and more of an impression of stopping the flow of the water. I wound up taking the shutter speed all the way to the maximum, as seen in the earlier hyper-realistic example. So, that is pretty much clockwork photographic science, use a fast shutter speed to freeze action. Not a major ground breaking discovery. I did find two other factors that had a much greater effect on the result of the shot than I expected: The angle from which I shot and the geography of the fall itself. The next images are shots of the same fall, two from the side and finally one straight on.

Realistic speed shot from side 

(1/200 F2.8 ISO 100)

   Note the flowing appearance on the center fall.

High speed shot of same fall

(1/3200 F2.8 @ ISO 800)

Noise reduction was deliberately not applied to this one, didn't want that to seem like it added smoothness to the fall. What surprised me was how little difference there was between the 1/200 and 1/3200 shot. Nowhere near as dramatic as the difference in the other shots. I shot both of these before moving around to the front of this fall.

High speed frontal shot- same fall

(1/4000 F2.8 @ ISO 800)

Notice the flow is clearly frozen, as can be seen in the gaps in flow, but portions of the fall still look smooth and flowy. 

   So, from the side, I was not able to get the same broken, frozen droplet effect I was able to get on the other falls. When I moved to the front, I was definitely able to freeze the flow, but the lip and the top half on the fall were still fairly smooth, unbroken flow. Not the same milky stream of the slow speed shots, but much smoother than the effect I was going for. I think that with the wide, smooth lip of this fall the water flow was almost completely laminar with no breaks, so even if I brought out Excalibur and cranked the speed up to 1/8000 it still would have a great deal of smooth flowiness in the resulting shot. (1/4000 is the fastest shutter on the D3200)

    That wraps up my high speed, hyper realistic shots. Basically, you need to crank up the shutter speed at least into the 4 digit numbers, the faster the better. To do this even in fairly bright light you will need either fast glass or high ISO capabilities, preferably both. And pay attention to the angle you are shooting from and the quality of the particular fall or flow you are shooting to make sure you will be able to get the effect you want. The nice thing about digital is you can shoot as much as you want, experiment with different shutter speed / aperture combos, and get instant review capability to let you get the precise look you want. You can either do this in full manual or set your camera to shutter speed priority and let it pick your aperture if you don't care. As you speed up it will default to the wide end, depending on light, so you may not get the depth of field you want. If that happens go full manual and use ISO to compensate. One other option that would be difficult in the field under most conditions, but definitely viable in the studio, would be to use a bulb or long exposure and use a high speed stobe to freeze the motion of the water. That would allow for even shorter exposures than the 1/8000 sec speed on the D4, depending on your lights, but I don't have the capability to play with that at present. 

   Now for the slow speed dreamy effect. This seems to be by far the current favorite in the water photography arena, at least judging from a quick internet image sample. I am torn, I really cannot decide whether I prefer this or the hyperrealistic approach. Like I said earlier, to really delve down into this area, I should have set up a tripod and remote release so I could go for some really long exposures. for very long exposures, since it was a fairly bright (albeit overcast) day I would have needed to use Neutral Density filters. As it is, I was just able to test the waters a bit. Again, I found this technique devilishly simple in concept but there are myriad ways to execute the technique, so it comes down to personal preference and how you want your images to look. Probably the only real technique point I can give you for these is adjustment. Again, nothing groundbreaking, this will only be a new idea for those unused to dealing with manual exposure, but here goes. Once you find an exposure you like, but if you don't have the effect you want, for each step you slow down your shutter you move an equivalent step higher in aperture and you will keep your exposure. You can also do these with shutter speed priority as well, expect your apertures to shrink and your depth of field to increase as you slow down your shutter. 

Slow.....

(1/30 F8 @ ISO 100)

Slower...

(1/15 F11 @ ISO 100)

And Slowest.... here we are....

(1/6 F18 @ ISO 100)

    

   It is pretty easy to see that the slower the shutter speed, the higher aperture I needed to get a good exposure at my lowest ISO. A few more steps down and I would have needed a to start using either exposure compensation or ND filters. But as you can see if you zoom in and look at the details, 1/6 was too slow for me to handhold even making an anatomical brace out of my knees, camera bag and elbows. The more I look at these, the more I see the attraction to this style. I will end with what turned out to be my favorite shot of the day's work. This is the same fall I discussed in the high speed section. (those really paying attention may notice it's also the same fall as the opening shot, so you can see the difference between 1/10 and 1/6 of a second)

(1/6 F16 @ ISO 100)

   So. There you have it. A quick overview of the three styles of shooting falling or flowing water and some of the bare bones techniques for how to shoot them. The same idea works on waves, rivers, even your bathroom shower or kitchen tap. So play around and see what you like best. Post some links to your results and share!

Monarch Butterfly Waystation program

    Some of you may have already seen these pictures, if you follow me on Instagram or 500px, but I decided they needed to get put up here again because I got more of the story behind them this evening, so hope you don't mind seeing them twice (or more for those following on multiple channels).

   We live in a small apartment complex near the beach in Carlsbad, Ca. One of the neighbors has a garden with signs out for the facility gardeners not to spray any pesticides or anything on her plants because she is a Monarch Waystation. At first I thought that this meant that she just put out food or something for the butterflies as they migrated... guess I was wrong. Apparently monarchs are running out of natural habitat and there are few places left where they can transform. So she sets up ideal conditions and pretty much plants the appropriate caterpillars in her garden when it's the right season. I missed all the caterpillars while I was out to sea last month, but when I got back there were plenty of beautiful cocoons all over her shrubs.

    These things were pretty cool, not the image that traditionally pops into my head when I think of Cocoons, I normally imagine something brown and lumpy and ugly. These were almost like little jewels or christmas ornaments. 

    Last weekend they started to hatch. Apparently for quite some time after the newborn monarch emerges, they sit there slowly flapping their wings in the breeze to dry themselves out and get ready to fly. It's almost like they are posing for pictures, really wish I had a handy macro lens, because they didn't seem to notice no matter how close I got, I could get closer than anything I had to shoot with would focus down. 

    Anyway, the neighbor was out this evening as we can home from dinner, and we got to chat. Sometimes they come out and aren't healthy, she will actually take them inside and feed them sugar water from a straw to try and get them healthy and they will follow her around the apartment like pets. 

    Of course, the ones that still don't make it apparently get put into the freezer and turned into jewelry, which is quite morbid and took the conversation in a totally different direction, but still, the waystation program is pretty awesome and I hope it takes off, because I remember seeing these guys all over in summer as a kid and it would be a loss if they disappeared. Glad I got to capture a few for the record either way. 

First studio shoot, more soccer and a club gig. Marathon shooting week

    Exposure to new things: this can be negative, positive, or usually some combination of the two. Over the past week and change I have had a lot of new experiences and a rehash of some old. 

    Started last Saturday with week two of the Surf Cup soccer tournament I wrote about earlier. This was going to be a marathon day, so of course I drank too much and stayed up way too late the night before. Still managed to get out of bed by 4:30 so I could get some breakfast and get there on time. Parking sucked the first time, so this time I parked a mile and change away and threw my bike in the back of the truck and rode in. The plan was this week to shoot with my 70-200 and a teleconverter provided by the company. Right off the bat with the teleconverter not working. Lens just hunted continually and wouldn't focus on anything. Turns out that after some troubleshooting it is my lens that won't work, even though it should work with the TC. Good thing I found that out because I was thinking of purchasing a TC. Now I either have to get the lens fixed if possible, or upgrade to the VRII version. Will have to see what the repair would run me first and what is actually wrong with it. Anyway, being maxed out at 200mm meant that I wasn't able to get as many good shots over the day, I was only able to shoot on the near end of the field without having to crop way in, which is fine if I am doing the post, but for the download and immediate sale environment I was working in for the company, those were pretty much worthless. But still, shot another 10 hours of soccer. Then I went home, took a quick shower, grabbed some food, kissed the family goodnight, grabbed a red bull and headed to Hillcrest for  an event.

    The mission of the night was to do a fashion show and performance at the Merrow, formerly the Ruby Room. The first thing I noticed was that the beautiful, awesome murals outside and the crazy interior paint in the bathrooms was gone, replaced by a rather ugly off white nothing. This made me a bit sad because the old walls were such a great backdrop to shoot at. The event was organized by Elektrofied SD , a really cool group I have shot with a few times now. I loaned them my black backdrop to set up outside. There was another backdrop inside, but I didn't get a chance to shoot on it. I wasn't really happy with my ability to set up lighting and shots against this backdrop. I couldn't get a good rim light set so that would separate dark hair/clothing from the backdrop without lighting the backdrop itself. Later found out the biggest reason was simply that I was setting the models up too close to the backdrop. But didn't know that at the time. This setup was also right next to the smoke pit, which sucked. But oh well. Although I can't say any of them are great, I was happier with the final results than I thought I would be chimping them in my screen, but I guess the trick really is having models who are hot enough that you stop noticing the technical flaws...

    So that was outside. Then inside for the fashion show piece and the performances. They hadn't really changed any of the lighting setup inside the club, but since they are no longer the Ruby Room, they didn't seem to have the same high percentage of solid red led washes. So nowhere near as challenging as is used to be to shoot in there. Really the only significant factor that was troublesome was the fog. But I managed to get  a lot of shots I really liked, and didn't have to spend anywhere near the time and workload I used to in post to get them useable. So either the lighting was easier to work with or I am getting better. I'd like to think it's a little of both. 

    I also got a few I liked during the fire performances.

    I was probably happiest with the shots I got of this guy spinning the flow staff. It was funny though, before he started this he had some sort of assistant running around pushing the crowd back and trying to get me to move. He made it sound like it was going to be a massive performance on the scale of some of the really good fire staff spinners I know. I kinda laughed and didn't really move at all. Turns out I was right, the guy could spin fast, but did nothing more than a few basic moves. Glad I got some good shots because I was quite underwhelmed by the performance after the buildup.

    Had a lot of people grab cards from me and ask about where to find the pics. This led to my biggest disappointment of the night. Near the end, as I was packing up and heading to the bathroom before getting into the car for the 45min drive home, I saw that someone had dumped one of my cards right into the urinal where the pee-cake normally goes. 

    I know it really shouldn't bother me, but at the end of a 20 hour day of shooting on top of not being happy with the outdoor light setup, it really got to me and pissed me off / discouraged me. 

   So that was the weekend. Things picked up again on Thursday when I went to take an intro to studio photography class at DK3 Studios in Mira Mesa. I had seen lots of pictures of friends from photo shoots at this studio, it's one of a couple of rental facilities in SD. Of all the rental studios I have seen, it has the best rates and comes most well equipped for your money. I got to meet Dave (the D in the name) at a photo expo, and have been planning to go in and play in his space for a while but haven't had the planets align, so when I got the meetup invite for the intro class on a night where my family was already out of town, I took the hint from the universe. Dave covered basic lighting setups for different things, how to make a white wall into a grey or black backdrop, how to do basic headshot lighting setups, etc. He also brought in a makeup artists to talk about various makeup issues. She in turn brought her two daughters to serve as our test models. It was a fun night and really good to take the various concepts I have been reading about and studying and put them into real world practice. I learned that the main reason I wasn't successful is the setup Saturday night was I was keeping the models too close to the backdrop. I needed to pull them farther away and then it would have been easier to get the results I wanted. Anyway, here are a few shots from the workshop.

    Played with high and low key, gels, all sorts of fun stuff, as you can see. I'd say pretty good for a first time in the studio. Overall I was very happy and now feel completely comfortable not only booking studio shoots, but making a decent shopping list when I start buying studio strobes and modifiers for my own uses. 

   Then this Saturday morning I did another sports shoot with a different company. This one I don't have any pics to post, because I was training and sharing a camera with one of their regular photographers. It was not action shooting, it was posed team and individual shots for kids sports. Basically, the company wants to hammer all creativity out of the process and create McSportraits (maybe I should trademark that term) to sell to parents. It's the kids sports version of the school yearbook portraits. Do paperwork. Spend no more than 60 seconds per kid. Use the pop up flash on your camera. Basically shots a trained monkey could take and the goal is to not be able to tell which photographer took which shot, they all should look the same. While I understand that from a sales and corporate perspective, I am not sure that it's a good fit for me, even worse than the soccer tournament from the past two weeks. So now after three weekends shooting for two different companies, I am torn. It is nice to be able to say I am making a little (emphasis on the LITTLE) money from my camera, it definitely isn't the direction I want to go in with my photography. I specifically want my photos to be distinctive, so have my own style and signature. I don't know what that is yet, it is one of those things I need to find. But part of me says it's good to put in my dues on the assembly line, the McSportrait company pretty much has the SD area youth sports market locked up, so it may be good for me to really see how the profitable business side of the it is run. But another part of me doesn't want to give up weekend days away from my family for next to nothing when I am not getting any creative challenge or even something I can put in my portfolio later. 

   I am pretty sure I am not going to continue with the McSportraits, I will just shoot the gigs I have already signed on for, don't want to be a flake, then move on and thank them for the experience. I may do a few more of the action shooting events, especially if they do get set up on a salary plus commission plan like they say they intend to, vice just an hourly wage. But I do need to practice my sports shooting, might as well do it on someone else's dime. Now it's time to come up with some ideas and line up some studio shoots!

Photographing a Soccer Tournament

 Last weekend I had the opportunity to shoot the Surf Cup Soccer Tournament in Del Mar, I was hired by a company called Can You Picture This (since this was a contract gig, you will notice their copyright on the images here and on my site) as one of about 20 photographers shooting the tournament. Notice I didn't call this a "how to" post, mostly because, while I did improve as the day went on, I really don't feel like I nailed it. I took roughly 1800 shots over 11 games throughout the day, but I only thought around 100 were decent. I have to say, a couple of them were real "keepers..." (sorry, haven't thrown out a really bad pun in far too long.)

 But why such a low ratio of good shots? There were lots of reasons. The primary one was that playing soccer is very different from shooting soccer. Surprised me a bit actually. Even though I knew what to expect, it was still harder to follow the game through the lens than it was when I was standing in a keeper's box running a team. I started to get used to that near the end of the day and started getting more shots. For most of the day I was trying to follow the ball, but I started to find times where I could predict where a punt or a long kick was going to come down, and pre-focus on whatever clump of players was in that area waiting for the ball. That led to some good shots, and the realization that people make really strange expressions when slamming their heads against soccer balls.

This header shot is my favorite, just because if you pull it up full size, you can really see the ball compress against her head...

  Tech has changed since I played. Shin guards were crazy thin and unobtrusive and a good number of the players wore headbands with pads to deal with the crazy headers like that one above.
 
   Camera tech was also a factor in my shooting. I had a lot of new factors going on. I was shooting on the monopod all day because it was a long day with a heavy combo- the D4 and a company provided 80-400 zoom. The 70-200 just wasn't long enough to get the whole field. I loved the color and sharpness of this lens, but compared to the 70-200 or the 24-70; however, this lens focused almost glacially slow. It was the older version of the lens, supposedly the newer version is faster focusing, but I can't speak to that. All I can say was that, despite being warned about the slow focus when issued the lens, it still was hard to adjust to, especially with the speed of the game. I have several great shots of awesome saves and shots on goal that are dead center focus point, but they are just out of sharp because I didn't get there far enough ahead to let the lens find the focus.

   I played with focus modes on excalibur throughout the day. I wasn't fast enough to keep up with single point AF, and found that anything over 9 point AF tended to lock onto something other than what I wanted, since there were so many players on the field all running for the ball. I tried all five AF delay options, ultimately settled on 4 (middle long).

   I started out trying to shoot from just behind the goal on one end of the field for the first game, thinking that would give me some great shots of attacks and slide tackles and things, but I picked the wrong end and the other team pretty much kept the ball on the other half, so way too many back shots. For that game I tried to be cool and bring out a folding chair and water and stuff, so I was pretty much locked into my little camp. So really was only able to shoot half the game.

  For the rest of the games I ditched the chair and water, and found that I really liked being right near the center line between the two team benches. That let me get shots of both goals as well as a lot of runs and drives.

 The only issue I had with this spot really was having to listen to the coaches for the whole day. They were only slightly more inane and annoying than sports announcers. I heard wonderful and brilliant things all day, gems like "you have to beat the other team to the ball," and the like. If you take a look at the intensity on these girls' faces, I am pretty sure they were already doing their best to beat the other team to the ball.

  And then there were arguments about calls. One freaking coach was still arguing about a call 20 minutes later, screaming at the ref. I wanted to walk over and ask him if he really expected the ref to stop the game, walk over and say, "oh, thanks coach. After 20 minutes of hearing your screams, I finally realize that my call was mistaken, and see the wisdom of your position. Let me just rewind the game 20 minutes and we'll pretend everything after that didn't happen." I also wanted to bring up the picture I took of the foul in question and tell the coach that, yes, the ref did in fact make the right call, as I clearly captured the moment on film. But I figured the company might not approve of that. At another point I thought I was going to have to break up a fight between opposing coaches. Seriously people, it's a game. Enjoy it. I don't care how many college scouts are watching. I am sure hearing you yell about how badly the kids are playing will have no lasting effect on their self confidence.....

  I also learned that it is very hard to find a hat that protects from sun but actually lets you shoot. The bills get in the way of the camera or the camera knocks the hat right off when it hits the bill. So far I have tried cowboy hats, my fedora, and my floppy sun hat. Guess that is why you see so many photojournalists with the classic backwards baseball cap. Gonna try that one next weekend and see how it works, because too much sunscreen winds up all over the camera and no matter how much I slather on, I still burn after 11 hours even in overcast conditions.
  I experimented with both horizontal and vertical shots. I liked the vertical composition better, but it was much harder to keep up with everything since the window was tighter. I got more useable shots horizontal. The huge zoom range made two eyed shooting harder to adjust to, and I found that because of the camera design, I could only really shoot two eyed with right eye on the viewfinder in vertical, but could use either eye for horizontal. This was important because when I was shooting horizontal and could switch eyes on the viewfinder, I was able to track the action wider with the free eye on either side of the camera, therefore either side of the field. When I was vertical, I could only use the other eye to track things happening to the left side of where I was set up. If I put my left eye to the viewfinder vertically all I could see with the right was camera. Next weekend now that I know that my batteries are capable of getting through a lot more than I expected (I shot 10.5 games on one battery before it died) I may play with shooting in live view a bit, I haven't really done that yet.
 
   It was a very different experience than shooting circus or dance. Performances are action, but it's choreographed, and the area of the stage is relatively small. The music gives cues to when big moments are going to happen, and the good performers actually pose for the camera/audience at multiple points in their routines naturally. It's also easy, especially for aerial, to know where something is going to happen in space. Find the trapeze bar, set your focus, and it really isn't going to change much for a static act. Soccer games are spread out over a large area, they happen fast, and even when you know the game it can be hard to predict who will win a race to the ball or which way the ball will go after a header or ricochet off a foot, knee or other body part. Next weekend will be the younger kids weekend of the tournament, much more chaotic. Will have to see how that pans out. And, on a final note, even when shooting high speed sports, don't forget to look for stray hairs and the little details!