Michael Reichmann of the Luminous Landscape just posed a review of working with a pre-production Canon 7D with beta firmware on his Web site. Definitely worth a look for anyone interested in the new camera body.
A John Wayne American flag hangs on the back wall at Lucy's on September 24, 2009 in McBaine, Mo.
I’m presently working on a story for the “Boone Life” photo column in the Columbia Missourian. While the story is not yet finished, I thought I would share a detail from the diner where I’m developing something to fit our new theme: beginnings. In this case, how people begin their days in the small town of McBaine, Mo., population 12. I’ll link to the story when it is finally completed.
The final story went online last Tuesday while I was at the Missouri Photo Workshop, and can be read on the Columbia Missourian’s Web site. Also, this slideshow accompanies the story:
David Champlin of the "Big Mo" drum crew, who lead the MIZ-ZOU cheers at football games, celebrates the Missouri Tigers' victory over the Furman Paladins with the Golden Girls at the end zone of Faurot Field on Saturday, September 19, 2009 in Columbia, Mo. The Tigers defeated the Paladins 52-12. / Canon 1D Mark IIN and 16-35mm f/2.8 II L lens @ 16mm; exposed 1/400 sec. @ f/8, ISO 800.
This weekend I photographed a college football game–Missouri Tigers versus the Furman Paladins–along with John Schreiber, for the Columbia Missourian. It was only my third or fourth time photographing football, and my first college game, so it was a little different. I was also using a Canon 600mm f/4 L IS lens from CPS, which made things extra different. But it was a lot of fun, and there’s a web gallery here.
While at the game, I was assigned to get a feature photo of the crew of “Big Mo,” an over-sized drum on a trike that is used to lead cheers of “MIZ–ZOU” at the games, as well as run up and down the end zone with the cheerleaders after a touch down. At the end of the game, David Champlin started dancing with the Golden Girls, who are a more “sparkly” version of the cheerleaders. The result was the photo above. Sadly, it will never find its way into the Missourian, so I’m posting it here for all to see. I suppose it’s better this way.
Secondly, I thought I would post this portrait of Anthony Fitzgerald and Arnold Cromwell, two custodians–one from Hickman High School, the other from Rock Bridge High School–to be featured in this week’s VOX Magazine in the “On-The-Job” section. I was happy with the final select, but also felt that the image below worked fairly well. I do wish I had some more time with them to get a moment between the two, but at the very least I feel that this was a respectful presentation of the two men.
Anthony Fitzgerald, left, a Hickman High School custodian, and Arnold Cromwell, right, a custodian from Rock Bridge High School, stand in the hallways of Hickman High on Monday, September 21, 2009 in Columbia, Mo. Despite the two schools' athletic rivalries, neither Fitzgerald or Cromwell take it too seriously. / Canon 5D II and 70-200mm f/4L IS lens @ 75mm; exposed 1/160 sec. @ f/8, ISO 800.
Tonight I photographed a blowout softball game: Rock Bridge High School: 4; Hickman High School: 0. And while I was reasonably pleased with the results of my first attempt at softball in over three years (read: they were OK) one of the outtakes sticks in my mind, so I thought I would post it here. It’s more of a graphic / dynamic image than a story-telling one:
Danielle Linneman, a junior on the Rock Bridge High School varsity softball team, heads off to bat on Thursday, September 17, 2009 at University Field in Columbia, Mo. The Rock Bridge Bruins defeated the Hickman Kewpies 4-0.
On Saturday, 12 September, a small but determined group of MU students and faculty drove down to St. James, Mo., the site of last year’s Missouri Photo Workshop, to enter a float into the Grape and Fall Festival Parade.
Our float was a mock-up of St. James: The people of Missouri’s ‘Forest City of the Ozarks’, a book of St. James residents’ stories told by MPW participants and MU students, which was edited by Josh Bickel, who received his M.A. in photojournalism this past May.
Many late nights the week before–printing, spray-painting, loading lumber and bikes into cars–culminated in a first place award for a float entered by an organization, and the sale of close to 100 books that afternoon…while Calin Ilea, Jakob Berr and I went fishing at Meramec Spring! (A well-deserved break, I might add.) Here, then, are 20 images that tell the story of the day:
I have finally had a chance to go over all of my images from the Tour de Missouri, as well as my other shoots from the week, and found three images that I thought were particularly interesting but were unpublished–they did not find their way into the Columbia Missourian, or my Blog, for that matter–until now!
Old Courthouse reflection, St. Louis, Mo. Canon 5D II and 24-70mm f/2.8 L @ 70mm; exposed 1/500 sec. @ f/5.6, ISO 100
I saw this composition with the imperfect reflections of office buildings and the Old Court House as I was walking to the downtown Hilton to pick up my press credentials for the first stage of the Tour of Missouri. This is cropped fairly heavily, so I do wish that I had switched lenses to the 70-200mm f/4 I L IS, but I was in a rush to get to the race before it started without me!
More after the jump!
Members of Team Columbia-HTC and a lone member of Team Cervelo move to the front of the pack as they work their way along 7th Street in St. Louis as part of the 7.5 mile circuit of the first stage of the Tour of Missouri on Monday. The first stage was won by Britain's Mark Cavendish, competing for Columbia-HTC, and consisted of ten laps of the circuit. Canon 1D IIN and 300mm f/4L lens; exposed 1/5000 sec. @ f/4, ISO 400.
Yesterday I was sent out to St. Louis by the Columbia Missourian to photograph professional cyclist Floyd Landis’ participation in Tour of Missouri, as well as the first stage of the race. Landis, who was stripped of his victory in the Tour de France in 2006, his pedaling with an artificial hip, and he apparently consulted with a doctor in Columbia, Mo. before having the surgery in the UK. I will link to that story when it goes up tomorrow. For now, you can browse through some of my other photos from yesterday on the Missourian‘s Tour of Missouri photo gallery.
One thing I will say is that I was very, very happy with my choice of taking my 300 f/4. Sure, 300 f/2.8 lenses are great in low-light situations, like indoor volleyball, but at an outdoor event like this, f/4 is plenty, the lens is extremely sharp, and unlike some of the other photographers at the media room at the Ballpark Hilton that night, I wasn’t complaining about my shoulder hurting!
I did get a weird comment from someone else about my new and favorite laptop, my MSI Wind netbook, as I used it to edit my take in Breeze Browser and then e-mail some of the better images back to the office before driving back two hours on I-70. But, again: I’m trying to save my shoulders, back, and knees. If you want to schlep around a 9-pound behemoth of a laptop, be my guest. But that ain’t for me!
Rear view of the Canon 7D announced today. Image from DPReview.com.
Announced today was a new camera to the Canon lineup that will fit between the xxD series, such as the 40D and 50D, and the 5D II: the 7D. Read the announcement and preview at DPReview. It appears to be a D300S killer, and it’s refreshing to see Canon being agressive rather than lazily updating the xxD line (again). Sporting an 18 megapixel sensor and two CPUs, it captures images at 8FPS and, supposedly, will have great autofocus. Of course, the 1D Mark III was supposed to have great autofocus, too, so I’m sure the jury will be out on this one for a while. But this does seem to be an answer to the problem of wanting an “action” (sports or wildlife) camera without having the bulk of a 1D series body. I’m very excited by the idea of this new body, I just hope that the execution meets my very, very high expectations. After the debacle with the 1D Mark III, anything like this that has a processor dedicated to autofocus should do the job damn well, because this camera might be testing the waters for a new 1D Mark IV coming down the pipeline. So if the autofocus on this camera sucks, it will be a bad omen for the Mark IV.
Speculation aside, this body seems to have some of the refinements that the 5D Mark II should have, such as the dedicated dial to switch between standard Live View and Movie mode. And I love the idea of having built-in wireless flash control. If it could do it without use of the popup flash, like the Nikon CLS system, then it will be even better (not sure of the details). Will this be the answer to the D300S? I sure hope so, because the proposition to switching to Nikon is just too expensive for me!
