Time-Effort-Reward

If you have ever read my blog you know that Josie does everything at 100%. This includes anything she does from sidewalk chalk art, playing dolls, drawing, sleeping and playing basketball with a soccer ball. The thing is we probably have 4 or 5 basketballs in the deck box but its so much easier to just use the soccer ball that is out of the deck box.

The thing I love the most is how this series of photos shows the true Josie spirit, she will not give up until she gets what she wants and when she is successful she celebrates. I've especially seen this as she works to conquer the letter "R" is speech. I love how she will say some word that has an "R" in the middle like dork, example- "Jenna your a dork", and then she stops says dork a little slower just to make sure she gets that "R" sound correct. I love when she realizes that she made the sound correctly and she says " Hey Dad, did you hear me say dork, it has an "R" in the middle and I said it right, Yes!"

I would like to thank Jamie for the example above of the word Dork and the accompanying sentence.

I love the fact that she shoots, misses and gets her own rebound and shoots again until she scores. My photography text book suggested a similar routine to improve your photos.
Shoot a photo.
Look at the photo.
Evaluate the photo.
Shoot another photo.

As long as we are talking photography, I like these photos for another reason, as Josie was practicing basketball, I was working on Henri Cartier Bresson's idea of the Decisive Moment.

"There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative," he said. "Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever."

Finally, there is nothing like celebration. We both put in the time and effort and we are both rewarded.

Tonight, I am thinking of my neighbor and former secretary Pat Lawrence who lost her husband this past week. Gerald has fought the good fight, finished the race, kept the faith. He will be missed, but I imagine that there is some celebration going on up in heaven with Gerald and those who have gone on ahead of him.

B&W Basketball

Tonight I shot basketball totally different than I did with the previous post. Saturday night was Decisive Moment shooting because I was using strobes that recycle about once every second. Tonight I shot available light with a Nikon D3S and a 24-70 F 2.8 lens with the camera set at ISO 8000 and the motor on 9fps. I think of this as more of a spray and pray type of shooting. I converted them to B&W because I like B&W better. We lost a tough game tonight to AR Tech in OT. Now we are moving on the the GSC tournament for the last time. In the fall the Bisons will be playing in the GAC, Great American Conference.

Lucy, Camera Timeline, and a Decisive Moment

This is another small grouping from my last roll of film. Lucy is taking my picture as I am taking her picture. A very normal thing to do. She is using a very old 3MP Kodak camera. That was the third digital camera that the office bought. The first digital camera was a Kodak DC290 a 2MP p&s camera that we paid about $500 for and a 48MB CF Card that we paid $150 for in 2000. After the Kodak 290 we bought a 3 MP Nikon 990 because it had a manual exposure mode which was a big help in controlling exposure. After we bought the Nikon My boss started using the Kodak which he wore out shooting Optimist Club events. The Kodak no longer worked but Kodak offered a rebate to buy back a bunch of their cameras and they were paying $250 for the DC 290. I called and checked to see if it had to function and was told there were no conditions on taking the cameras back. So we traded the DC290 in for the Kodak DC 4800 and only had to pay $50. After the Nikon 990 we stepped up bigtime to a Nikon D1X in 2002. We later added a D100 and Then the awesome D2X and D2Xs.

Just as Lucy was about to take my photo Jackson put his hand in front of her lens and I got this decisive moment. You have to be thankful for motor drives. I was using my Canon T70 film camera so motor drive might be a stretch. Auto winder is more what that camera has since it operates at about a frame per second. I love the total look of disgust that she is giving Jackson. I feel the same way, it is never funny to put your hand in front of someones camera lens.

In this last picture, Lucy is giving Jackson the you better not mess with me because you will loose look. One of the reasons that I got this sequence is that I am staying with the subject and the action which is easier with a film camera because you can't chimp. The other reason that I got that sequence is that I am a highly trained professional- at least that is what I tell my boss when he asks how I got some cool photo. I often refer to Nick Kelsh and his three rules for great photography and rule three is shoot more photos. I would be out of line to not give credit for The Decisive Moment to Henri Cartier-Bresson.