New Direction

In correlation with my last semester's work, I'd like to continue shooting sports for my body of work. This semester, I have more resources which means I should have more freedom to get a little more creative with my photographs. Working with Scott Brown for my internship has been great so far, he's a really nice guy, has lots of experience, and being able to work on shoots with him has allowed me to learn so much a very little time. Anyways, because of my internship, he's going to allow me to borrow lens, possibly even cameras from him. I want to continue with shooting basketball, I've had a lot of fun shooting that over break, we've set up strobes, been using multiple remote cameras, all wireless connected to the strobes. Its pretty intense setting it all up, but I need to continue shooting sports on my own as well, I don't get to do all that much shooting when I attend games with him, I play an assistant role. Getting back into games for myself will allow me to get more timing down, getting a feel of when to shoot. But I'll have learned a few things, like where the good spots are to sit, when to more and get other shots, when to aim for the sideline, coaching, different aspects. Its nice to have a mentor figure to show me the ropes, learn things directly from him, it saves time not having to go out on my own and learn from my mistakes. I'd like to experiment with different angles, I want to mess around with some wider angle lens, I'm already shooting from a low angle. Maybe try getting shots of the atmosphere as well, crowd, stadium, etc. I'll be shooting a tennis match on friday, first home match of the season, that should be interesting. Pretty excited to see how that turns out, I've never sat in for a tennis match. I've watched on tv, but the closest I've come to tennis in first person is playing homerun derby and just cranking the balls out of the court. They have a new court for matches at Cary St. which has a deck that over looks the court, so I'm hoping I can get access to try and sit up there, get some high angle shots. I just need to get in touch with Chris or Justin from VCU athletics, called already this week, didn't get an answer, I got time though.

I have also thought about doing some sports portraiture as well, stuff that you'd see in magazines such as ESPN or Sports Illustrated, just to get a feel for the lighting, maybe somewhere down the road it'll give me opportunities to photograph pro athletes, it would be a great experience. I've already gotten a little experience with commercial portrait photography with Scott Brown, so I know some things, but I would like to work a little more on portraits, so I can expand my horizons a little more, explore different areas of photography so I'm more well rounded. I'll be taking the fashion photography course this semester, so that will help with experience. Taking the course seems kind of cheesy, but it seems a little better after going to one of the classes, I just wanted a chance to work with a real client in a class, rather than just pleasing classmates all the time, some of the can be really close-minded and hard to please just because they have a different perspective. Anyways, thats about all I've got for now, I think this semester will be more about fine tuning what i've learned so far, and shoot more specific areas of sports, and moving into a little portraiture photography. Sports portraits probably won't be part of my semesters work for this class, but I may do it on the side for individual research and portfolio pieces.