Never, never...never never never EVER...mess with this woman…
I don’t know which of these ladies I am more afraid of…
I would not cross either one, that is fer sure!
Great stuff Alex. What process are you using to go the B&W route. Looks very good.
Thanks! The short answer is I set the camera to monochrome. Long explanation to follow, those of you who are not into photography can stop reading now:
My goal is to always get the photo I want just by pushing the button on the top of the camera. By carefully and deliberately adjusting the camera menus and settings I can avoid spending a lot of time at my computer editing photos. Photoshop is a necessary evil that I try to avoid as much as possible. I used to love it but not anymore!
For this particular event the goal was to make black-n-white photos that froze the action, putting the skill of the participants on display. I chose b/w because the action depicted was from before the days of color photography and my eye just visualizes that era in monochrome. People really look good in shades of grey. Skies and clouds are also beautifully rendered. It is all about texture and contrast. Plus I have just been in the mood to do black-n-white lately.
Camera settings
Tonality is taken care of by setting picture control to monochrome. In the “manage picture control” menu I chose the yellow filter. This adds contrast to the sky and people. I also used a screw-on circular polarizer the entire day for the same reason. Clouds really pop thanks to that puppy! Active D-Lighting is set to “high”, this could be a permanent setting for my camera. Every camera I own has some form of this feature, I love it because it gives me more detail in the highlights
and shadows, sparing me from the #1 reason for having to resort to Photoshop. Sharpening is set to the third from lowest box, this is one area where Photoshop gives me better control than Nikon.
Another feature I love is Auto ISO. It was turned on, max ISO set to 3200, min shutter speed set to 1/1000 to stop motion. Some of the photos were bumped up as far as ISO 500 without me even having to think about it. Exposure mode is set to aperture, I control this third of the exposure equation, the camera does the other 2 parts. Action shooting stages were photographed with my 50mm lens set at f/5.6. Mounted shooting was photographed with a 70-200mm zoom. Aperture varied from f/2.8, where I struggled with the short depth of field and some falloff, to f/4. I am not used to telephoto lenses, most of the time I am up close using a wide angle lens so this was good experience. I also need more experience using the continuous auto focus mode, it did not always agree with me on what should be the focus point on my moving subjects.
Since anticipating action only gets me so far, drive mode stayed in continuous high all day long. Because I was expecting to have a lot of photos image size/quality was set to small/fine. Some of the crops suffered in quality due to the small file I started with. I don’t know what I would have done with 1200 12mp photos anyways!
Photoshop actions
Basically I set up the camera to make the exposure that I want. My job is composition and anticipating where the action is going to be… the two things that Photoshop can’t do for me! Actually, the crop tool in PS did help with a few of the more distant equestrian subjects. I normally crop with the camera but it was hard to keep up with galloping horses so some of my compositions needed help. The only other exposure adjustment I made at my computer was highlights/shadows to lighten shadows on some of the riders who’s faces were shaded from the midday sun by their hats. Compare the face in the 2 photos of the cavalry guy on the pinto pony. I didn't adjust the one where he is using his pistol, the one where he is drawing the shotty has been lightened.
Then it is “process multiple files” time. This is my favorite part of Photoshop! I pick source and destination folders, put 900 pixels in the image width box, check “resize” and “constrain proportions”, select “convert to JPEG high quality”, check the “sharpen” box in the quick fix tab then hit OK and walk away. After most trips this is all I need to do to prepare all my photos for the web. The photos look sharp on a web page
and download quickly!
Some things I would do differently next time.
Skip using the VR. At 1/1000sec there is no need! :doh:
Use a smaller aperture on the telephoto lens.
Pay attention to the circular polarizer. Some of the scenes had better skies in portrait orientation than in landscape orientation because of where the polarizer was set.
Maybe pick up a battery grip. An extra 3 fps would have been nice. More importantly, I will be the first to admit I do very few photos in the portrait orientation simply because I hate holding the camera that way.
Finally - talk to the people, get them to pose and use flash when it won’t cause a distraction.
