Once again, Photo Friday has managed to anticipate my photography homework by a week. Next week's assignment in the Saturday class is to photograph shadows. Unfortunately, that's the Photo Friday subject for this week.

I did manage to find a couple of images that would work from my current week's 'motion' homework, though. I spent some time at the high school track the other day, photographing the runners. My results were fine for a first attempt, but I hope to get a couple of other chances to create images of the athletes. It's fun to work with the motor drive, and to capture moving subjects.

This first image was created by metering off the center of the track and setting the focus for the location I expected the runners to traverse. I used my 105mm lens at 1/180 of a second and an aperture of f3.3.

There are two problems with this method. First of all, by metering off of the track, the camera moved it to a midtone when, in reality, it's a bit darker. Everything in this first image is a bit lighter than it ought to be. Second, the runners didn't traverse the area of the track that I expected; they were on the inside lanes, where the focus is quite soft. (Fortunately, in this image it's not as noticeable as in the next two images in the sequence.)

As an indication that I'm gaining some skill through experience, I realized these two mistakes and was able to make adjustments for the next series of images. I metered from a grey card, and I stopped down (1/125 of a second at f5.6) while altering my focus area. Still, I would have liked a sharper image. Something to work on next time, I guess.

I also want to try photographing some baseball before the end of the season.

On this day at foldedspace.org

2005 — A Fine Evening   I know it doesn't sound like much, but with the yardwork and the dinner with a friend (and now the pipe in my hands), it was a fine, fine evening.

2004 — Sunriver 2004   We're back from the annual MNF Sunriver trip. This year's three-day getaway was one of the best yet, though I felt like an ass at times.