Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Remote FAIL



Yes, thats my camera.

Remote photography takes lots of preparation, patience and above all, a willingness to accept that you have put hours (or days) into a shot only to have one little thing you overlooked screw it all up. I've done remotes at basketball, baseball, shuttle launches, soccer (and on my dog's food bowl).

My success ratio? Slim. Very slim. The dog hated me for a day, the soccer wasn't dominant enough, the baseball never fired right, the shuttle ... abysmal failure. This leads me to Georgia's 67-66 win over Virginia Tech. Very good game. Since it was an off day, i grabbed the second pass and decided that i would get there hours early and set up a backboard remote. Here's the how-to. My only suggestion is that you add infinite patience and have someone help you focus.



Same shot as above, different angle. What's wrong with this picture....

So i get it all set up, its framed nice so that I'm looking down on the play - there's not much 'above the rim' play in the college game. I get it just right, adjust the gobo, double magic arm, all the works. Cleaned the glass too. Decided for whatever insane reason that somehow it would be a good idea to focus on the netting. Lord knows what the heck i was thinking because what was in focus? Only the rim and the net! Not the players, not the lane, nothing other than the net.

Here's the two really nice photos i really would have liked to have. Yes, i went to the trouble to crop, tone and resize two completely out of focus pictures just to show the readers why you need to double check everything.




1 comment:

kewlfocus said...

Let me let you in on a little secret... The Washington Times would have run those photos. No joke, I saw our sports photogs pass through so many unsharp photos it was ridiculous, and I would say something and they would say.. well.. It's newspaper sharp.. Wrong! Oh well, an A for effort then, eh?