How I Shot That - Clouds and a Falling Leaf

How I Shot That - Clouds and a Falling Leaf

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Sony a6000 / Sony 50mm f1.8

When the Fall comes, the weather gives us special opportunities.  One of these opportunities came from a set of trees in La Crosse that are nearly 100 years old.

Every fall, these few tall trees around Riverside Park shed their leaves.  It is the hight that gives me options.  And that day the clouds were spotty and the wind was just enough to rest the light collector away from the branch.  

Since it has so far to fall, the wind really carries it away.  I get enough space away from the tree to take that out of the frame.  And then I need to spend much of a day by this tree, running down leaves.  Sometimes I need to spend multiple days in order to get the photo I want.  This one, I had actually come back to the same place multiple afternoons to get the photo of a single leaf with the clouds in the background.

Something else that helped take this photo, was a new camera (at the time) that had a much better focus system than my old point and shoot bridge camera.  This was from my Sony a6000.  I used the 50mm f1.8 lens.  The a6000 was made as a starting sports camera.  So I was able to get my focus on the leaf pretty well.  I also had to shoot pretty fast.  So 11 frames a second was nice to have.

If you were to purchase this photo, the best way to do it justice would be on a large metal print.  Think 12x18.  That would be gorgeous.

How I Shot That - The Waiting Skaters

How I Shot That - The Waiting Skaters

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Amazon SP Teri Skate Search
Amazon Edea Skate Search
Amazon Riedell Skate Search

Figure skating, like in a lot of things, is filled with an atmosphere of 'hurry up and wait'.  I couldn't think of a finer personification of that statement than with this moment.

Every year, the City of La Crosse Park and Recreation and Forestry department puts on an ice show for the people that participated in their winter figure skating program.  Over the years, through my wife, I have gotten to know many of these kids quite well.  At the time, the camera I was using was still new to me (Sony a6000).  But I loved how flexible it is for me in this environment.  Specially since it let me get a shot like this.

This is a little bit before the ice show started.  I had previously determined that this location is where I would shoot the entire show from, because the door there would open up to the ice.  At this moment, many of the higher level skaters were lining up at this door for the show's opening number.

One of the  challenges about figure skating and photographing kids is a lot of people don't always like their kids faces online.  So I'm always looking for a photo that will be universal of sorts.  When we were waiting for the show to start, I'm seeing all of these kids with all of their skates.  For me what I think worked best, very few of the skaters had the same skate as someone else.  What got me excited was, everyone skating with whatever they had... an incredible cross-section of skaters.

So I got low with my camera (from Amazon: Sony a6000) and I kept on my 50mm f1.8(from Amazon) lens.  By focusing on some of the middle skaters more of the skates could stay in relative focus (I didn't need bokeh balls in the background).  I could get the shot down to 1/60th of a second but still needing my ISO up to 1000.

And I must say, the best reward of this photo was printing it on metallic paper.  This is a shot that needs to show the shine of the blades while making the skates shimmer a little bit.  I liked it cropped or like this.  So it can be taken down to 16x9 and it still looks great!  Honestly, I think ice rinks all over could have this photo to decorate with.