Gladiators

Today I went and photographed a Community House Middle School football game.  My friend Oneill Palmer is the coach and this is his first year coaching football at that school.  My other friend Matt Shinall is coaching the defense, it's also his first year in that position.  I have taken pictures for this middle school before during their track season but this is the first time I've ever photographed a football game.  Pretty exciting, lots of action and lots of opportunity to learn.  One thing about me is I rarely say no to a photography job because I use it as a platform for learning.  What I do when I photograph the middle schools is I will capture the season and sell cd's or dvd's of the season to the parents.....they LOVE them. 

On this image, "Chance" was taking a pitch to the right and made a couple people miss for a few yards.  He did have one fumble in the game but his team recovered the ball.  The final score was 7-7 and the Cavaliers this season are 0-1-1.

In this image, shot at f/4.5 at 1/600 of a sec, I converted it to black and white using a plug-in from Nik Software.  I took it back to Photoshop and worked on some contrast.  I didn't need to do much to the image, I just kept it simple.  My next step was to crop using the Rule of Thirds, if you arent familiar with this, it is one of the basic principles of good photography.  Painters have been using this technique for thousands of years. 

Well this is my 4/365 in my project "Life is a "trip"...." I'm still going strong almost a week in.