We always post our best shots

So here are some that almost made it (there are plenty on the cutting room floor). As with most of life, timing is everything.

You will have to come up with your own titles for these.

More wet fun

The wet weather seems to have arrived but that doesn’t deter soccer lovers. I was amazed at the dedication to the game. As a result of my confusion over the schedule the U-18 game wasn’t were I was Saturday morning. It was raining (with occasional lightning) and I was wet already from looking for the right game so I decided to photograph some younger players. These are the Division 4 Girls U-10. Everything was dampened down quite well but their spirits seemed bright and cheerful. Most of them were having fun.

Photographically they presented quite a challenge. The sky was so dark that I ended up at ISO 1600 just to get enough shutter speed to stop most of the action. Fortunately there is enough rain that any noise generated by that ISO is all but invisible.

More images at Norwood Photos

More soccer

I still don’t know a lot about soccer but I do know it’s a real technical challenge to photograph. It moves fast, over a large area, with a subtlety that I never would have imagined. And as the season progresses the weather will deteriorate and it will become more of a challenge, both to play and photograph I would think. So I’ll continue to practice and learn. The best lens I have in the bag for the game so far is the Canon 70-200/2.8 IS. It’s a compromise, being a bit too long on the short end for up close work and not quite long enough on the long end for across the field work. Do they make a 35-400/2.8?

And some of the fans were just plain fierce……

Woodland, Washington – all a board…

OK, goofy title. But we had fun getting the pictures, and that’s where I’m at. Daughter Amy and I made a trip to the Woodland Skate Park to try our hand at skateboarding photography. Fun evening with some talented young folks doing some tricks that this balance-challenged photographer would not dream of trying. Skateboarding is interesting to photograph because you can generally get right up close to the action.

And something with a bit more color –

Soccer!

Another first for me – a soccer game. I’ve never played but can certainly appreciate the stamina and skill involved. I was exhausted just watching the game. Thanks to Steve H. – NW Rebel Photography – I got a chance to shoot this game last Saturday. The weather was about perfect, the light actually pretty good, and the color and action terrific. Learning to shoot this sport is a real challenge. The action is fast (and a long way off most of the time) and quite unpredictable to my untrained eyes. Thanks to some coaching by Steve and some help from the fans on the sidelines I managed to get a few keepers. I used the Canon 70-200/2.8 IS the whole day – an amazing lens. The full set of images is available on my photo site.

Sometimes things just get weird

Night wandering sometimes produces very strange results.

But things quickly get back to normal, the storm passes, and life resumes.

Sunflowers found…

After the trip to Fort Vancouver in search of sunflowers I gave in and found out where Beth’s friend had found them and it turns out it’s not too far from home. On the corner of 156th and 92nd Avenue, Vancouver, is a terrific little vegetable stand run by Betty A. and her son Duane. Betty is a delightful lady who obviously loves growing top quality farm produce. While I was busy with the sunflowers (which were rapidly fading, being a week or more past their prime) Beth was perusing the offerings of fresh vegetables. For lunch today we had, without a doubt, the best sweet corn we’ve had since arriving in the NW some 20 years ago. Betty also gave me free run of her sunflower patch for photographs. As it turns out the entire patch this year is made up of volunteers. We also ended up with some sunflower heads for my backyard bird photography. More photos available at NorwoodPhotos.

In search of sunflowers…

One of the ladies in Beth’s painting group recently took some terrific photos of sunflowers and I was hooked. I had to find some sunflowers to photograph. I remembered that the small garden just outside the entrance to Fort Vancouver had sunflowers galore and so I headed on over. It’s a small demonstration garden and this year they weren’t demonstrating sunflowers – not even one.

Not wanting to pass up an opportunity to use my Senior Parks pass I decided to go on into the Fort. Fort Vancouver is NOT a very busy place during the week which left much of it open for unobstructed photography so I played a bit. Nothing special, just interesting – to me at least.

Local views

I am catching up on some older works that should have been posted long ago. These three shots were done within a 2 minute walk of each other in Vancouver. The vignettes are the result spending some time with another photographer, Todd N., who has a real knack for seeing the picture within a picture.

The reversion of a mural.

I do not profess to know what the issues were and I certainly don’t know who the players were. What I do know is that a colorful mural with a positive message has been painted over. But I happened upon it before the latest brush reduced it to a long gray wall. There are several versions of it on my site. Hint – they fit real well on the 5×30 panorama print. Note: the original mural was about a half of a city block long – quite large.