In the Bowl

Gallery: POP PhotosPosted July 7, 201276 views6 comments

I hardly ever take action shots, but I had fun photographing skateboarding for my guy's "Later Skaters" Facebook page launch. I'm so used to second-guessing myself, worrying about whether I'm failing to use the best techniques to make the most of a scene. It was refreshing, and more fun that I would have suspected, to have to make a few quick decisions about where to place myself and what settings to use, and then just going with it. I only had a few runs to try to get some good shots, and this is my favorite. I typically shoot at the "intimate portrait" level for nature and urban photography. I guess I ended up doing the same for sports shooting!
I would welcome any comments and critiques.

Comments

6 comments

Comment posted by Harley Goldman on July 8, 2012 at 1:50 PM

I really like your composition in this one. I think the cutoff boarder works well to emphasize the shadow and lend just enough reality to an otherwise abstract scene. Works for me.

Registered on November 19, 2003, 586 Posts, 11271 Comments

Comment posted by Anil Rao on July 9, 2012 at 3:53 AM

Very interesting. I love how the shadow completes whatever is not shown of the skater.

Registered on November 15, 2003, 234 Posts, 4923 Comments

Comment posted by Craig Myers on July 9, 2012 at 3:37 PM

This works really well. I'd say you've captured the essence of the sport in this deceptively simple scene. Having to crop your images to meet the Facebook home page standard, must have been an interesting post-processing exercise in evaluating potential images.

Registered on September 1, 2008, 85 Posts, 757 Comments

Comment posted by Heather Nilson on July 9, 2012 at 5:25 PM

Thank you for the comments. Craig--this shot was used as the cover photo for the page, so the horizontal crop worked out, but I actually did not plan it that way. In fact, I was not aware during the editing of the intended use for the images! I have experienced that before, though, where my images looked awful with the square format imposed on some of the page shots, and it does take some work (usually) to find an image for that banner format on the header. At least they have a little tool to move the frame around, but there's no doubt that some shots don't show to advantage with Facebook's formatting. I happened to luck out with this one.

Registered on March 19, 2008, 12 Posts, 60 Comments

Comment posted by Max Waugh on July 18, 2012 at 8:40 AM

I think this works pretty well, though I might've asked for a tick more room at the top so the foot and end of the board weren't abutting the top edge so closely. The light, shadow and curved lines on the surface are really great.

The only disadvantage to this when it comes to Facebook is that the square "avatar" picture is on the left side, which will be a bit of a distraction and may come close to overlapping some of the detail in this shot. I've certainly run into this problem a few times when looking for various images to use on my own FB page.

Max

Registered on September 26, 2008, 428 Posts, 2329 Comments

Comment posted by Catherine Reilly on August 25, 2012 at 1:24 PM

Perfect.

Registered on August 16, 2006, 603 Posts, 9192 Comments