So I went to a cheer competition yesterday. I have 2 nieces, one of which is the one in the middle of this picture with her mouth wide open. She's 10 right now and doing this competitive cheer thing. I was instructed by my sister-in-law to be there at 9:00 to take pictures. I wasn't necessarily looking forward to it, but in the end I had a good time.
Sports photography is always tricky to me, mostly because I've never shot whatever is it is I'm shooting. I don't do sports. Not because I don't like to but because the opportunity doesn't come up very often, and when it does, I realize I need one of those $5,000 lenses. It's always a challenge. I enjoy it. Going into the cheer thing, I wasn't ready for what was about to happen. . .
Their thing was about 4 minutes long and I took almost 300 pictures. I focused on Amber about 95% of the time. A few times I zoomed all the way out to get the entire group.
The point of this post. . .I like action photography. Sports and action and anything moving. . .stuff like that is really fun!!
Thanks!!
Here's the story behind this picture. . .
First of all, I'm very patriotic. I've been wearing a "SUPPORT OUR TROOPS" wristband thing since October of 2001. I've had to buy a few b/c they wear out and eventually you can't read that it says that, but I don't take it off. My Dad was in Vietnam, his Dad was in WWII. . .I'm patriotic.
My old flag was pretty worn out so my parents got me a new one for Christmas. It's beautiful. I always forget how awesome a brand new flag looks. . .the colors are bright, you can hear it flapping in the wind. . .it's awesome!! So awesome that I've been wanting to take a picture of it. I took one tonight. I'm not sure if we have a full moon going on tonight or if it will be full tomorrow night, but it's big and bright tonight, so I composed a shot with the flag and the moon. I wanted to get that star effect from the moon so I had to set my aperture to something small. I started with something like 6 seconds at f/10. That was decent but not the one. The exposure on this shot ended up being 30 seconds at f/18. I thought I liked it when I saw it on the camera. Then I got it in photoshop.
WOW!! I had quite a blast working on this one. I did quite a bit to it--levels, a photo filter, a CoffeeShop Action (Vintage News), and lots more. I spent about an hour on it. So you better like it!! I like it.
Thanks!!
