Baseball Photo Products

I enjoy working as the official photographer for the Lehigh Valley Baseball Academy. It keeps me involved in a game I love, allows me the challenge to capture the amazing plays that happen on the field, and introduces me to a lot of incredible players, parents, and coaches.

Besides the benefits I enjoy from this, I also like to share my work with others. Capturing a player putting a tag on a potential base stealer in the midst of his slide is but one example of the thrill of photographing baseball games. I photographed 19 baseball games this year–14 for LVBA and 5 for the high school team at Pleasant Valley. Each and every game is different and trying to reflect the flow and outcome of the game with my Nikon camera is an exciting challenge!

Sharing the photographs is the second part of my job. I do provide the LVBA with 7 framed action shots for them to hang on the wall of their facility. We are also in the design stage of creating unique calendars for each team. But here are a few more ways players and parents can enjoy my photographs.

Sticky Pix
These are similar to Fat Heads, if you know what they are. These photographs stick to the wall and can be moved over and over again without leaving a sticky residue on the wall. They can also be ordered as cut-outs and are available in three different sizes–11″ x 14″, 16″x 20″, or 20″ x 30″.

3-Photo Sports Collage
The collage features three different photos of the same player. The one in the middle of the collage is bigger and the other two are arranged in an attractive way around it.

Teamsakes
For goodness sakes, what in the world is a Teamsake? I’m glad you asked! A Teamsake is an 8″ x 10″ collage of 9 photos. The idea is to include a variety of photos from your team as a memory keeper of the season.

Buttons
Many parents are proud of their baseball players and mom’s especially like to wear a 3″ button featuring their favorite baseball star. The photo in the button can either be a portrait or an action shot.

Magnets
I don’t know about you, but our refrigerator is filled with all kinds of magnets. My favorite section is the rows of photo magnets depicting our kids in the various sports they have played. Each one brings back some special memories of that season and you can see your little man growing up right before your eyes!

Mugs
Do you drink coffee, tea, or hot cocoa in the morning? Well why not drink out of a mug that shows your favorite athlete on the side? While you’re at it, take it work to show all your co-workers. Action shots showing dust and dirt flying are guaranteed to stay on the outside of your mug and not ruin the taste of your favorite hot drink.

Large Prints
Prints have become a bit more rare with the advent of computers and digital frames. Still, there is nothing quite like a large print hanging on the wall. The details of a photograph are much easier to see and enjoy in the larger sizes.

This is just a sampling of the ways to enjoy your favorite photographs. For more information on these and more please see my website or go directly to this page or this page.

2010 Pennsylvania Elk Calendars Now Available

How would you like to see the majestic Pennsylvania elk every month of the year?

Many of us enjoy getting to see the elk firsthand, but we just do not have the time to make trips to the elk range often enough. The mountains beckon but we cannot always heed their call.

Enter the 2010 PA Elk Calendar. This calendar features photographs I took of the elk and there is one for every month of the year plus another photo on the cover. You can see the photographs I included by going to my website. You can also order a calendar if you so desire.

I enjoyed the process of selecting the photographs for this calendar, but it was not easy narrowing down the final selections. Take a look for yourself and let me know what you think of this elk calendar.

The Value of a Spreadsheet

Do you know how much a spreadsheet can help your photography?

Most people assume that spreadsheets are only for working with numbers, but nothing could be farther from the truth. I use spreadsheets for all sorts of things. For example, I have one spreadsheet with my photo equipment dream list. One one sheet I prioritize the items I hope to buy in the future. On another sheet I track my savings for the next piece of gear. I can even compare features of several lenses side-by-side.

I use spreadsheets for upcoming photo events, too. I can list shots I don’t want to miss, create to do lists to make sure I am ready for the event, and even track my progress by using little check marks and highlighting what still needs to be accomplished.

Spreadsheets can be a great tool for the photography. Give it a try!

Taking Care of Business

I have a lot of photo editing to do tonight, so this will be a brief blog entry. Editing photos can be a time consuming process but today’s software makes it a breeze. Adobe Lightroom is my all-time favorite photo software right now. It not only excels at managing my collection of photos, but I can also change the White Balance, adjust the exposure, and even touch up part of a photo with the adjustment brush. It is some sweet software!

I still have to use Photoshop every now and then. It is very powerful and useful. The resulting images are so much more clear than back in the old film days. Just compare a scanned slide image next to one taken with a digital camera. It is amazing!

Ok, I really have to get back to my photo editing job. Good night!

Up to My Eyeballs in Elk Photos

I am up to my eyeballs in elk photos and I love it!

I am currently working on a project that I am hoping to unveil later this month. I have been looking back over my elk photographs and this exercise alone has been a wonderful experience. Sure, I see some old photographs that I hope will never see the light of day, but I also see a progression of my photography technique and how it has improved over the years.

Looking back through these photographs took my mind back to many times spent up on the elk range. It really is a beautiful place, like none other. And as I am known to repeat, “There is no place like the mountains!”

I don’t just say it, I believe it. We live on Effort Mountain in the beautiful Poconos of northeast Pennsylvania. Our elevation here is actually a bit higher than Winslow Hill. We do get a decent amount of snow each year, but nowhere near the amount Elk County receives. And there are no elk here in the Poconos.

So, short of driving the 3-hour trip to my favorite spot in the world, I am left looking through photographs taken while I was there in the past. I see the photos and can almost re-live many of the moments I snapped those photos. It is amazing how my mind can go back and recall specific details just from these photographs!

I will keep sifting through these photos, two of which I posted here for you see.

Laptops & Desktops

I’ve been using a laptop for a very long time now. Its portability and compact profile make it perfect for me to carry back and forth from the office to home. I can travel with it, check my email just about anywhere with its wireless connection, and I can even sit out on the back deck and surf the web!

Yep, I like laptops. So much so that I never imagined I would ever want to own a desktop again.

Well this is all beginning to change. You see, I am not very faithful at backing up my data and this is troublesome. I have been fortunate in the past to never have a hard drive fail. Well, correction, I had a 20mb hard drive fail on my very first IBM PS2 desktop, but back then my files were saved onto 3.5″ floppy drives. We’ve come a long way from those days!

With all the photographs that I have been capturing over the years, much hard drive space is required. One problem I’ve encountered with the laptop is that my external drives sometimes change their drive assignments. For example, sometimes one is drive g: but then sometime later becomes drive h: I also have to keep disconnecting the external hard drives from my laptop every time I want to take the laptop with me.

Enter the desktop solution. Tonight I reassembled a desktop. My initial goal was attach a LaserJet print to this desktop so I could print from it on my network. But then I got to thinking, “Hey, this could make a pretty handy backup scheme if I attach my external hard drives.

Eventually I want to get a Drobo for my backups and I can simply attach this to the desktop.

My laptop is not being replaced and I will use it for my email and much of my day-to-day work, but I am beginning to see that having a desktop on my desk will be a very nice addition to my work flow. I am a little slow, but now I have some work to do to get this thing fully functional on my network!

More Rain but Some Constructive Photo Learning Nevertheless

It is raining in the Poconos once again. Rain, rain, go away!

But instead of letting it get me down this time I started reading a good photo book, made a plan to backup all my photographs, and started fixing a desktop computer to connect to my network.

The book is Scott Kelby’s, “The Digital Photography Book, Volume 3″ and I cannot say enough about this book. Let me, however, say this, “I already ordered Volumes 1 & 2 and I’ve only had Volume 3 for one day.” Buy this book if you want to get some creative ideas for your photography. It is well worth the price and time to read this incredible book.

My backup plan started with a few paragraphs of Scott’s book, which referred me to an article on his blog. The backup scheme he uses is solid and I decided to adapt slightly a few of his ideas and use them for my backup procedure. I will follow his advice of making sure I have two copies of each photograph before reformatting a flash card, In my case I will use my laptop for one copy and a portable hard drive for the second copy. The OWC portable drives caught my eye and I plan on purchasing one soon and another one in the near future. They are smaller than the external drives I have been using up to now. I also plan on breaking down and buying a Drobo. I first heard about this little robot on “This Week in Photography.” The redundant backup scheme of this little guy far exceeds the RAID option. I will have to save a few pennies first, but since I recently acquired the 24-70mm zoom lens, I figure it is okay to spend a little dough to protect my photographs.

The desktop computer is one that I haven’t used in a while, but I want to utilize a good laser printer that I acquired and connecting this desktop to my network should allow me to do just that. I have to work around one minor monitor issue, but after that I should be up and running.

It is raining, but I’m still thinking a lot about photography nevertheless!

What To Do on Rainy Days

Well, it’s another rainy day here in the Poconos. So what is a photographer to do on such a rainy, miserable day?

Here is a list of things I can think to do photographically on rainy days:

1. Catch up on keywording photographs.
2. Sort and organize photos
3. Create a list of subjects and places you would like to photograph
4. Backup photos
5. Clean your photo gear
6. Shop on the internet or add to your wish list
7. View other photographer’s websites for inspiration
8. Check out some new photo blogs
9. Read some good photography books
10. Dream about photography

 

First Impressions

What do you think about first impressions?

Are you the kind of person who believes strongly in first impressions? Can you truly judge a book by its cover much of the time?

Well, my first impressions of the Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens is full of praises. It is a beefy lens, which I like. Some say it is to big or too heavy and I’m think, “What? Are you crazy?” Far too many modern products are too flimsy and will not stand up to much that is thrown at it. Not the case with this lens!

The auto focus is quick and responsive and the AF-S adjustment allows the photographer to dial in a quick fix adjustment on the focus by hand. The range is nice, too–24mm to 70mm, which is the perfect range under my 70-200mm f/2.8. I can see this lens being great for portraits, landscapes, and indoor photography. 24mm is not all that wide on the digital cropped body, but it is better than what I had before so I am happy.

I still haven’t taken all that many photos with this lens, so I am not posting any samples yet. But I can tell you that my first impressions of this lens are, well, impressive! This may sound redundant and perhaps predictable, but I extremely happy with this purchase and I believe I will get a lot of use from this lens. The photos I have taken are crisp, sharp, and full of amazing color. My first impressions give this lens an A+ so far. Of course, seeing is believing so I hope to share a few photos from this amazing lens soon.

Rain, Rain…

With all the heavy rain we’ve been having I haven’t been able to put my new standard zoom lens through many paces. I was hoping to have some photos posted by now, but this just didn’t happen. It’s been raining so hard that I got to use one of my favorite sayings, “It’s raining as hard as a cow peeing on a flat rock!”

The rainy weather has put a halt to many outdoor activities: my son’s baseball tournament and the ALCS baseball game between the Angels and Yankees just to name a few. I know we need rain, but it sure puts a damper on outdoor photography. Sometimes I tough it out and go out in the rain anyway, but this weekend the rain was often very heavy. So I chose to stay inside, stay dry, and watch some college football.

My new lens will get to be used soon enough I suppose but I am impatient. Rain, rain, go away!