Arrived near the end of the airshow at the Leesburg Executive Airport today, so I only watched the last event, but it was excellent. US and World Freestaly Aerobatic champion Rob Holland performed some amazing stunts.
Category: photography
How to create banners for your sports team
Many high-schools in our area create banners for their sports team to display in the gym during the season. Sometimes the photographer that does your official team photos will offer to make such banners, but that may cost $40 or more per player. Here is how to do it for about half the price and with more flexibility.
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From a developer to a photographer
Ever had a blog and then did not write anything for five years? Here is how it happened in my case.
Kids got bigger, got into volleyball, and one day I found myself trying to take pictures of fast moving subjects in badly lit gyms with no flash allowed. Phone cameras are not designed for that, and even a decent digital camera can not handle that situation with a kit lens (I had Canon Rebel T3i at the time.)
After some research I got a Canon 70d with 85mm f/1.8 lens and that worked quite well for a while, but then we were getting into high school and I wanted to find something with a little more reach and faster focus.
Canon did not seem to have anything significantly better in my price range, so I switched to a Nikon D500 (refurbished, of course.) At first I used Nikkor 85mm f/1.8G lens because I still needed a fast aperture, but that did not give me any additional reach (and I still had to switch lenses to take a team photo…)
And then I found out that Sigma actually designed a lens specifically for indoor volleyball! OK, that is not true but almost… Sigma 50-100mm f/1.8 Art lens has it all – fast aperture and zoom that covers just the right distances for me. It is quite heavy but I love it. See my instagram account for some more volleyball shots I got with it. One of them even got published in a local paper.
Once I figured out how to use the camera in difficult settings – and I had to go all manual and all raw to get as much quality as possible – it seemed easy to try other types of photography. I was right in some ways, but I also learned there is much more to learn, so I kept my day job after all. Some of those other photos are available on Flickr.