Sometimes in life, you get lucky. Well I got lucky on Monday, immediately spotting a pretty girl with an umbrella a few hundred feet away that perfectly fit the dreary weather pitch. I walked up, asked her if I could take some candid photos and she agreed. I ran forward a bit and got some cool walking photos and even though it was a little bit awkward it was a good example of how being forward and a little bit carefree makes for good photos sometimes. It’s a good lesson going forward, be bold.
Overall, I was pretty happy with how this assignment went. The pictures are good, my only qualm is that both were from the same day and setting so there was very little diversity. I did try to find another sporting event to cover, but there were simply none around campus in the timeframe for the assignment. In the photo illustration, I do not pretend that it’s more than elementary but it’s not bad for my first attempt at using photoshop for something like that. Like all previous assignments, this one was a great learning experience and sports features are something I badly want to get into in the near future.
Alex DeRocco, center, John Manziel and Wyatt Carstens walk up Galbraith Mountain on a warm spring day on Saturday, May 14, 2016.
Alex DeRocco, 23, puts his knee pads on before riding down SST trail on Galbraith Mountain in Bellingham, Washington, on Saturday, May 14, 2016.
A photo illustration showing the problem of prescription and illegal drugs in classrooms around the country.
Last weekend I climbed Mount Hood in Oregon and was really stoked on having my camera with me. Unfortunately, I realized once I got up that I had forgotten my memory card. Classic! That being said, I snapped some photos of my phone and realized that photographing the experience does not have to make the experience. It’s just a nice add on. I got the summit and a beautiful ski down and could not be more stoked on climbing the tallest mountain in Oregon on a beautiful day with a great friend.
Emotion photos are always fun to take because you are capturing a moment and freezing it forever, that’s really rewarding to me. I am happy with both of these pictures because I honestly feel like I captured each person’s personality and did not stop shooting until I got what I needed. They may not be perfect, but nothing I take is and that’s ok. Looking forward, I want to learn to capture emotion while also conveying a really technically solid and layered photo, something I was amazed by in Jordan’s portfolio.
I had a lot of fun shooting this assignment, action photos are my passion in photography and I badly want to improve my skills. I used techniques such as blur and pan that I had never tested before and although these photos did not turn out as well as they could have, I learned valuable skills going forward that I have already used in my own photography. This reaffirmed my belief that I want to focus on action sports photography as much as possible in the future.
