As some of you know, I recently started up a new organization called theSMACAttack. I am located in Mississippi, and coverage of High School sports here is lacking. Of course, the larger schools are covered, but when I was in HS, there was always the lack of stories, updates, and features written about the smaller schools. I felt that if my team won a big game, we should be able to click over online to see how our district rivals did as well. That was never a feature I was graced with, and I was left reading stories in Monday's paper about our district foes. That wasn't good enough. We were already past the energetic rush of winning a game. 3 days is far too long to wait on coverage. In fact, 1 day is too long. My website provides same-day coverage of local high schools. We are just starting out, but already we are beating local media outlets with coverage. We provide recaps of games before midnight, imposing harsh 2 hour deadlines to have stats recorded, stories written, interviews finished and photos edited. We have blown our competition out of the water. In all this excitement, I picked up a new hobby. Here are some of my shots from recent games I have covered. If you like these, I may post more for you guys. This was taken with a training lens, which was no better than f/4.5. The school lighting really helped out here, as it was pitch black outside. I ended up shooting with a lens speed of 80 at max, which is awful for sports. I found only about 30 good photos out of 1300! This one was from this past Friday night. I shot at a school with decent lighting, but not nearly as good as the previous. I was using a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens here. I shot with a camera speed of about 200 all game long due to the lighting, but the lens really helped out. Considering I have a 40D, a camera upgrade is next on my list, but not immediately needed. I can get away with this setup for a good while. That new 7D, however, has my eye. \ Tell me what you think! Also, visit me at www.thesmacattack.com ! I would really appreciate feedback on the site.
I've highly refined my equipment and really focusing on getting down some decent settings. Here is a shot that I've really grown to like recently: One of my main mistakes at this particular game was shooting at such a high ISO. The jersey of #6 is actually a reflective grey color, not black. The sensor didn't handle the color well at such high ISO. However, check out that ball! That was a perfect spiral, and my camera stopped it mid-spin. One of the big differences between this camera and last camera can be seen immediately: no blur. This one does a great job of shooting fast enough while still allowing enough light to get through.
We've also undergone a website redesign. This streamlines the content a bit better, as well as clears up the cluttered background.
I've changed up my post-processing a bit, as well as started compressing my images. The result is an image right at or under 800k, as opposed to a 7MB image file that clogs the site... And the post-processing looks better IMO....
