New Orleans: Day 1

First things first: I had a wonderful time in New Orleans on my National Geographic Weekend Photo Expedition. I met some great people, both as part of the program and the locals, learned a lot, and got better (I hope). It was wonderful to meet Tyrone, Jennifer and Krista and they worked hard to make sure we had a good time and a great experience. I'm already trying to figure out which one to do next. Tucson or Santa Fe look mighty interesting... There is far too much to detail in a single post so I'm going to be writing about the weekend for several posts to come.

How it worked: For the 2 full days of the workshop, we went out to shoot with a specific focus in mind. We were out for 3-4 hours and then returned to the classroom to review our take. We were each expected to pick our top 20 images from the day and then sit with one of the instructors (Tyrone one day, Jennifer the next) to critique those 20. As part of the critique, they would pick their top 3 or 4 images to be displayed for comment to the entire group. The critiques were an extremely useful vehicle for learning what to look for in a photo, particularly as we were encouraged to listen in on each other's critiques when we had the time.

Day 1 officially began at 9am. However, about half of us met Tyrone in Jackson Square at 5:45am to catch the sunrise and beautiful early morning light. I ended up selecting a couple of these in my 20 for the day (more in a future post), including this one of the St. Louis Cathedral.

Off to New Orleans

I had another blog post planned for this week (a shoot involving colored gels on the flash) but I ran out of time to write it. It will still be there to write when I get home. This post is guaranteed to be my shortest yet!

I'm on the plane (and hoping that blogger works well enough on the iPad to let me post this) en route to New Orleansa by way of Atlanta, for a National Geographic Weekend Photo Expedition. I turned 50 last fall and this trip was my birthday present. It took a while to find the right expedition but this is it. I'm at once excited and terrified.

I hope to have lots of good images and stories to share on the blog after this weekend. As the cliché says: stay tuned...

In motion

This past weekend, I needed to shoot photos showing motion for an assignment in a course I'm taking. I was not allowed to use flash which pretty much required that the shots be done outside. In the winter in New England, outdoor motion photography is hard to come by except on the ski slopes so that's where I headed with the camera.

There are two primary ways to illustrate motion in a photo and I had the option of submitting either or both for my assignment. It was an exceedingly bright day making it difficult to tell whether I was getting anything usable while we were still on the mountain so I made a number of shots with each technique and planned to sort out my submission once I got the images back to the computer. I ended up with some good examples of both techniques and submitted one of each.

The first technique is referred to as "stop motion" or "stop action". It involves using a very fast shutter speed to freeze everything in the frame. In order for this technique to work, the subject has to be caught in a position that isn't physically possible when at rest. As luck would have it, my first shot on the mountain was the best of the "stop action" shots and is the one I submitted.

200mm, ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/2000 © Richard Critz

The glare from the snow and not being able to use my goggles with the viewfinder made tracking him to guarantee that the camera focused a serious challenge and I was essentially shooting half-blind. While I would like to have caught more of his skis while he was airborne and would have liked to have the critical focus be on his eyes instead of the tips of his skis, I think this shot succeeds quite well at capturing motion.