As many of my friends know, I love airplanes and whether it's by nature or nurture my four-year-old son Reed loves airplanes too. Lately his favorite airplane is the SR-71 Blackbird. It's probably because one of his airplane videos shows a SR-71 with lots of fire coming out the back.
When you're four, there's nothing better then a jet that shoots fire out the back.
This year our annual Outer Banks summer vacation took us through the Northern Virginia Dulles area where there just happens to be the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. This is the new annex to the Air & Space Museum in Washington D.C. The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center is a beautiful museum and features the Boeing Aviation Hanger, a huge building housing hundreds of aircraft. One of the centerpiece aircraft of the museum is the SR-71! Reed was excited and of course I was too.
I had a Kodak V570 with me, a small compact digital camera that has a wide-angle lens and panoramic stitching feature. I will talk more about panoramic stitching in future blogs. Conditions were difficult: A seven-hour car ride, two tired kids, a McDonald's looming in the food court and of course the SR-71 (a completely black aircraft).
The Boeing Aviation hanger is a large dark space with bright windows on each end. The small flash of a compact digital camera just doesn't provide the fill lighting needed for such an open space. I tried my best to steady the camera as well as play with the ISO settings. What ISO controls is how sensitive the image sensor is to the amount of light present. The higher the ISO the more sensitive the image sensor becomes giving you the capability to take pictures in low-light situations. This can be tricky though because a higher ISO often creates more "noise" within an image.
I didn't get technically good pictures, but when your four years old, a picture of you and a SR-71 is a great one and that's really what photography is all about. I printed out the panoramic image and it now hangs in Reeds room. It's pretty cool.
If you are ever in the Dulles Virginia area, the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center is definitely worth the stop and you too can see the SR-71.
There's something mesmerizing and often delightful about being able to freeze an action moment in time - that split second moment that even your brain can hardly recall. How much "air" can you really catch on a bike or on a sled? Capture that moment, and a picture can tell the story. Two of my favorite action shots are included in this entry. The first picture is of my nephew Ross flying high while sledding in Tahoe. The second is a picture of my nephew Grant "catching some air" while testing out his new bike ramp.
Trying to capture an action shot with your digital camera can be challenging and frustrating. One of the main reasons for missing an action shot can be due to shutter delay - that delay between the time you press the button and the moment that the picture is actually captured. On some digital cameras, this delay can be significant. Although many newer digital cameras are addressing this issue, it can still be a problem. Another issue is good ol' human reaction time. Even if you owned a camera with zero shutter delay, your finger might not react quickly enough to capture those faster moments such as your son pitching in little league. Is the situation hopeless? Not at all. With just a little know how and practice, you too can become a digital action photographer!
While there are no guarantees, here are some tips to help you out:
- Use the "Sport" mode: many recent cameras have a "Sport" or "Action" shot mode. This mode typically presets camera settings to be optimized for action shots, thereby increasing your chances of getting a good shot.
- Use the "Burst" mode: many cameras also have a "Burst" or "Multi-Shot" mode. In this mode, you hold the shutter button down and the camera captures a number of pictures in rapid succession. For example, on the Kodak V550, you can capture up to 5 pictures at a time, at a rate of 3 pictures per second. This helps to address issues related to delayed reaction time.
- Follow your subject with your camera: as the action is taking place, frame your subject and move the camera along with the subject as you are capturing the picture. This is a technique referred to as "panning" your camera with your subject.
- Shoot before the shot: try to anticipate your shot and press the button just before the shot you really want; this will help address issues with shutter delay.
So what about me, what do I do and how did I capture that biking and sledding picture? I always use "burst" mode and pan my camera with the subject. I also try to remember to anticipate my shot. In general, it usually takes me lots of attempts and I end up deleting a number of pictures that do not turn out. Sometimes my nephews get exhausted before I do. But, practice helps and when I do capture "that one shot" it's all worth it in the end!
Do you have a cool action shot to share? Add a link to the comment section or submit your picture to Kodak's Picture of the Day.
Rather than lug around a large photo album, I discovered that a great way to share my travel tales is to create an online album at the EasyShare Gallery. I write the captions as if I were telling the story, and then send the link to my family, friends, even coworkers. I don't have to reiterate the same stories ad nauseam and I can write really long captions to tell my story. I’m not cut off at 120 or 248 characters like I’ve found on some websites.
One summer, my family of five drove cross-country from Rochester, New York to the Grand Canyon in two weeks. Since we will probably never take another trip like that again, I wanted to preserve every moment. I didn't just photograph the grand vistas and the family lined up in front of famous landmarks; I also took pictures of the little things that made up the trip -- the kids playing in the car, our breakdown, the campsites, even signs along the way. I documented the little moments of the trip -- our countless picnic lunches, rest stops, even pumping gasoline. Come to think of it, I should have photographed the price of gasoline back then. That price is just a happy memory now. So are all the precious moments of that trip.
I was happy to be able to tell the story, the WHOLE story, in my album. You can check out our Trip West here.
Later on, I will share some of my extreme international travels through the pictures I take.
