I posted some pictures from the Stella Ultimate (Frisbee) tryouts from a week or two ago.

It was fairly dark under the lights so I set a somewhat slow (for sports) shutter speed of 1/160 sec. and opened the aperture as wide as possible (varied depending on zoom) and used the auto ISO function to compensate for the changing aperture.  Most of the pictures have an extremely high ISO and are quite grainy, but that is too be expected in such harsh conditions.  When they are shrunk down to web size they don’t look so bad.

It was tryouts so I was hoping for some layouts from people trying really hard but there were not many to found (even though there were some good opportunities).

I finally finished up with my Stella pictures from the Canadian Ultimate Championships 2010 and have the pictures from the womens finals posted over on the Stella site. Womens Finals: Stella v. Storm.

I have posted all of my Stella pictures now.  I do have a limited number from a Phoenix game that I may post somewhere, but I’m not sure yet.

Another set of pictures from the Canadian Ultimate Championship 2010.  Stella v. EXO.

I have posted my first set of pictures from the Canadian Ultimate Championships 2010 on the Stella site.   So far I have only put up the Stella v. Scarlett game.  I hope to have game 2 up soon.

There seems to be a lot of traffic coming for CUC 2010 photos.  I have tonnes of pictures from 3 of Stella’s games (including the finals) but I am at a conference in Montreal until tomorrow night and haven’t had time to edit and post them.  I will work on that as soon as I can.  Check the ultimate page for pictures.

I’m at the Canadian Ultimate Championship (CUC 2010) in Sherbrooke, QC.  I’m taking Stella photos when I can (I’m observing, similar to reffing, a lot of games).  I will try to get pictures posted after the tourney.  Check the main page for pictures.

Jessie’s Ultimate Frisbee team, Stella, was playing in the 2010 Ontario Women’s Regionals here in Ottawa on the weekend and I went out to take some pictures.  ’Some’ turned into almost two full 4 gig cards.  I filtered it down to 230 and posted them to the Stella site.  Here are a few of my favourites, though there are some other good ones.  I posted so many to the Stella site so that I have most, if not all of the players covered at least a couple times, ‘cuz who doesn’t love looking through pictures from an activity and finding a few of themselves.

Taking pictures of the huddle is tough.  I got some decent ones when they all move close together for the cheer.  I like this one because it gives some context to the day, and I can picture it being a two page spread in a magazine with title and text in the negative space.

I found that because I am often so far away from the action, even my 200mm lens doesn’t get in close enough so I had to do quite a bit of cropping.  For this set I cropped them all to the same aspect ratio (some landscape and some portrait), just for consistency (and the landscapes fit nicely as wallpapers on new widescreens).   Sometimes it wasn’t the optimal crop, but cropping in close makes for much more dramatic pictures and removes some distracting elements both on the field and in the background.

Wasn’t Jessie’s hand block awesome!  I’m glad I caught it on film.  One problem I have had is maintaining focus as the conditions around my main subject change (like people running through the scene as I am focusing on the handler and marker).  When I knew where action was going to occur I would auto focus and then hold the focus lock (nicely positioned for my right thumb beside the eyepiece) so that the auto tracking feature would not try to change the focus as other people moved.  This lead to some cool shots of the handler framed by cutters in the foreground, such as the one below.  Sometimes I did forget to let go of the lock button.  Practice.

You may have noticed that I put a small watermark on this set.  This pictures get passed around and Facebooked quite a bit, so I thought I might as well put my name on them.  I don’t really care at this point if they get used elsewhere and the resolution isn’t the greatest anyways.  I currently do these games for fun and practice, but I do like that people know where they came from.  I will work on a better watermark (I have an idea) and I will discuss how I make them and batch apply them in a future post.  It isn’t as easy as it should be with Photoshop.  I know third party software exists, but I am surprised Adobe hasn’t made it easier.

The last one is another of my favourites, though it has some flaws I will try to remedy in the future (such as the cutting off of some feet and legs).  I still think it’s a cool shot and would also make a neat two page spread, or a good wallpaper since there is some negative space to put some icons.  I may do that.

Again, all of the Pictures are posted on the Stella Site.

Jessie is playing womens competitive ultimate with Stella this summer so I will often be tagging along and taking a lot of pictures.  The first tournament was the Toronto Ultimate Festival (TUF) put on by the Toronto Sports and Social Club (TSSC) over the first weekend in May.

The weather was a mostly miserably wet and cold with a little bit of sunshine for the last game and a half.  Even when it was overcast the shooting conditions were infinitely better than when I was trying to shoot indoor ultimate over the winter.  I started shooting at 1/500 sec. and when things brightened up a little bit I moved to 1/1000 sec. to try and freeze things even more.  I definitely notice a difference in the sharpness when the shutter is sped up and I will try to shoot at faster speeds in the future.  On sunny days I can probably go even a little bit faster and I will try that in the future.  Since I was using my 18-200mm lens with a variable aperture I set it to stay at the maximum aperture (minimum f-number) for the current zoom and set it to a variable iso.  This is kind of like using a semi automatic shutter or aperture  mode.  I’m not sure how conventional this is, but I have heard of others doing this.  One day I’ll get a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens, but thats pretty expensive.

I was learning a little bit about style and technique as well.  One thing I already knew is that in ultimate it is much easier to take pictures of handlers and their throws than it is to capture receivers and catches or exciting D’s.  I do know a lot about the sport so I can sometimes anticipate the action but that often means watching the handler and cutters at the same time.  It’s easier to anticipate down field action on a long huck when you can anticipate where the disc will come down and hopefully some action will occur.  This also gives you time to focus on the people involved.  On shorter to midrange throws (which can result in even more exciting photos) you need to be much quicker.  But the challenge can be worth it.  I may work on getting more receiver photos next time.

Another challenge is positioning.  Figuring out the best place to plant myself on the field was difficult.  The ‘Home’ side of the field can be quite crowded if both teams set up their ‘benches’ on the same side.  Higher calibre teams tend to have a lot of off field spotters how move up and down the sideline and some will give me room and others will not.  Sometimes moving to the ‘away’ side of the field means less of a crowd.  I like to move a little bit on the sideline (at least at the outdoor games) and tend to stay closer near the 1/4 field mark of one end of the field and move towards the end zone as the play goes that way.  I don’t stick to tightly to this and if the weather is bad or I have friends there I tend to not move as much.  Wind also plays a role.  Long throws will tend to go down wind.  You have a good chance of seeing some layouts or fights for the disc at the downwind end zone, where most of the points are usually scored.  One other thing I have noticed is that sometimes you get a more interesting angle if you crouch down (or even lay down) and take pictures up at the players.  I didn’t do this too much at this tournament, but I will experiment more with this in the future.  The general rule seems to be that the most exciting plays will happen at the opposite end of the field from wherever you are.

I did do a little bit of post processing.  Mostly cropping, minor white balance changes and some small exposure adjustments.  Nothing too fancy.  I did play around with some content aware fill to get rid of some distractions on the sidelines (bags and jackets) in a couple of the pictures.  I was just trying out the new feature.  You would probably never be able to tell unless you compared them with the originals or I told you.

These were some of my favourites more are being posted on the Stella Ultimate gallery. I’m sure there will be many more of these posted in the future.  I hope to improve my technique and I may work on improve my post processing and overall workflow.  I dread tagging.