Cincinnati Sports Photography by Vincent Rush

Making Money in Photography

2012-01-13T11:27:00.000-05:00

Making Money With Photography — 10 Surefire Ideas To Help You Make Money With Photography

February 1, 2011

Money

Here are 10 ways to make a good start at making money with photography. Some pursue photography as a hobby or interest. However as any other field of art, photography is a good way to make money while you are at it. It may not be one of the most promising and money making stream to choose as a career, done wisely it can prove to be a stable and reliable income stream . In the days of film, the number of people pursuing photography as a career was limited to few gifted people, but in the days of digital photography, the art of photography has reached its zenith. It has become a promising income stream with some effort involving internet marketing and creativity to blow-off the common man’s expectations with outstanding photographs.

Make Money With Event Coverage
Events are a huge source of making money with photography. Be it weddings, sports events, company meetings, graduation ceremony, school activities, etc all require to be documented in forms of photographs. The organizations hire the professional photographers for covering the events and pay them like anything. On an average basis, a wedding photographer charges $2000 to $5000 per wedding. Similarly, sports photography is also a huge market of making money.

Sports Photography
Make Money Online
One of the best ways to make money with photography is to establish online presence as the photographer. Internet is the easiest source of reaching to large masses and gaining popularity (and eventually gaining the benefits of “word of mouth”). Become the part of the viral internet marketing through:
- Stock Photography: Stock photography provides an excellent platform to the buyers and the sellers of the photographs. The stock photography sites encourage the photographers to submit their best works (and maintain the online portfolio) and provides the best deals to the buyers.
- Building Web Gallery: The other smart way to showcase your work to the world is to create a web gallery. You can either build your own website or a photo-blog to display your photographs or can choose from Picsengine or Wix.com which help in building the online portfolios without the hassles of maintaining the website.
- Social Networking And Sharing Sites: Social networking sites are an effective way of gaining popularity. Upload your photographs to the social networking sites and offer the photo-services to attract the potential customers. Apart from the social sharing sites, there are some sites like Demotix.com which pays you for submitting the newsworthy images.
Life On The Road
Specialize In “What Sells”
To make money with photography, you need to look at the commercial aspect of photography. Get an overview of the market stats to know what sells the most. You have to be thorough with this one. Find out what sells the most not only in terms of the subject, but in terms of image quality, concept and license (royalty-free, rights-managed or copyrighted images). Once you are done with the ground work, you gain an insight into what is favored by the audience and likewise you can start working in that direction for providing the photographs which are liked by the masses.
Creativity Is The Key To Making Money
Your creativity, vision, imagination and the presentation skills provide you an edge over the other photographers. The stock photography sites, the web designers, entrepreneurs, advertisers, etc mostly avoid picking up the common photographs. The photographs they pick and choose reflect the brand and convey some specific message and thus, each of them is looking for something unusual, different and striking. If you can offer the creative photographs which convey the message or highlight the concept, nothing like it. So, even though you specialize in what sells the most, the one thing which gives you an edge over the others and of course help you draw money is your creativity.

Here Comes The Sun
Post-processing As A Medium For Making Money
In the course of learning photography, the photographers eventually turn out to be the masters of the post-processing skills. Right from making some crucial post-processing adjustments for correcting the color cast, contrast, saturation, sharpness, etc to introducing some special effects in the photographs, the photographers can make a good income by utilizing their post-processing skills (also termed as the photo-finishing skills). You can easily make money by offering post-processing services like creating a realistic torn photo-frame effect, converting the colored photographs to black and white, restoring the old pictures (and resurrect the faded color in Photoshop), etc.
Photo-Journalism Is A Great Source Of Making Money
Photography is as diverse as its applications. Ranging from street photography to conceptual / story telling photographs, you can make good money by offering your photographs for editorial purposes to magazines and newspapers. This gives you an opportunity to make money as a freelancer (as a hobbyists or an enthusiast). Instead of just offering the photographs to the magazines, you can earn a good income by selling the stories with the photographs shot by you. All you need to do is to invest in some creative effort to wrap the photographs around the content like photographing streets, customs, traditions, buildings, people, etc when traveling to some distant city / state with the intent of presenting it as a documentation sells well with the magazines.

Family Cycle Train
Shoot For The Advertisement Campaigns
Marketing is the evergreen stream of income and shooting for an advertisement campaign alone can help you make good money. But getting the offer for an advertising campaign requires a lot of effort on your part; where the major role is played by the contacts at your disposal and the richness of your portfolio. It requires you to be a technical expert (having sound knowledge of the basic concepts of photography and command over the equipment) to produce the sharp, creative and impressive photographs required by the advertising agencies.
Join A Professional Photographer As An Assistant
Joining a professional photographer as an assistant serves a dual purpose. Firstly, it enables you to make a living with the salary offered by the photographer and secondly, it helps in gaining experience and exposure. Working on various projects with a professional / freelancer photographer comes in handy for understanding the issues between clients & photographers and helps you in exploring the opportunities as a beginner.
Make Money With A Home Studio
Economically speaking, the best of way of earning money is to cut down the costs. Instead of investing in a full-fledged studio, its better to maintain a simple home-based studio with bare necessities. It just takes a DSLR, a tripod and the artificial lights to get started with a decent business with home studios. This kind of set-up comes in handy for photographing the table-top products ranging from a pencil or pen to the textured walls (and balls, fruits, etc) which help in contributing to your online portfolio with stock photography sites (or can make way to owned website galleries). A home studio set-up opens up the opportunities for experimenting with various subjects at your disposal.

Pencil
Find The Business Interested In Your Kind Of Photography
Every business needs photos for various purposes —for brochures, websites, company events and meetings, advertisements, etc. These photographs reflect the brand of the company and gives recognition to the products and the services they offer. Owing to the above said facts, the companies tend to hire the photographers permanently and pay them huge sums for the photographs which speak about the company at large. Apart from this, the businesses dealing in real estates also offer good deals to the photographers for photographing the property and portraying the houses and flats as attractive as possible.

Which one of these works for you the best?

*Re posted from APN
10 Surefire Ideas To Help You Make Money With Photography

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

Senior Portraits by Vincent Rush

2011-11-19T21:27:00.000-05:00

Monroe Senior Baseball Catcher Dakota Fischer, photographed by Dayton and Cincinnati Photographer Vincent Rush at the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

Photographer Bill Biggarts Final Images on 9-11-01

2011-09-11T23:05:00.000-04:00

Photographer Bill Biggarts Final Images on 9-11-01

From The Digital Journalist

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

9/11...We Were All Americans!

2011-09-11T02:09:00.000-04:00

Today marks the 10 years anniversary of the terroristic attacks on the United States, simply referred to as “9/11″ or our generations “Pearl Harbor”

The common question for the past 7 days, both in media and from associates has been, “Do you remember where you were or what you were doing on that day?”

Well, I think you’d be hard pressed to find an individual that doesn’t remember everything about that day.

My reply, this past week has been, “Of course I do. But what really stands out to me, more than anything else, were the days following the attacks”

I remember, that for the first few weeks, after the attacks, people being nicer to each other.

I remember kindness, patience, consideration and an overall attitude of servitude toward our fellow-man.

I was born in 1963, and for the first time in my life, I lived in a country where there was no race, no black and white.

I lived in a world where there were no rich or poor, haves or have not.

There were no Democrats or Republicans.

I lived in a world where we all had time for our families and appreciated all that God had blessed us with, taking nothing for granted.

Despite the incredible tragedy that our country had just lived through, America was one of the nicest places to live and everyone acted and treated one another as I believe God had intended for us to treat each other.

But just as time heals all wounds, scars fade and the pain becomes a distant memory

It’s a shame that we had to be united by a common enemy in such an evil way.

But what I remember most about that time, ten years ago, is that for a short time, we were all Americans, and proud of it.

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

Getting Your Name Out There as a Photographer

2011-09-06T18:42:00.000-04:00

Cincinnati Reds Photography by Ohio Sports Photographer Vincent Rush of Cincinnati Sports Photography

By skipcohen

Over the years I’ve met and talked with thousands of professional photographers. One of the questions that comes up on a regular basis, especially with new photographers, relates to getting your name out there. A few of these I’ve written about before, but let’s see if we can come up with a list of projects to help you get started.

• Decorate the doctor’s office: I’ve been talking about this one for years. How much money do you or did your parents spend on doctor bills, especially with the pediatrician? Well it’s time for payback! The last class doctors takes before getting out of medical school is about decorating their office. They’re taught to not spend more than $50!

Think about your last doctor visit. There wasn’t much on the walls of the waiting room, unless your doc was a high-end neurosurgeon and then maybe they had a few Ansel Adams posters! So, here’s a great idea and it’s perfect for the pediatrician.

Offer to put some images on the walls of the reception area! Kids, family portraits, anything with a sense of children. Then in the corner, on the table next to that 1984 copy of Popular Mechanics put a stack of your business cards or brochures.

Here’s the deal – women make 98% of the purchase decisions to hire a professional photographer. Who takes the kids to the doctor’s office? It’s Mom and she’s sitting there bored, with nothing to read. This is about the subliminal message you can plant with a few well done family and children’s portraits!

• Restaurants and coffee shops: They all need help, especially if you’re a regular customer. Helen Yancy told a group of photographers at Summer School about getting started at a local Coney Island restaurant in her area just by decorating the walls of the restaurant with her images.

• Meet and Greet: Take a couple of days and just wander around your local business area. Get to know the neighborhood and introduce yourself. Local businesses, sooner or later, have imaging needs and you want to let them know you’re there.

• Start your own network luncheon. Contact everyone in the area who has something in common with your target audience. Find an inexpensive diner type restaurant and get together once a month for lunch just to talk about what’s going on in the community.

• Get involved in your community! With or without a camera in your hand, get involved with the people you’re looking to support your business. Join Kiwanis, Rotary, Exchange Club etc.

• Do your own fundraiser! Vicki Taufer did one of the very first pet days in her area three years ago and today she’s one of the best known pet photographers in her community. She tied in with the local animal shelter, but you can set up a fundraiser with any organization.

• Is there a local children’s store? It’s another great one from Vicki Taufer, who when she was first starting, did all the children’s portraits of the clerks and owner of the local children’s clothing shop. They all became her ambassadors.

• Develop promotions and advertise! I know it’s obvious, but this is the first one in the list that will actually cost you some money, but you have to have a plan. If you think you can get away with running just one ad and then waiting to see the results, think again. You need to have consistency in your timing and in the placement/location of the ad.

• Cross-promote with other vendors. It’s easiest to explain within the wedding category, but essentially you’re going to give a discount certificate to any bride for the local florist and the florist is going to give the bride a certificate for something from you, but try and stay away from discounting. Give an hour of extra coverage or an addition 8×10 – go for added value rather than price reductions.

• Contact the PTA at the local schools. Isn’t it time we upgraded the bake sale concept? How about offering family sittings for a holiday card shot. It’s only September and you’ve got time to work with any local association or group and have an image in people’s hands in time for their holiday cards.

• Career Day and Adult Education: All of you are qualified to do a career day at the local school and help motivate an interest in photography with kids. Many of you are also qualified to teach an adult education class on photography. This is about getting involved in the community and don’t forget to do a press release to the local paper with a picture of you interacting with the participants at each event.

• Enter photo contests and competitions. Most of the national associations have some level of print competition. Local chapters have regular print competition as well as portfolio reviews. This is a great way to get feedback outside your immediate circle of family and friends.

It’s not costly to get your name out there, but it is labor intensive. This is where outsourcing comes into play. By not doing everything yourself you can find the time to market your personality and skill set. Your time is best spent getting to know your client base rather than sitting behind a computer editing images!

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

u local Member Of The Month: Vincent_Rush - u local News Story - WLWT Cincinnati

2011-09-04T23:20:00.000-04:00

u local Member Of The Month: Vincent_Rush - u local News Story - WLWT Cincinnati

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.comCheck out my about.me profile!

2011 Eaton Little League Highlight Video

2011-08-31T21:11:00.002-04:00

2011 Eaton Little League Highlight Video

2011 Eaton Little League Baseball Highlight Video. Photos by Cincinnati and Dayton Sports Photographer Vincent Rush of Cincinnati Sports Photography

“Our Summer Song” by Forever the Sickest Kids

“We are the World Tonight” by an Unidentified Artist and originally played in ESPN’s 2011 Little League World Series Highlight video (My wife thinks it may be the lead singer for The News Boys)

All but a few action photos were shot by Vince Rush in Eaton, Ohio, during the 2011 Little League season.

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

Team Prodigy, Swamp Stomp Mud Challenge Photo Shoot

2011-08-30T03:56:00.000-04:00

A couple of photos from Monday's shooting with Team Prodigy in Springboro, Ohio, in preparation for their October event, called "Swamp Stomp Mud Challenge"

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

Cincinnati Sports Photography and Prodigy Fitness of Springboro, Ohio

2011-08-27T10:31:00.003-04:00

Amanda Joiner of Buckner Martial Arts in Liberty Township

Cincinnati Sports Photography has teamed with Prodigy Fitness of Springboro, Ohio to provide professional sports photography services for upcoming events.

The first will be the inaugural "Swamp Stomp Mud Challenge" in October. Details to come.

Team Prodigy is the largest venue of its kind in North America. Devoted to the sports of boxing, wrestling, martial arts and mixed martial arts, it also offers state-of-the-art training facilities for fitness and conditioning.

Our clean, family-friendly environment offers training areas for each discipline, including a boxing ring, MMA cage and more mat space for martial arts than a city's worth of dojos put together. Our heated wrestling room offers athletes optimal training conditions not only to improve their technique but to make weight.

With more than 100 pieces of specialized fitness equipment and a collection of free weights, all of our members and athletes have the opportunity to shape their body to its maximum potential.

Sports and Photography Have Many Similarities

2011-08-25T03:58:00.000-04:00

Mason Braves at Florence Freedom Field by Vincent Rush of Cincinnati Sports Photography

Sports can be hard. Photography can be hard. To be good at sports requires patience, practice and perseverance. So does photography. Sports offer constant opportunity for self-improvement and analysis. So does photography.

I used to play competitive sports when I was a kid. I played in high school football and golf tournaments and for some reason, I was good at both right from the start. I couldn’t break 100 on a golf course today for money, nor could I run a wind sprint – but I have enough experience with sports to be able to use it as a metaphor for photography.

While there’s plenty of negativity in the world today, athletes and photographers both tend to be optimistic. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t put the time in to do what they do.

When I was a golfer, I used to think my best golf was always around the corner. As a photographer, I still feel that way. I still feel like I can continue to make better and better photographs.

Another way that both sports and photography are similar is in their ability to both humble and even humiliate the people who participate in each.

When I was young I had a commanding lead in a high school golf tournament on my home course. I knew the course better than anyone. My putting was fantastic. At the turn, I had a four-shot lead and was going strong. I was confident. I had just won the tournament the week before in nearby Kettering, Ohio and thought this tournament was a lock. Then came the 10th hole where I dropped a shot on an easy putt I could make in my sleep. I found the bunker on 11 and dropped another shot. On 12 I managed to hook my drive and ended up behind a tree. One more bogey added to the score card. By the time I got to the 13th hole, I found out I was tied for the lead. I managed a par four on the 13th and 14th but dropped another on the 15th due another missed putt. I took my lead and threw it away and ended up second. It felt like finishing dead last.

Fast forward to my time as a photographer. Some of you remember my story of Cranes in the Fire Mist. To be blunt, this is a photograph that kicked my ass for more than a decade. Just as I would get close, some essential element of the shot would pass me by, and like hooking my drive behind a tree or missing an easy putt, I learned that misfortune can befall athletes OR photographers at any time.

The point of this post is simple. We engage in activities every day that are challenging because we like challenges. We do things that are hard because we like to test ourselves. We work at impossible goals because we are driven and optimistic.

Things like sports and photography can help us realize our strengths and our weaknesses very quickly. Both can lead to raw disappointment or abundant joy.

When photographers start to realize that there are many things in life that require similar dedication, it might give them the hope that they can outlast the next hard photograph. The few super successful pictures bring them back for more, despite the many failures along the way.

Moral of the story? Don’t give up.
Copyright Scott Bourne 2007 - All Rights Reserved

Follow Scott Bourne on Twitter at @scottbourne

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

2011-08-22T15:53:00.000-04:00

Eaton Little league 12U All Star Video by Photographer Vincent Rush

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

"Fryer Baller" Tyler Schmidt of Eaton's Henny Penny Red's

2011-08-18T00:55:00.000-04:00

Now that the sun has set on the 2011 Eaton Little League season, and the kids are either on to football, soccer or Fall baseball, I am going through my files and picking out some of my favorite action photos from the season.

There is no pattern or theme to what I post, other than to keep fresh content on my web pages, for the purpose of SEO, or Search Engine Optimization.

From the web site of Cincinnati Ohio Professional Sports Photographer Vincent Rush of Ohio Sports Photography, Cincinnati Action Photo and Team Pictures as well as Dayton Ohio Sports Photography and Cincinnati Portraits, Event Photo Coverage. Covering Baseball, Little League, Pee Wee Football, High school sports, Cincinnati Reds, MLB, NFL and University of Cincinnati. Vince Rush Photography and Monroe Hornets Action Sports Photography is Located in Monroe Ohio.

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

Baseball Photography by Vincent Rush

2011-08-16T02:40:00.001-04:00

Minnesota Starz Pitcher by Ohio Sports Photographer Vincent Rush

Web Site of Cincinnati Ohio Professional Sports Photographer Vincent Rush of Ohio Sports Photography, Cincinnati Action Photo and Team Pictures as well as Dayton Ohio Sports Photography and Cincinnati Portraits, Event Photo Coverage. Covering Baseball, Little League, Pee Wee Football, High school sports, Cincinnati Reds, MLB, NFL and University of Cincinnati. Vince Rush Photography and Monroe Hornets Action Sports Photography is Located in Monroe Ohio.

Batters Eye View

2011-08-10T04:21:00.001-04:00

Eaton Little League Pitcher Max Fadden, pitches in Franklin Ohio. Photo by sports photographer Vincent Rush of Dayton Sports Photographers and Cincinnati Sports Photography

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

2011 Little League Photography by Sports Photographer Vincent Rush

2011-07-31T17:54:00.003-04:00

2011 Little League Sports Photography

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

The Sweet Spot

2011-07-23T22:25:00.000-04:00

Zachary Rush playing for the Eaton Tigers and swinging a 2011 Easton Omen 31/19 Baseball bat. Record for 2011 while playing for both Eaton and Monroe, 28-13 and a .468 batting average with 11 strike outs.

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

10 Babe Ruth Facts, Every Baseball Fan Should Know

2011-04-27T13:07:00.001-04:00

10 Babe Ruth Facts, Every Baseball Fan Should Know

Capturing or Freezing Motion in Photos

2011-04-13T00:05:00.000-04:00

Ball State Cardinal's celebrate a late inning homer against Miami University by Sports Photographer Vincent Rush

One thing that makes photography unique is its ability to freeze a moment in time. As humans, we see what's in front of us as a continuing chain of events. The camera, however, is able to stop time from moving forward, giving us the opportunity to study that fraction of a second. And it's being able to control those fractions of a second that makes this possible.

There are two elements in every camera that affect how much light enters the camera and finds its way through the lens to the camera's sensor. One is the aperture and the other is the shutter.
The aperture is the opening that can be adjusted to allow more or less light to enter the camera. The varying sizes of the opening are called f/stops and are referred ao in numerical terms: f/4, f/5.6, /8, f/11 and so forth.
The shutter is the mechanism that determines how fast the aperture will open and close. The slower the shutter speed the more light that enters the camera. Shutter speeds are measured in seconds. Most cameras have shutter speeds that range from several seconds-some as long as 30 seconds-to fractions of a second-up 1/1000 of a second and above.

The camera's shutter speed determines how the action in a photo is recorded. A fast shutter speed can freeze action, even stopping a hummingbird's wings. A slow shutter speed can let action blur or even make a moving subject seem to disappear. First, let's look at how a high shutter speed can stop action.

When you want to take a picture that stops the action of your subject, you have to first consider the speed of the action. The speed of the blades of a helicopter in flight is much greater than that of a kid biking down the street. Trying to freeze those helicopter blades might require a shutter speed above 1/1000 second; stopping the movement of the bike might be possible at 1/250. Thus, the shutter speed you choose has to be relative to the action you're trying to stop. A good rule of thumb would be that 1/500 second is a good starting point for stopping motion that's fairly fast.

Sometimes it's better to not stop action and let it blur instead. This type of blur can add to the feel of the picture. In the case of the helicopter, showing some blur in the blades may look more natural than having them stopped completely while in mid-flight. The proper shutter speed for achieving the amount of blur you want is dependent on the speed of the action. You can see blur in helicopter blades at 1/500, but showing the motion of a snail crossing a log may require an exposure of several seconds.

As you begin to work with shutter speeds, you'll learn there are different types of blur. For instance, blur can be brief or pronounced. The slower the shutter speed, the easier it will be to see the resulting blur. Traditional blur is when the camera is being held still and a moving subject is photographed at a slow shutter speed. In that case the non-moving area around the subject will be captured with no blur, and only the subject will be blurred. Panning is when you do essentially the opposite.

In panning you follow the subject with the camera during the action, actually tracking the subject. Doing that means the background will now blur because you're moving the camera during the relatively slow exposure. And because you're tracking the subject, it's possible that part or all of the subject will be captured with little or no blur. This technique is very effective when it works. The key to making a successful pan shot is to shoot a lot of photos. Because you're shooting a slow shutter speed, and moving the camera, you're likely to have several photos that don't work, but when you get one, it can look great.

Extremely slow shutter speeds—20 or seconds for example—can make moving subjects seem to disappear. A good example of this is shooting a roadway at night from a tripod. Despite a number of cars passing by, only their bright headlights and taillights will show up in the exposure, because they weren't in the same place long enough to record on the film or sensor.

Experiment with different shutter speeds to you find the one that gives you the most pleasing effect for the scene and subject.

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

Opening Day in Cincinnati

2011-03-31T00:59:00.001-04:00

Great American Ballpark by Cincinnati Sports Photographer Vincent Rush

Reds bring new confidence into season

Defending NL Central champs know what it feels like to win by Mark Sheldon of MLB

The Reds take nothing for granted, but have carried a confidence throughout Spring Training that they can repeat as National League Central division champions.

No, there weren't any major upgrades or additions to the roster during the winter -- or spring -- while rivals like the Brewers and Cardinals were busy. Then again, when you had the NL's best offensive team, one of the best defenses and a deep pitching staff, how much tinkering can really be done?

The stability is welcomed as they prepare for Opening Day against the Brewers today at 2:10 p.m. ET, but it comes with a caveat: The younger players are expected to keep taking steps forward.

"I think any time you have or nearly have your 25 guys set before Spring Training even starts, it's a huge advantage for any team," Reds first baseman Joey Votto said. "I think a lot of people don't give us enough credit -- people come up with complaints about us not making trades or any major moves in the offseason. But so often, players come into their own over time and go from being average to above-average ballplayers in one offseason. That happens when you're in your 22-28-year-old range, the younger part of your career. I don't think we needed to make any more adjustments."

National League MVP, Joey Votto by Cincinnati Sports Photographer Vincent Rush

Votto, 27, is the reigning NL Most Valuable Player, coming off a huge year and a jump to elite status. But he is hardly a one-man show.

Jay Bruce by Cincinnati Sports Photographer Vincent Rush of Ohio Sports Photography

Right fielder Jay Bruce, 23, hit a career-high 25 home runs and finished strong after a rough start to 2010. Ditto for 26-year-old center fielder Drew Stubbs, who hit 22 homers and is still developing as a hitter. Second baseman Brandon Phillips, 29, is capable of hitting 30 homers and was a first-time All-Star and became a two-time Gold Glove winner last season
.
The pitching staff was a stable bunch, as well -- until the final 10 days of camp, when health issues thinned the rotation.

Shoulder injuries put No. 3 starter Johnny Cueto and No. 4 starter Homer Bailey on the disabled list to start the season, but neither are considered seriously injured. No. 2 starter and 2010 17-game winner Bronson Arroyo was diagnosed with mononucleosis and will keep pitching while trying to conserve energy.

The Reds have already been able to look to younger pitchers like Travis Wood, Mike Leake and Sam LeCure to step up behind Edinson Volquez and Arroyo.

Reds manager Dusty Baker obviously didn't plan on testing his rotation's depth this much, this early. But he steadfastly remained positive about the situation.

"What you going to do?" Baker said. "Everybody is doom and gloom. I'm not like that. I was taught to find a solution. Instead of the sky is falling, Chicken Little and 'oh me, oh my,' you try to figure out a solution. The problem is going to be there. It's already there. I hate it, but it's there."

Francisco Cordero by Cincinnati Sports Photographer Vincent Rush

The unexpected, but short-term worries about the rotation are joined by other questions. Can a slimmed-down Francisco Cordero take his solid spring performances into the regular season? Will flame throwing Aroldis Chapman be a stable presence in a left-handed setup role? As the everyday left fielder, can Jonny Gomes build upon his career season from 2010? Can Paul Janish, who had a strong spring, thrive as the new regular shortstop? Will Scott Rolen be as productive in the second half with the wear-and-tear of the season on his body?

If the young core can make their expected improvements and others do their jobs well, Votto believes those questions -- and any others -- will answer themselves positively.

"We can be a much better team, I think," Votto said. "It all starts and ends with the pitching staff, but they're a young group of guys also. I notice huge leaps between offseasons. You can step back, think about the mistakes you've made and how you want to improve and adjust your training. You experience life lessons, and it pays off on the field."

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

Major League Baseball's Opening Week....In March!?!?!

2011-03-28T02:12:00.000-04:00

Vincent Rush at Louisville Cardinal Stadium playing with The Freedom Fighters Baseball Club in 2006

This Thursday, March 31st, marks the opening day for Major League Baseball as the Cincinnati Reds take on the Brewers at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati.

Yesterday my friends little league team, The Monroe Swarm, was warming up to a snow covered outfield and 33 degree temps.

I never understood why Major League Baseball feels the need to, 1) Not only start the season so early and finish the World Series in November and 2) take a full 162 games to be able to determine a winner of a division.

I'm a huge baseball fan. I love the game. The best times of my youth were centered around baseball. But if Barak Obama appointed me Baseball Czar, I would make some changes to the game, both for entertainment as well as economic purposes.

Here is a plan that I've had in my own mind for fixing Major League Baseball, or should I say, enhancing MLB to cater to the fans and benefit the game it's self. Bud Selig, if you read my blog, feel free to call me and discuss. I have more ideas than just this, but lets start with re aligning the divisions and creating a Regional plan that works.

I will also state that I am fully aware that the rating for THIS post season have been very good. But lets not forget that there is the benefit of a marquee match up and any time the Yankees are in the post season there is going to be a huge ratings boost. I will guarantee that if the series was being played right now, between the Rockies and the Twins, you would have a hard time giving advertising away and there more empty seats than a Vanilla Ice reunion tour.

I know baseball went through re-alignment a few years ago, but that means it can be done again, for the better of the game, by being better for the fans.

I also know that this is not the first time the idea has been approached by columnists, bloggers and various sources. But while google searching the realignment arguments, I have yet to find a posting during the first three pages that either 1) Makes Sense or 2) Presents a valid reason behind their plan.

And while there are those who scream that my ideas mess with tradition, I state back that the definition of stupidity is to keep doing the same thing over and over, simply because you've always done it like that, even if it doesn't work.

Here's a thought; Lets not change anything and re-address the issue in ten years when there are less fans and less revenue and we start caring about the health and the future game and less about upsetting the ghosts of the past. There isn't really a corn field in Iowa where Shoeless Joe will walk out of the tall stalks to pass with you if you make him happy. It was a movie.

Baseball needs to make a radical shift in the way it does business and markets its self if it wants to continue to grow and develop a generation of fans from the ranks of the youth. Today's kids have more alternatives than ever baseball has more competition than ever before.

Look no matter how much the old "traditionalists" with hair growing from their ears want to believe that the spirits of Jolting Joe DiMaggio, Ty Cobb, The Babe and Ted Williams are going to re-appear and curse the game if Major League Baseball breaks from tradition, the fact is that interest in the game, fueled by a weakening economy and and alternatives to going to the park such as High Def TV and 300 cable channels with several games on per night.

The Vincent Rush / Cincinnati Sports Photography Plan for Fixing Major League Baseball

Lets create 3 Divisions of 10 teams each in a way that makes sense regionally;

Eastern Division:
Boston Redsox
NY Yankees
NY Mets
Toronto Blue Jays
Philadelphia Phillies
Baltimore Orioles
Washington Nationals
Atlanta Braves
Tampa Bay Rays
Florida Marlins

Central Division:
Pittsburgh Pirates
Cleveland Indians
Cincinnati Reds
Detroit Tigers
Chicago White Sox
Chicago Cubs
Milwaukee Brewers
Minnesota Twins
St. Louis Cardinals
Kansas City Royals

Western Division:
Seattle Mariners
San Francisco Giants
Oakland A's
LA Angles
LA Dodgers
SD Padres
Arizona D Backs
Colorado Rockies
Houston Astros
Texas Rangers

At the end of the season, top 8 teams in baseball advance to a seeded bracketed playoff system based on record. The winners of each division are in. If the winner of a division has the 9th best record, then a 1 game playoff or shall we say a "Play In" game would exist between number 8 and number 9, but only if that was the unlikely case.

First round best 3/5 next two rounds best of seven. This, although it does not guarantee, it does create a better probability of the two best teams meeting at the end.

Start the regular season on the 15th of April and end on the 15th of September.

Either reduce the regular season schedule by the 25 games lost or make up a portion of them in more double headers throughout the season as a way of enticing fans to come to the park knowing that they can get a full day of baseball for the money. Double headers were and are still great for families on a Saturday or Sunday. It does not matter if the players like them or not. The fans are the ones who buy the tickets.

Baseball will make it up on the increased revenue from concessions, better weather and the laws of supply and demand. If there is any doubt as to this theory, ask yourself how many teams sold out the season in the current schedule?

Regional divisions will help foster closer rivalries, and encourage more fans to attend more away games because of the closeness. There will be less time difference conflicts that lose TV viewers.

Baseball as a whole and teams in general will save money on travel throughout the course of the season and can promote it as a environmentally conscious step to help reduce carbon emissions through decreased fuel consumption. Do you realize for example that the Yankees made 10 road trips to Chicago or further. The average team made about 10 long distance road trips. What if all the coastal teams could eliminate the cross country treks?. If MLB wanted to maintain some form of inter league play, they could work coordinate cross country match ups. The savings on travel would be into the millions for baseball and the teams.

As a result of the new start and finish dates of the season, there will be less chance of snow games, rain outs, temperatures in the 30's and re-schedules. Baseball will also not be starting the World Series and competing with the beginning of the NBA season. The Series will end in October with only the NFL to compete with.

One conflict will be how to determine who plays in an All Star Game, or if it will be necessary to continue.

Or what if a team moves, folds or MLB wants to expand? What if Florida moves to Indianapolis? Then simply tweak the division by moving a team or two. The key is to be progressive and decisive and not wait 10 years to make up your mind.

Another obstacle, as I've said before, is the always strong opposition of so the called "Baseball Purists". What is purity in the game any more? If these "Pure-ists" were committed to their mantra, all players would be wearing baggy flannels and using the old mitts of yester-year, there would be no designated hitter and there would only be two teams that played it out at the end of the season. And lets do away with all domes and field turf, and the middle relief pitchers.

I think it would also, at this stage of the game become a big part of the Bud Selig legacy. The game is in better shape than when he found it, That doesn't mean that he can't set it up to be even better 20 years after he leaves.

Chances of this becoming anything more than a pipe dream????? About the same as my dream of seeing the All Star Home Run Hitting Contest done with Aluminum and Composite bats.

As an adult, I would actually sit through a HR contest if I thought there was a chance of seeing a 600 foot shot or a light busted out of the tower. As a kid, I would run out to Dicks and buy whatever bat A-Rod or Josh Hamilton just hit one out of Yankee Stadium with.

Think of the advertising dollars baseball would draw or endorsement money players would pull down from the likes of Easton, TPX, DeMarini, Rawlings or Miken! And don't cry about tradition again. Since when does a batter stand at the plate and hit off of a batting practice pitcher during a traditional game? The Home Run hitting contest should be the same type of freak show the NBA Slam Dunk contest is.

A 7-15 year kid knows nothing about tradition! Baseball has to quit marketing to the "wing tips" and start marketing to the flip fops, to continue to grow it's fan base.

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

Tips on Becoming a Great Sports Photographer Part 3

2011-03-17T01:44:00.000-04:00

Big East Track Championships at University of Cincinnati by Cincinnati Sports Photographer Vincent Rush

...Part 3

Freezing Action Shots

So far, we have discussed each event and they types of shots to be taken. Safeties generally are taken at times where the action is minimal, and we don't have to concentrate as much on freezing the action. But what sells, and what the viewers want to see are people suspended in mid-air. They want to see the crisp ball laying just off the receivers finger tips. To do that, we must freeze the action.

Freezing the action requires fast shutter speeds. Most modern, high end 35mm SLRs have a top shutter speed of 1/8000th of a second. Except for a speeding bullet, this is about fast enough to catch anything you or I are likely to shoot, even an Indy car blasting around the track at 230mph.

But it isn't that simple. Lets first discuss a standard photographic rule of thumb, which is the minimal speed for hand-holding a lens. The minimal shutter speed for hand holding a lens is 1 divided by the focal length of the lens. Thus a 50mm lens should not be hand held any slower than 1/50th of a second. A 300mm lens should not be hand held at less than 1/300th of a second. If your camera does not have shutter speeds between say 1/250 and 1/500, then you round up. So for a 300mm lens, your minimal hand hold speed may be 1/500th of a second. The more proficient you get, the more likely you are to be able to cheat by one shutter speed. A monopod is the preferred way for action photographers to gain additional steadiness. It can generally buy you one to two shutter speeds of hand holding.

Not only has it become more difficult to hand hold these lenses, it becomes harder to freeze the action as well. The lenses get heavier and harder to hold. Your breathing and heart beating and muscle strain are enough to cause still objects hard to capture. Longer lenses not only magnify the scene, they magnify the apparent movement. If a runner passes through the viewfinder with a 50mm lens attached in one second, then at 500mm, the same person moving at the same speed will pass in 1/10th of a second.

Generally, to freeze action, you need at least two full shutter speeds if not more faster than the hand hold speed. So for our 300mm lens, you will need at least 1/1200 to 1/2400 to freeze action with this lens (rounding up, that's 1/2000-1/4000th of a second). Even at these speeds, you may have to follow side to side movement, called panning to have the movement crisp when you expose the film Lets say you are shooting a car racing event. Even at high shutter speeds, if you hold the camera still and wait on the car, you will capture a blur. By matching the movement of the subject with the movement of the lens, you minimize the relative motion between the two.

For subjects coming to you or heading away, their apparent movement isn't as great. Many people make up some of the action freezing by getting things coming toward them.

Film is critical in freezing action. Each increase in film speed gets you one more shutter speed. So if you shoot an event with ISO 100 film and the best you can get is 1/500th of a second, switching to an ISO 400 film gets you to 1/2000th which may be enough to freeze the action. Going to ISO 1600, will take you to 1/8000th of a second.

Adding high shutter speeds, fast films, monopods, panning, or shooting objects as they come toward you, and capturing action at its peak will let you freeze fantastic shots.

Giving the illusion of movement.

Many new action photographers worry about freezing action, trying to get the crispest shots possible. Even veteran photographers will try for crisp shots, but they are not afraid to allow some blurring.

Stop and think about it for a minute. A baseball pitcher throws the ball, the batter swings the bat. Your eyes don't freeze the action precisely, so why should your pictures. A blurring bat, or an elongated ball leaving a blurry arm imply movement. As long as most of the body and the face is crisp a little motion in the hands, feet, and projectiles is acceptable and in many cases desired. This is another little cheat in not having that fast of a shutter speed.

Some times, we slow the shutter speed down intentionally to amplify the movement. We have all seen shots of runners where the background is a blur their arms and legs are a blur, but their body and head are fairly well focused. Combining panning, slower shutter speeds, and predictable movement and you can capture some very dramatic pictures showing all kinds of movement.

These types of shots require patients, work, and a lot of experimenting. Don't hesitate, when at an event to experiment with different techniques . . . after you get your safeties and your primary shots.

Emotion

Shots that lack emotion are ho-hum. They lack energy. They lack story telling ability. If there is no emotion, then there is little desire to view it. Most tight action shots of players will be emotional. Regardless of level, these players, when they are exerting themselves, exhibit emotion. From the little tee-ball player messing with her hair and her helmet, to the strain of a pole vaulter working to get over the cross bar, there is plenty of emotion to be found in sports. You will, from experience be able to edit out the shots that lack emotion and do not tell the story. But it requires shooting and shooting.

You should also look for emotion from other sources. As years of ABC's Wide World of Sports told us . . . The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Make sure to save film to shoot the players after their events. Or during their events, don't always focus on the ball, but on the emotion after the big 360 degree slam dunk. Don't forget to look for emotion in the coaches and the fans. A lot of the best shots come from the crowd.

Where to Start

It's important to understand that not every photographer will be able to take this information and expect to step onto the field at Great American Ball Park, sit in the press gallery and expect to capture Grade A shots of Jay Bruce and Joey Votto. To get to that level, you have to have a proven sports portfolio and work for an agency who can get you access.

Before you get to that level, you have to shoot a lot of minor sporting events. The best place to start is your local youth leagues. Early in my career, I got broken in on high school sports, but through my experience there, I got to shoot for my college papers and year books. That allowed me access to shoot NCAA Division I sports early on. But I would not have had that opportunity without having developed a portfolio from my early days of shooting.

Local youth leagues provide you great access and opportunities to use smaller lenses to capture shots. As your portfolio develops, you can approach shooting at higher levels. You can get a lot of practice and experience here which is valuable when going to "The Show".

Today, I am back shooting for a small town paper and the highest level of sports that I have reasonable access to is high school. Even though I have been to "The Show", I still enjoy getting pictures of 5 year olds when they catch their first ball or score their first goal.

You may however get opportunities to shoot pro games from a fan's perspective. Depending on your location in the arena, you can get some reasonably good shots. Take your long lens and some high speed film and make the most of it. In these situations, freezing action isn't as important as being able to hand hold the lens. The players will be at such a distance that their movement will be like a person closer to you with a normal lens on. As long as you have enough shutter speed to get a steady shot you should be able to get memorable shots.

Summary

One final note. Don't rush your action assignments. Spend some time, and expect to burn some film. Only through practice and looking at the results and going back to it will you get the timing and skills needed to one day capture world class shots.

Written by Rob Miracle in 1998

Written by Sports Photographer Rob Miracle and posted by Cincinnati Ohio Sports Photographer Vincent Rush of Cincinnati Sports Photography.

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

Know your Sport...Know your Players! Part 2

2011-03-10T00:35:00.000-05:00

Karate Black Belt and Olympic hopeful Amanda Joiner photographed in Monroe by Photographer Vincent Rush

Volleyball
Volleyball is a rarely covered event, with beach volleyball getting more press than the traditional gym based variety. Volleyball can yield some rich, colorful and dramatic shots given the need and desire to take them. Your access in volleyball venues will vary drastically. For instance, during a high school game, you may be permitted to shoot along the sidelines, or not far behind the end lines. As the level of competition goes up, you will be moved further and further back. In beach volley ball, you probably will not be permitted in the sand pit at all. So pack a long lens and some sun block (for the beach game).

Volleyball shots are tricky to use auto focus on. If you are shooting from behind the lines towards the net, the AF could trigger on the net, the back of the opposing players, the back wall, or just about any point in between. It is best to use a vertical sensor for this sport since people are going up and down and there is little side to side movement. For manual focus, you want to zone focus. From behind the end line, most all action at the net will be at the same distance from you, so focus on an area just a little behind the net and leave it there.

For shots along the side lines, it is best to shoot at an angle to capture the faces. These are the best times to capture digs and diving players as you should have a fairly un-obscured view of all the players. Traditionally, volleyball follows the "Bump Set Spike" ritual. Learn who the diggers, setter, and hitters are. Then take your time working on a shot of the individual skill you want to capture. Your setter will be easy to track and get shots of. Digging is a bit tricky since it can come from any were on a given half of the court, be a low or high dig, involve a dive or other less than predictable motion. Hitters/blockers are fairly easy to capture since that area of play is somewhat limited.

Your safeties are the player serving and the setters since they are fairly easy to capture. Next work on your hitters/blockers followed by digs.

Golf
Golf is a fairly easy game to shoot as far as action goes, but it is one of the toughest because of the nature of the game. That is you can get good action shots if you can get there at all. Consider the following. Golf is a long distance, one direction game. It is played over a course of thousands of yards in a some what straight path and it is played from hole to hole. Secondly, it is a quiet game where the slightest distraction is not allowed. Finally, for your safety, your access to swing areas is limited.

The first problem is addressed by one of two methods. First, you can camp at one location, such as a tee box or a green on one hole and shoot multiple people as they pass you. Or alternatively, you can with the permission of the course, use a cart and follow individual golfers. Cart paths are narrow and heading against the grain is difficult. Ideally, you will learn the course and find a spot where you can shoot both green play and a tee box with minimal movement.

Even at 400mm, you may not get close enough for good tight shots. Longer lenses are almost a must for capturing competitive golf. If you are shooting recreational golf, say your beer buddies, you can get closer and a lens in the 200mm range will suffice. Any focus method will work since the players are basically standing still. Golf, in particular at the pro level is very sound sensitive. Turn off the AF (you don't need it any way) and go to a slient manual focus. If you have silent AF lenses, such as the Canon USM or the Nikon AF-S lenses, then you can AF. Some events may require you to use a sound blimp around the camera if your shutter/motor are distracting to the golfers.

There are a few main golf shots, in most all cases, they are individual shots. The primary action golf shots include a shot during the back-swing, a shot near impact of the ball, a shot after the follow-through with the golfer looking for the ball or any time during a putt (but be quiet). However, there are a lot of opportunities for safeties in golf. Any shot of a golfer studying the course, be it looking at the scorecard, messing with the golf bag, talking to the caddie, or lining up a putt are easy shots to get. These are times where the firing of the shutter will be more tolerated. Also, shots after the follow-through are considered safe shots. The action is paused and you know its going to happen so getting them is somewhat easier.

Don't forget that a lot of good golf shots, and other sports for that matter do not involve play at all. One of my personal favorite golf shots was of a greens keeper changing the pins.

Track and Field
Track and Field meets are a lot of fun to shoot. You get a lot of variety of shots, multiple opportunities to shoot most participants and events and there generally is a lot of emotion displayed during a track meet. The most difficult things about track meets are logistical.

Access can be restricted depending on the level of play that is being photographed. At a high school meet, there is little in the way of restrictions. Just stay out of the participants way, or out of the way of projectiles like shot puts and discus and you are okay. As you climb the ladder, access gets tighter and tighter. Even at NCAA Division I level meets, the access is still pretty good. Pro level, Olympic, or Major Events will be more tightly controlled due to the size of the event and the amount of media present. Access will be restricted to particular shooting areas.

Logistically, track meets are hard to cover because multiple events are going on at once. If media movement is controlled, you may only get to shoot one or two events. But at a more relaxed meet, you will have more freedom to scoot from event to event. Because of time, multiple heats/attempts and so on, the track will generally be filled with races while the inside of the track contains the field events.

There are no specific safety shots in a track meet, but the individual events are fairly easy since almost all movement is predictable. Track events all move one direction. Shooting the finish, or turns provides the most dramatic events. For the hurdles, it is pretty easy to time the players as they peak over the hurdles. Relays, with the baton passing is probably the hardest part to capture because the runner taking the baton may obscure the runner handing it off. Use follow focus to catch runners and they move past, or zone focus if you are working on the finish line.

Field events, like wise are very predictable. Events like the high jump, long jump, and pole vault involve participants running towards an object, and then jumping over it. This is a zone focus heaven. Use a little depth of field (F5.6 or so) and focus on the bar for the high jump and pole vault and fire as they start up and over. You should catch them at the peak as they hurdle over the event. If you didn't get that run, don't worry, each player generally takes two or three shots and there are multiple players.

The Long jump, and its cousin, the triple-jump are pretty easy. They are also zone focus events. If you are at the end of the pit, focus just a few feet into the pit and fire when they hit the board and begin their jump. After a few jumps, you should have a feel for when they peak at their jump and will nail a few really good jumps. If you have to shoot from the side, you still zone focus over the middle of the pit, track the runner as they head down the track and fire when they go airborne.

The throwing and hurling events are likewise easy to shoot. The players have to stay within a confined space, so zone focus and you will do well. Try to catch them when their face is towards you and when their emotion is at its best or just after the throw.

If you have good access, you can get some great shots with an 80-200mm lens. If you are restricted you may need a 400mm or longer, but in most cases you can get away with smaller lenses.

Gymnastics and Figure Skating
Gymnastics, as a rule, is a no flash event. While a flash may be tolerated at a basketball game, or a night football or baseball game, its generally a no-no for gymnastics. The participants are easily distracted and the slightest hesitation can cause serious injury. The bad thing is most gymnastics happen is poorly lit situations. Lighting will be covered later.

Like Track and Field, gymnastics is a series of events with individuals performing. The events go on simultaneous to each other and depending on the level of the meet, your access may be limited to minimize distractions. With the exception of the floor program, most of the gymnastics events are kept in a small area which makes focusing easy and the movements are predictable. Even with the vault, your object is to catch the vault itself or the landing. So you will probably want to zone focus most of the events. The floor exercise will require follow focus or auto focus. Your lens choice will vary too much by access, but like other indoor sports you want the fastest glass available.

Events like the balance beam, rings, parallel bars, and the uneven bars provide several opportunities to capture the athletes in artistic, athletic, and emotional poses where capturing the moment is somewhat easier. The vault and floor exercises require more timing to get good shots. However, for the floor exercises, its about emotion anyway, so catching the cute smiles and ballet style poses is critical to telling the story more than catching someone in a tumbling pass.

Figure Skating combines the problems of gymnastics with the problems of hockey. You are limited by your access to off ice and you have to compensate for the white surface. Lighting isn't as good as a hockey game. Frequently, the lighting is spot lights, so knowing stage lighting is important. The programs can be predictable and are generally published before the event so you know when the triple jumps are coming. Lens length is determined by proximity to the surface but again, you want the fastest glass possible. Autofocus is a good idea for Figure Skating, though some success with follow and zone focusing can be achieved.

Motorsports and Racing Events
These sports are generally fairly easy to photograph. They generally occur during the daytime and you can get away with longer slower lenses. AF isn't quite as important because the action occurs in a very precticable fashion. You can follow or zone focus easy enough. Safety shots are the partcipants racing past you. The challenge for racing sports is to show motion which will be covered shortly. You don't want your Forumla 1 car looking like it is sitting still. Also much more importantly, there is a lot to the game other than the cars or horses running around the track. The pits/paddock afford some of the best shots. Be ready for an accident. They can happen at any time.

The biggest problem with racing sports is the distance from the track. You only have the partcipants for a brief time on each lap and in the case of the ponies, you only get them for one lap (per race). You will need big lenses in almost all circumstances for the race itself. Your shorter lenses work well for crowd and off track shots.

Written by Sports Photographer Rob Miracle and posted by Cincinnati Ohio Sports Photographer Vincent Rush of Cincinnati Sports Photography.

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

Know your Sport...Know your Players! Part 1

2011-03-07T12:05:00.001-05:00

Monroe Hornets Sports Photography by Monroe, Ohio Sports Photographer Vincent Rush

Know your Sport, Know your Players Part 1

Each sport is different in the techniques used to capture the moment. Each sport has a limited number of unique shots. You can only shoot so many basketball games before you start feeling like, "been there, done that". Each sport also has opportunities to get "safeties". A safety is a shot that is easy to get and will give you something to publish if you fail to get good action. For instance, I was shooting a baseball game. In the visitors at bat in the second inning, the skies opened up and it started raining. I had time to shoot the home team in the field and at bat once. Realizing the pending weather, I concentrated on getting some simple usable shots instead of waiting on some excitement at a base, like a steal. Safeties include things like batters batting, pitchers pitching, basketball players shooting free throws, the quarterback under center. Take times when the action is slow to get some good tight shots to use in case no good action materializes. Shoot your safeties first, concentrate on action later. You always want to come back with something.

Its also important to spend some time at an event and not rush the assignment. Many photographers are under intense deadlines and cannot devote enough time to their sporting events and it shows in their work. I expect one usable shot every 20 frames. I like to shoot at least 72 (2 -36's) per event and I can come out with several usable shots and some fantastic ones. If you go to a soccer game and shoot a 1GB chip, don't expect much.

Its very important to know the sport you are covering. You have to know the coach and their coaching style. You have to understand some basic fundamentals of the game or you will become very frustrated. For instance, in football, if its 3rd down and 1 yard to go, don't expect a pass, but point the camera at the full back. In most likelihood, he will be getting the ball, unless its late in the game and they have to pass. Or don't wait on a steal at 2nd base with 2 outs. Coaches hate making the last out of the inning on the base paths.
You also need to know players and their habits. Some players are full of emotion and tend to display their patterned moves. For instance at a local high school girls soccer match, I got a dramatic sequence of a player doing a cartwheel throw in. I knew it was coming and I was prepared for her move when she got the ball.
Knowing your sport goes beyond the rules and players. Know your coaches and what tends to make them emotional. Get fan shots or cheerleader shots with their emotion. A co-worker once told me "even a blind pig gets an acorn once in a while". Any photographer will eventually get the "action" shot, but sometimes you need that crying cheerleader after a loss, or fans in costumes going nuts to completely tell the story. The game goes beyond the boundaries of the field and the rule book.

Baseball
Baseball is one of the hardest sports to shoot. The action is unpredictable. You wait and wait and then when you are half asleep, something happens. Much of the field is out of range of normal zoom and telephoto lenses. Depending on the level of your sport, you will need long lenses. For most regulation fields (90 feet between bases, 350+ feet to the wall), you need 400mm or longer if you are shooting from the dugouts. It lets you shoot all the infield positions reasonably tight from the dugout/press area. The near base can be gotten with a 200-300mm lens. If you are shooting little league, you can get away with a 200-300mm lens because of the smaller fields unless you are trying to catch the outfield. Night baseball is too poorly lit and you need professional long telephotos to capture good images here.

Your safeties in baseball consist of the pitcher, throwing the ball, the batters batting, the catcher catching or getting a sign from the dugout. After these shots, the game becomes a little less predictable. When a batter hits the ball to an infielder, you have to find the play, aim the camera, focus, and fire. Generally its too late. What you have to do is kinda keep the camera pointed at the short stop or the second baseman. Keep the camera near your face, but you need to watch the play. In particular, if you are standing where you can see the batters stomach, you are in risk of getting hit by a foul ball. If you see the batters back, you will rarely see a foul ball. Once you have an idea of where the play is going, you can adjust, focus and fire. If you are shooting from the first base dugout, 3rd and Short Stop should be about the same distance away, so you can zone focus here. Likewise, from the third base dugout, 2nd and 1st are about the same distance.

Basketball
Unlike baseball, basketball is the easiest sport to shoot. Action is contained in a 100 foot x 50 foot area. There are two objects (the nets) where the action always heads. Basketball is a game of limited shots though. You can shoot jump shots, lay ups, free throws, blocks, dribbling, and defense. Zone focus works well in basketball. You know lay ups are going to happen close to the net, so focus on the net and wait on the action to come to you. Your focusing techniques will vary somewhat if you are on the side line or base line. If you are on the baseline, zone focus is the best method. If you are along the side, you can follow focus. Your safeties are free throws and players dribbling or looking to pass. At these times action is minimal and you can get some good tight shots of players.

Basketball (and other gym sports) is probably the worst lighting situation you will get into, however, you can get away with much slower shutter speeds. When a player drives for a lay up or takes a jump shot, they almost pause at the top of their jump. This is the peak of the action and the shot should be taken then. Since they have stopped moving for a millisecond, that is the best time to freeze them. Once you have these shots under your belt, you can then start working on emotion shots, blocks, and other action which may not come along as often.

Generally you can get away with anywhere between a 50mm and 135mm lens with 85-105 being optimal. This lets you cover out to about mid court. If you want to shoot shots under the far basket, you will need a longer lens. However a fast lens, like an 85mm F1.4 is an excellent choice for most of your basketball action shots.

Football
Football is also an easy sport to shoot but may be one of the most equipment intense sports. Most of the time, you will be shooting at night and fast glass is required. Motion is predictable and a student of the game can almost predict the plays to allow you to get ready. Knowing your sports allows you to know if its a passing situation or running situation so you know where to focus your attention. For instance, in a football game, if it is 3rd down with 1 yard to go, you can be pretty comfortable that a running play is coming. So get your lens pointed at the backfield and get ready.

Football affords the fewest safeties. You can get the QB getting ready to pass or the coach on the side lines. However, the action shots are plenty. You will get opportunities to photograph the quarterback throwing the ball and running backs running the ball. Make sure you get these shots. Then you can go hunting pass plays to the receivers.

If you have freedom of movement, you want to set up 5-10 yards down field from the play. That way you get the QB and running backs coming at you. If you are stuck in photo zones between the goal line and the 35 yard marker, you will be limited to shooting plays that occur in that area. Big glass is important to football. If you have freedom of movement, a 300mm F2.8 is the ideal lens. However if you are restricted, you either need a 2x on the 300mm or a 600mm to reach plays on the far end of the field. If you are patient or shooting youth league, you can get away with an 80-200 zoom. You will have to wait on more plays to come your way. You wont get much in the middle or far side of the field.

Since football movement is up and down the field and most photographers shoot from a side line, football is a follow focus sport. It is a pretty easy sport to follow focus because the subject to camera distance changes constantly, so once you start focusing, you should be able to time your turning the focus ring with their movement.

Soccer and Hockey
Auto focus was invented with soccer and hockey in mind. These two sports involve rapid changes in direction. The subject to camera distance changes so fast, its hard to follow focus because in an instant, the play is heading another direction. Zone focusing is a bit more applicable, except there is no guarantee the play will enter your focus zone. AF solves this problem because it tracks the play better than you. These two sports alone are the reason I moved from manual cameras to auto focus.

Soccer is a game where you need long lenses. Generally, you have good access to the side lines. At the major league and college level, there may be some limits, but they probably are not as tight as football because the number of players on the sidelines is much less. You will typically shoot from the touch (or side) lines, though you can get some real good shots from behind the net or along the goal line. The lens of choice for Soccer is a 400mm F2.8 or longer. Many pro soccer photographers will have two cameras. One with the long lens mounted and a second with an 80-200mm zoom. This gives me some flexibility in composition while giving me the length needed to capture this large field game. If play gets close, they can switch bodies and go to the shorter lens.

Soccer is a good game to get some dynamic and exciting photos. Your safeties include players dribbling the ball and throw ins. Get these shots and then work on catching headers, traps, corner kicks, and goalie saves. Soccer headers require the most accurate guessing on timing. The ball will be out of the frame quickly. It takes a lot of practice to capture these.

Hockey, while similar to soccer in its unpredictable movement, has an advantage of being played in a smaller contained area. An 80-200mm lens is good for shooting hockey regardless of where the play is. To get shots on the far end of the rink, up to 300mm may be needed. Hockey however has some quirks that you need to be aware of. Frequently you are limited to shooting through the glass which limits the angles you can shoot or through chain link fence for outdoor roller hockey. Some arenas you are limited to one location and have a small hole to shoot though and you most likely will be competing with other photographers for this real estate.
The ice or deck wrecks havoc with your camera's meter. You will need to overexpose by at least one stop in ice rinks to get white ice. This takes away from your available shutter speed. Your safeties includes face offs, and players skating with the puck/ball. Good shots can be had of the goalies, though many of your shots will be of players on the rink.

Written by Sports Photographer Rob Miracle and posted by Cincinnati Ohio Sports Photographer Vincent Rush of Cincinnati Sports Photography.

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

Tips on Becoming a Great Sports Photographer Part 2

2011-03-03T01:50:00.000-05:00

NFL Pro Combine 40 yard Dash Time by Cincinnati Sports Photographer Vincent Rush

Part 2 from Rob Miracle;

Besides these long lenses, you need a camera that can drive them. Today, most new cameras are auto focus. Auto focus makes this easier on us, but the AF systems are not fool proof. Luckily, many sports lend them selves well to manual focus, so sometimes you can get a bargain on a manual version of a lens to use on a manual camera and still get good photos. However AF comes in handy for a few sports. Hockey and Soccer involve many subject to camera distance changes. Motion is less predictable and these sports are some what harder to manual focus. Football, Basketball, and Baseball are quite easy to manual focus.

You may also need a flash with a high output. I personally do not recommend a flash at any sporting event. I find the results unpleasing. However the new modern flash systems produce great results. Some sporting events like gymnastics and others are no-flash events. It is best to talk to an event official (referee, coach, etc.) before using your flash. Flashes will be covered more in the section on lighting.

Other equipment which can come in handy are remote triggers. These allow you to mount a camera where you cannot be during the game and remotely triggering it, recovering it after the event. Basketball and Horse Racing are two good examples of sports where great photos come from someone who never sees the viewfinder while they are shooting. Pictures of NBA stars slam dunking the basketball taken above the rim or the winner of the horse race thundering by are done remotely.

Depth of Field -- Isolating the subject.

Most all dramatic sports photos are shot with the lens wide open or one stop from wide open. This is done for two reasons. First you need all the shutter speed you can get, which means shooting wide open, but just as important, it has to do with isolating the subject. As the aperture on a lens opens up, less and less of the photo is in focus. The longer the lens, the more dramatic the change. The larger the distance between the subject and the background the more out of focus the background will come. If you use a long lens and a fast aperture, then your subject will stand out and the background elements will have less impact on your photo.
Reducing background noise is an important goal in many photographs, sports action or not. In studio or landscape settings, you have time to control the elements that make up the picture. Action photography is a "grab it now" type of shooting and you live with the background that is there. If you open up the lens to its maximum, you will find your subjects standing out and becoming memorable.

When you are shooting sports, in particular football and soccer, keep in mind that plays shot on the far side of the field are closer to the background than shots on the near side of the field. Thus if you are shooting a soccer player moving the ball down field and the player passes in front of the bench when you snap the shot, you will have a very distracting background. It may be hard to separate the player and ball from the background noise. Fences, signs, poles, bleachers, stands, and people on the far sideline can really mess up a good shot. Even though you might be shooting wide open, the background will be too prominent in these shots. Should they be avoided? If you have better shots, don't use it. However, it may be your best shot. Shoot it, just be aware that distracting backgrounds are more problematic on shots on the far side of the field.

Focus

An out of focus shot is pretty useless. There isn't much you can do with them other than throw them away. So achieving crisp focus should be a goal of every one. Today's AF cameras do a very good job of focusing, and focusing quickly. AF has really made a lot of photographers lazy. I used to manual focus everything, but now that I have an AF system with AF lenses, I let it do my work for me.

However, many times, manual focus works better. To understand this, you need to know how auto focus works. The camera takes a series of measurements across its AF sensors. It looks for contrasting lines. It moves the lens until these lines achieve the maximum sharpness. These sensors are located in the viewfinder of the camera. Different camera models have different sensor configurations and different capabilities. These sensors either are a simple spot meter in the center of the view finder. A line of three sensors that run across the viewfinder. Or a cross which run side to side and top to bottom. Generally, these sensors do not cover the full range of the view finder and your view finder will have markings showing where the AF sensors are.
If you are following a football player as he runs down the side lines, or a horse as it heads over a water jump, you start by pointing the camera at the subject. If you have a spot AF sensor, you have to be dead on the subject or you will find a focused background and a blurry subject. Wide horizontal sensors will allow you to lead your subject a little bit or allow you to compose shots that are off center. However, when you turn the camera to shoot a vertically framed shot, your sensors now run up and down. There are two things to be aware of here. First the AF is now vertical, thus your subject now has to be in the middle of the frame again, just like the spot sensor. Depending on the AF sensors in your camera, they may not focus on horizontal lines as well as vertical and you may find the AF less than responsive. However, you are shooting vertical sports, like volleyball, shooting vertically works pretty well.

Depending on your composition, many sports photos are shot vertically. Humans are vertical people and if you are trying to get a good shot of your favorite baseball player cranking a home run, you want to turn the camera to a vertical format. Luckily, baseball lends itself well to a small AF sensor for pitchers pitching and batters batting.

Some of the high end cameras have a cross pattern of AF sensors and they are generally selectable. By using a sensor array in this format, you have good vertical and horizontal sensor patterns regardless of which way you hold the camera.

For those times where AF isn't working well, or if you have a manual focus camera, you need to understand how to focus. There are two primary means of focusing a camera: Follow focus and Zone Focus. Follow focus is where you keep your camera on your subject, rotating the focus collar attempting to keep the subject in focus. This works very well on side to side movement, where the camera to subject distance is not changing rapidly. You might use this method for football, auto racing, or other events where you turn side to side following the action. This requires practice to get down. A good way to practice is to go out to the street and follow focus cars as they drive past.

The second method is called zone focus. Here you expect the action to take place at a particular place, at the goal mouth on a hockey rink, or at the jump point on a long jump event at a track meet. You can focus on the area you want to be sharp and when the subject moves into the zone, you then take the photo. This is timing related. You need to practice the timing on this as well, Both of these methods allowed photographers to capture fantastic photos before the invention of auto focus and will continue to into the future. Even if you have an AF system, you should learn to follow focus and zone focus because there may be times where your AF isn't available (low light, low contrast situations for instance) and you need to be able to come back with the shot.

To Be Continued

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

Tips on Becoming a Great Sports Photographer Part 1

2011-03-01T01:46:00.000-05:00

Yankee Stadium on Closing Night. Posted by Cincinnati Sports Photographer Vincent Rush

We have all at one time or another been captivated by sports images. It may be Kirk Gibson's World Series Home run, and the image of him running the bases, overcoming the pain he was in or an image of high flying Michael Jordan slam dunking a basketball with his tongue out. We have all been captured in the moment of human drama. We all like a good action photo and, in particular, if your kids play sports, you want to remember them in their toils.

Quality sports shots are somewhat difficult to come by. Most people have limited access to events to photograph them. The further away you are from the event, the harder it becomes to capture the event in a pleasing manner. Sports are an event where crowd control is important, not only for the crowd's safety, but for the players also. There is nothing more frightening than to be on the sidelines of a football game, focused on a play in the field, when out of the blue a 250 pound line backer drives a player into your legs or a foul ball comes crashing at your $8,000 lens!

World renown sports photographer Rob Miracle shares his knowledge on the subject

Location, Location, Location!

You can only photograph things you can see. The closer you are to someone, the better you can see them. Sports are no different. You have to get as close to what you are shooting as you can. Typically, for a photographer with a press pass, you can get to the sidelines or other similar locations. You generally will not be permitted on the playing field. Depending on the sport, you most likely will be limited to designated locations. For instance, at most Division I football games, the media cannot shoot between the two 35 yard markers. For most people, the situation is even worse. You probably don't have press access and are stuck in the stands for your shots. Get as close a possible. Even if you make it to the sidelines, you will be jostling for space with many other photographers, both still and video who have worked hard to get there and have the same job to do that you have.

You also have to be familiar with the sport to be able to capture the moment. This means knowing where to position yourself for the best action. This is critical because of angular momentum that will be discussed in the section on freezing action. Not only does it matter with the subject, but the background. Look at what is going to be behind your subject. While we will try to minimize the impact that a background has, it will still be unavoidable. So you need to position your self where the background is the most pleasing.

The Decisive Moment

Sports and Action photography is all about timing. Its about reacting. Its about being in the right place at the right time and its about execute. These are all qualities of the athlete and those of the photographer as well. Each sport has predictable and unpredictable moments. Under "Knowing your Sport", you will learn about these moments for individual sports. For instance, in basketball, you will have opportunities to photograph layups, jump shots, free throws, etc. Understanding the timing of these predictable actions allows you to capture the peak moment, when the action is most dramatic.

By knowing these moments you can anticipate the action. This helps in two ways, one it helps you with focus which will be discussed in a later segment, and secondly it helps you snap the shutter at the right time. The saying goes "If you see the action you missed it." This basically means if you wait for the soccer player to head the ball then press the shutter release, the ball most likely will be sailing out of the frame. You have to push the button before the action so that the mirror has time to flip out of the way and the shutter open and close. There is a delay between the image hitting your optical nerve and the shutter closing. You have to, through experience, learn what that time is and adjust for it.

Required Equipment

Most sports are shot on 35mm cameras because of their portability. While some photographers have captured great sports moments with other format cameras, we will concentrate our efforts on the 35mm arena which is the most commonly used gear.

"Its not the equipment but the photographer who makes the picture" is generally a true statement. However with sports and action photography, having the wrong equipment means not getting the shots you want or need. This relates back to the section on location. The further away, the longer the lens is needed to capture the same image in the frame. Different sports require different lens lengths. For instance, basketball is generally shot from the baseline or sideline near the baseline. You generally can get good results with an 85mm lens in this situation. However, by the time the players are at mid court, you need a 135mm to capture them. If they are playing under the far goal, a 200-300mm lens is needed to fill the frame well, yet for shooting a soccer game, a 300-400mm lens is needed for just about anything useful.

Lens speed is also a critical factor. The faster the lens, the faster the shutter speed you can use, which as the lens grows longer, this becomes even more important. This will be covered in the freezing action section in more depth. If you look at the sidelines of any Division 1 college football game or an NFL football game, you will see people with really big lenses. These range from 300mm to 600mm or longer and even then, they may have a 1.4X converter or 2X converter on. You need fast shutter speeds to freeze action with long lenses. Every F Stop you give up requires a faster film or less freezing potential.

Most consumer grade long lenses and zooms have variable apertures, but most are F5.6 at the long end of the lens. F5.6 is good for outdoor day time shots, but becomes very inhibiting for night games and indoor action. Most people use lenses that are F2.8 or faster. These lenses are very expensive. A 400mm F2.8 sells for over $8000 US. They are also very heavy and bulky. Using a monopod is a life saver with these big lenses.

To be continued....

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

Live the Dream | Joe Markiewicz

2011-02-25T16:03:00.000-05:00

Live the Dream | Joe Markiewicz

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.comCheck out my about.me profile!

Live the Dream | Joe Markiewicz

2011-02-24T22:06:00.001-05:00

http://vimeo.com/12865835

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.comCheck out my about.me profile!

Breaking The Rules Of Photography — Before You Break The Rules

2011-02-23T00:48:00.000-05:00

Sunset in Scottsdale Arizona by Cincinnati, Ohio Photographer Vincent Rush

I was having a casual conversation with a renowned photographer. And he proudly said that it was all about breaking the rules – he never follows any rules. He said he does that because if he followed the rules he would never have grown beyond those rules.

Though breaking the rules is creative, lately I’m getting the feeling as if it’s becoming a fashion statement – such statements seem to be lacking depth and knowledge and irresponsible. I have a more conservative approach to “breaking the rule” rule. It is this attitude that prepares you for a long haul at photography. So go ahead and break those rules; but here’s a checklist before you set out to break them.

Know the rules
You can’t break something you don’t know about. You need to understand what the rule is, why is it practiced and what is the barrier it poses to your creativity. Certainly there must be a drawback else why would you bother to invest time in breaking the rule.
Perfect the rules
Understanding the rule is not good enough. You should be perfect at following them. If you are not, you are already neglecting them. That’s breaking the rules in a sense – but it also implies what level of control you have on your art and equipment. Practice till you set some of the best examples for yourself. You will realize, at some level the rule gets in the way of your creativity and results. Now you know you can explore further.
Don’t reinvent the wheel
Most of the times people just end up reinventing the wheel. I asked this photographer “Do you make use of the rule of thirds?” He answered that he never followed any rules. The rule of thirds is a rule of composition that helps you frame shots which are aesthetically more pleasing. This and similar rules are tested by specialists and through big surveys. When you make such a statement saying that you don’t follow the rule of thirds, you are saying you don’t invest efforts in making your composition more aesthetically pleasing. You may make some great compositions and then you may make some other – but in this context they are more of exceptions than rules. At the end of the day after shooting a few hundred shots you realize all the best shots follow some or the other rule of composition.
Work to get better results
Breaking the rules is a great idea provided you get better results than you’d have got following the rules. What’s the point in breaking the rules when you end up with something which doesn’t make sense? Get better results – that’s the way creativity is rewarded.
Experiment
Breaking the rules doesn’t work by itself. You have to spend hours experimenting with light, composition and several other parameters, get creative, visualize and try again. Explore your talent and get creative. Getting creative is the way to breaking the rules. It is when rules get in the way of your visualization and creativity that you have to chose not to follow them. Creativity is what makes a photograph stand out of the thousands. Creativity gives you the edge and you realize the individuality of the photographer within. The more you experiment, the more you get experienced and the better your work becomes.

So go ahead and break the rules. But tick off this list first.

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

11 Tips for Photographing Pets And Children

2011-02-20T02:08:00.000-05:00

Photo by Cincinnati Photographer Vincent Rush of Cincinnati Sports Photography

Photographing children can be fun. They have entirely different reactions to the camera, are very unpredictable yet lovely in their own ways. And most of this is true for pets too. Here are a few tips to help you make the most of it.

Be Patient: In photography patience can be ultimately rewarding (or frustrating on a bad day). Children and pets are unpredictable so it may take quite some time to get the shots you want. Things are mostly out of control and waiting it out is the key to success. So, don’t be irritated,try to be cool and get familiar with child
Be Ready: Don’t let your patience get the better of you. Be alert and prepared. Keep your eye on the viewfinder and don’t hesitate to shoot. In the days of the digital you can always delete the unwanted shots. Set your camera to continuous-auto-focus (or the sports mode) so that activity and movement doesn’t throw the subject out of focus. This setting is present on almost all consumer and DSLRs nowadays.
Maintain Distance: If you are not family and not a friend it’s advisable to maintain a distance to avoid distracting your subject. Also there’s a technical angle to this reasoning. Shooting pics from too close may induce unwanted geometrical artifacts and distortions. Thus rely on a zoom lens.
Come Close: Against the exact opposite of the above, sometimes you may intentionally want to get close to get some geometrical distortion to get a funny look to the shots and the faces of you pet(s).
Capture Natural Poses: While kids can be directed to pose, try to freeze some natural moments to eternity. You’ll cherish these for the times to come.
Keep Friends and Family Close: When shooting pets or kids it’s good to have one of theirs close ones to assist you. When you are holding the camera it can become quite difficult to make the child smile or pose. This also can induce reassurance to kids who are not comfortable with a stranger following them around with an scary something.
Use Props: Children either love to pose or hate it. In such a situation you can use props and toys to engage them.
Expression: Most important feature of the photograph, keep the expression natural and original.
Multiple Shots: Children and pets are always moody, unpredictable and very active. Thus it becomes quite a task to get it in a single shot. Always shoot in continuous mode and if your camera doesn’t come with this feature, be prepared to hit the shutter-release every few seconds. Later when you sort them on your computer you can pick and choose to keep the best.
Color: Lively and energetic as children are peppy, vibrant or soft colors compliment them and the entire scene. Try to avoid dark and dull colors unless you know what you are doing.
Angle and Perspective: It’s important to get your camera to the level of your subject for a vast majority of the shots and normally means being on your knees at the very least. But feel free to break the rules and try some crazy angles to portray the madness in the scene.

From Advanced Photography 8/23/2010

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

The A List:: Super Sports

2011-02-16T23:10:00.000-05:00

Little League Sports Action Photograph of Eaton Ohio Little Leaguer, by Vincent Rush of Cincinnati Sports Photography

Robert Beck is a Sports Illustrated contract photographer with over 25 years experience shooting all manner of sports events. He's as comfortable applying his skills to his son's flag football game as he is to prowling the sidelines at the Super Bowl. We recently asked him to share some tips from his A-list of sports shooting advice.

• The first thing I look at is the background. Whatever the action is, the background will complete the picture. I don't want a busy background—a lot of fences or light glaring off a fence. A lot of people in the stands are okay, but I don't want one person walking by or just standing around. Some sports are good with the bench as background, like lacrosse or football, with coaches and players behind the action. Shooting Little League is trickier. The field is an odd shape, and I try to crop out distractions. I shoot the batter so the bench is in the background as opposed to two parents and otherwise empty aluminum stands reflecting light. The rule of thumb: real clean or real real.

• The first lens in my kit is the 70-200mm zoom lens [AF-S VR Zoom-NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G IF-ED]. Very sharp, very fast, and if I have to shoot through a fence, I shoot wide open and the fence won't even show. It also offers me a lot of flexibility in composing; too tight, I zoom out, too loose, zoom in. My next lens is the 200-400mm [AF-S VR Zoom-NIKKOR 200-400mm f/4G IF-ED]; fabulous for any sport, just perfect.

• I'm shooting D3 right now almost exclusively. I also have a D700 and a D300. Focusing is quick on all, but the D3 is a little faster in its burst. But I suggest you don't get caught up in shooting sequences. In reality the high point of action is really one or two frames, especially in sports where a ball is struck. The ball is only going to be in there for one frame, and if a kid is fielding the ball, the ball's only there for three frames. Generally, five frames per second is fast enough.

• The truth is that professional sports are almost easier to shoot. The younger the kids, the less you can anticipate—they don't have a sense of timing like the pros or older kids; the young kids are all a little bit off the timing. Be prepared.

The Difference Between Bokeh And Depth Of Field

2011-02-11T15:51:00.003-05:00

Joe Markiewicz autographed Home Run baseball presented to Vincent Rush. Photo by Vincent Rush

Bokeh and depth of field, both the techniques help the photographers in creating beautiful photographs. In the approach of photographing at lower f-numbers, the distinction between depth of field and bokeh vanishes and the hobbyists and enthusiasts often end up using the terms bokeh and DOF interchangeably. To photograph the aesthetics of the subject and the background, one should be clear about what DOF and bokeh stand for. To effectively use the two techniques, let’s have a quick view at depth of field, bokeh and the differences between the two.

What Is Depth Of Field

The depth of field refers to the area of sharp focus in a photograph. When taking a photograph, sometimes it may be desirable to have the entire image sharp and at other times you may be interested in focusing only a small portion of the scene. You can easily achieve the desired effect by tuning the camera to aperture priority mode for either high depth of field or small depth of field.

A high depth of field is the scenario where everything in the plane of focus is in sharp focus. The shallow depth of field on the other hand is the technique of focusing only a small portion of the plane of focus resulting in effectively focused subject amidst defocused background and foreground. The shallow depth of field helps in profoundly separating the subject by beautifully blurring the background clutter.

What Is Bokeh

Bokeh is the aesthetic quality of blur in out of focus areas of the image. Bokeh is the terminology used for defining the quality of blur achieved at shallow depth of field. Bokeh thus refers to the quality of blurred imagery rendered by the lens for out-of-focus points of light.

The bokeh refers to the circular discs formed as the result of blurring the background. The pronounced bokeh effect is created when the camera is tuned for shallow depth of field. The effective brightness in the background of the subject renders beautiful imagery to the out-of-focus areas, thus, resulting in smooth, soft circular discs in the background.

The Difference Between Bokeh And Depth Of Field

The above definitions clarify the fact that the depth of field and the bokeh are not same. While depth of field is the technique of presenting the area of sharp focus, bokeh is the craft of artistically presenting the out-of-focus area of an image. Bokeh is more of a qualitative aspect of the photograph. You can eventually identify the bokeh as good or bad, but there is no way to adjudge the depth of field in terms of qualitative adjectives. The DOF is determined by the camera-to-subject distance, the lens focal length, the lens f-number, and the format size or circle of confusion criterion. The bokeh on the other hand is influenced by influence the phenomena outside the focal plane like foreground / background brightness, lens aberration, speed of the lens, color and shapes & patterns of the subject, etc.

Thus we can say that bokeh is dependent on depth of field but depth of field is in no way dependent on the bokeh. The bokeh and the depth of field are two different techniques used for specific purposes. The sole purpose of depth of field is to represent the area of sharp focus in the photograph, whereas bokeh is artistic quality of out-of-focus area. The two techniques (shallow depth of field and beautiful bokeh effect) when used together produce stunningly beautiful and creative results.

From Advanced Photography

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of http://mainstreetmonroe.com and Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

2011-02-08T15:31:00.000-05:00

Eaton Eagles 6th Grade Football vs Valley View Spartans of Germantown, Ohio by Vincent Rush

By Nancy Hill
Everybody has a camera, so why should you bother taking pictures? Let someone else worry about shooting the family reunion, the kids, the sports. You can always ask them for prints. Right?
Maybe not. You could be missing out on a lot if you settle for someone else’s photos instead of learning to take good pictures yourself. Here are 10 reasons why it’s well worth the effort to learn to take good photographs yourself.

1. Photographs are personal. Only you know how you see the world.
Everyone views the world differently. Your perspective is unique. Your sister will not capture your family reunion like you would. She will focus on the kids, while you like how many generations are in your family. Your best friend with her fancy camera does sweeping landscapes. You were with her on the shoot. While she was fussing with her tripod, you were fascinated by the kids fishing with their mother. She never even thought to look. Only you can capture the world you live in. Leaving it up to anyone else will mean your vision is lost.

2. Photographs provide an historical record.
Maybe all those Little League games you go to seem tedious after a while, but 20 years from now, your kids will love looking at those pictures, recalling their glory moments (and they will remember some), the kids on their teams, and the coach who kept believing in them. Same goes for other things in your life. Taking photos of your house will remind you of what you once valued, and what your tastes were. Cars change, woods give way to roads, property is sub-divided, old homes are torn down. Having photos of how things are now will give you a record when things “ain’t what they used to be.”

3. Taking photographs will kick your brain into a creative mode.
Simply by looking through the camera and deciding what part of the scene in front of you belongs in the picture will kick your creative side into action. The more you shoot, the more your creativity will come out. It’s a wonderful part of you. Let it play.

4. Photography is great therapy.
This is close to number 3, but it goes beyond creativity. Photography can help you see the world differently. If you’re upset, grab your camera and go out looking for beauty. You’ll find it. If you’re down, spend an hour shooting photographs – of anything – your house, your yard, your city, flowers, animals. Life through a camera lens is full of wonder. Focusing on how the world around you looks can also help break through your negative thoughts.

5. Photography is a great way to make new friends.
Photographers – amateurs, hobbyists, and pros alike – love to talk about photography. You’ll never lack for company if you join a photography club. You’ll also learn a lot more about photography by someone who takes good photographs than you’ll ever learn in a book.

6. Photography is a way to share your life with others.
Sometimes it’s hard to talk to family members. Just because you share relatives doesn’t mean you have much in common. Sharing your photographs with them is a good way to break through barriers, to show someone what’s important in your life. You can also share travel photographs with groups interested in the area you visited. The photos you took of soil eroded around a river might be just what a environmental group needs to get a grant to save the area. The possibilities are endless.

7. Photography is a gift you can give others.
Cards with your photographs on them make great gifts, and a calendar of family photos is a perfect present for your parents who have everything they could possibly want or need. Getting cards and calendars made has never been easier; you can even have it done online. You can also use your photographs on mouse pads, shirts, mugs, and even postage stamps. What could be more personal?

8. Photography will improve your web site and/or blog.
Your words alone aren’t likely to keep people on your web site for very long, so you need to include graphics. You can always use someone else’s work, but your own will be easier, more personal, and say a lot about you. Don’t overlook the power of a good photograph. It can take your web site to a new level.

9. Photography brings accolades.
Your images might not make you famous, but being known as someone who takes good pictures is a real self-esteem builder. It’s great to hear, “Wow! That’s beautiful! Can I get a copy?” Even a simple, “You take such good photographs. How do you do it?” makes the effort worth while. Praise is good. None of us can get enough of it.

10. Photography can bring in money.
Yep, it’s true. Take good photographs, and chances are you can pick up some extra cash. Whether it’s taking your neighbor’s kid’s high school senior pictures, winning a little cash in a photo contest, or selling your cards on a web site, photography can bring in some extra cash. Maybe someone backs into your neighbor’s fence and they need a photo for court. Who knows, maybe you’ll get so good your work will be published in newspapers or magazines some day. You could start small. Lots of magazines, especially women’s magazines, pay $25-50 for cute kid shots. There are lots of possibilities.
The more you learn about photography, the better your photographs will be. The better they are, the more confidence you’ll have – not just in your photographs, but in yourself. Don’t waste another minute — Grab your camera and start shooting!

Steelers vs. Packers, Bart Starr and Super Bowl 45

2011-02-06T13:40:00.000-05:00

Sitting on the couch with my Dad, watching my very first NFL football game I can still hear him cursing the day that the Steelers had drafted “The dumbest quarterback in history….”Bleepin” Terry Bradshaw! I remember more colorful language as he proclaimed that they Steelers should fire Chuck Noll, That Terry Hanratty or Joe Gilliam should be in a QB and on and on and on
.
Dad was from an area just outside of Pittsburgh, in a town called Washington, Pennsylvania.

2 minutes later…all was right with the world, as Franco Harris scooped up a deflected pass off of Frenchie Fuqua and ran into football history with the immaculate reception.

From that day on, I was a Steelers fan.

Growing up in the Cincinnati and Dayton region, I used to win a lot of lunch money on Steelers vs. Bengal’s week. I had a Steelers lunch box, rain coat, note book and a whole host of Steelers swag. On the rare occasions that the Bengals would win and my classmates would hit me with “Score Board, Rush!”, I could always retort with “Trophy Case!”

I’m also a fan of Bart Starr.

In 1993, as I was getting my Amway business started, I became good friends with an Amway Diamond by the name of Larry Winters. Larry was one of my business mentors. At the time I probably only had about 50 people on my team and wasn’t really on the radar as a future success story.

Larry’s team was about 3-4000 people strong at the time, and as a result, he was running his own “Major Functions”.

In January of 1993, Larry brought legendary Green Bay Packer quarterback Bart Starr in as a guest speaker for the weekend.

I had the honor of being asked to host Bart while he was in town.

As a result I got to drive Bart around, take him to dinner and spend about 5 hours with him. It was one of my most memorable events I ever participated in. Bart was a truly genuine, down to earth human being and one of the nicest guys I ever met. He taught me a few valuable lessons about leadership, compassion and people skills that I still hold tight to today. And he also signed a football and a helmet for me.

As a result I became a semi-Packer’s fan as well as a Steelers fan.

So today on Super Bowl Sunday, while I root for the Steelers, I remain a Bart Starr fan. And no matter the outcome of Super Bowl 45, I can always find comfort in the trophy case.

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com Check out my about.me profile!

Making Money With Photography

2011-02-02T01:37:00.003-05:00

Mount St. Joseph College Football photo by Cincinnati Sports Photographer Vincent Rush

From Advanced Photography

Make Money With Event Coverage Events are a huge source of making money with photography. Be it weddings, sporting events, company meetings, graduation ceremony, school activities, etc all require to be documented in forms of photographs. The organizations hire the professional photographer for covering the events and pay them like anything. On an average basis, a wedding photographer charges $2000 to $5000 per wedding. Similarly, sports photography is also a huge market of making money.

Make Money Online One of the best ways to make money with photography is to establish online presence as the photographer. Internet is the easiest source of reaching to large masses and gaining popularity (and eventually gaining the benefits of “word of mouth”). Become the part of the viral internet marketing through:

Stock Photography: Stock photography provides an excellent platform to the buyers and the sellers of the photographs. The stock photography sites encourage the photographers to submit their best works (and maintain the online portfolio) and provides the best deals to the buyers.

Building A Web Gallery: The other smart way to showcase your work to the world is to create a web gallery. You can either build your own website or a photo-blog to display your photographs or can choose from Picsengine or Wix.com which help in building the online portfolios without the hassles of maintaining the website. Social Networking And

Sharing Sites: Social networking sites are an effective way of gaining popularity. Upload your photographs to the social networking sites and offer the photo-services to attract the potential customers. Apart from the social sharing sites, there are some sites like Demotix.com which pays you for submitting the newsworthy images.

Specialize In “What Sells” To make money with photography, you need to look at the commercial aspect of photography. Get an overview of the market stats to know what sells the most. You have to be thorough with this one. Find out what sells the most not only in terms of the subject, but in terms of image quality, concept and license (royalty-free, rights-managed or copyrighted images). Once you are done with the ground work, you gain an insight into what is favored by the audience and likewise you can start working in that direction for providing the photographs which are liked by the masses.

4) Creativity Is The Key To Making Money Your creativity, vision, imagination and the presentation skills provide you an edge over the other photographers. The stock photography sites, the web designers, entrepreneurs, advertisers, etc mostly avoid picking up the common photographs. The photographs they pick and choose reflect the brand and convey some specific message and thus, each of them is looking for something unusual, different and striking. If you can offer the creative photographs which convey the message or highlight the concept, nothing like it. So, even though you specialize in what sells the most, the one thing which gives you an edge over the others and of course help you draw money is your creativity

Post-processing As A Medium For Making Money In the course of learning photography, the photographers eventually turn out to be the masters of the post-processing skills. Right from making some crucial post-processing adjustments for correcting the color cast, contrast, saturation, sharpness, etc to introducing some special effects in the photographs, the photographers can make a good income by utilizing their post-processing skills (also termed as the photo-finishing skills). You can easily make money by offering post-processing services like creating a realistic torn photo-frame effect, converting the colored photographs to black and white, restoring the old pictures (and resurrect the faded color in Photoshop), etc.

Photo-Journalism Is A Great Source Of Making Money Photography is as diverse as its applications. Ranging fromstreet photography to conceptual / story telling photographs, you can make good money by offering your photographs for editorial purposes to magazines and newspapers. This gives you an opportunity to make money as a freelancer (as a hobbyists or an enthusiast). Instead of just offering the photographs to the magazines, you can earn a good income by selling the stories with the photographs shot by you. All you need to do is to invest in some creative effort to wrap the photographs around the content like photographing streets, customs, traditions, buildings, people, etc when traveling to some distant city / state with the intent of presenting it as a documentation sells well with the magazines

Shoot For The Advertisement Campaigns Marketing is the evergreen stream of income and shooting for an advertisement campaign alone can help you make good money. But getting the offer for an advertising campaign requires a lot of effort on your part; where the major role is played by the contacts at your disposal and the richness of your portfolio. It requires you to be a technical expert (having sound knowledge of the basic concepts of photography and command over the equipment) to produce the sharp, creative and impressive photographs required by the advertising agencies.

Join A Professional Photographer As An Assistant Joining a professional photographer as an assistant serves a dual purpose. Firstly, it enables you to make a living with the salary offered by the photographer and secondly, it helps in gaining experience and exposure. Working on various projects with a professional / freelancer photographer comes in handy for understanding the issues between clients & photographers and helps you in exploring the opportunities as a beginner.

Make Money With A Home Studio Economically speaking, the best of way of earning money is to cut down the costs. Instead of investing in a full-fledged studio, its better to maintain a simple home-based studio with bare necessities. It just takes a DSLR, a tripod and the artificial lights to get started with a decent business with home studios. This kind of set-up comes in handy for photographing the table-top products ranging from a pencil or pen to the textured walls (and balls, fruits, etc) which help in contributing to your online portfolio with stock photography sites (or can make way to owned website galleries). A home studio set-up opens up the opportunities for experimenting with various subjects at your disposal

Every business needs photos for various purposes —for brochures, websites, company events and meetings, advertisements, etc. These photographs reflect the brand of the company and gives recognition to the products and the services they offer. Owing to the above said facts, the companies tend to hire the photographers permanently and pay them huge sums for the photographs which speak about the company at large. Apart from this, the businesses dealing in real estates also offer good deals to the photographers for photographing the property and portraying the houses and flats as attractive as possible

Play Within Your Game

2011-01-31T11:40:00.002-05:00

Stephen Strasburg of The Washington Nationals vs. The Cincinnati Reds by Cincinnati Photographer Vince Rush

Playing within your game could also be interpreted as staying within your niche. When I was playing men's softball and traveling with a team every weekend, I never tried to be more than I was.

Out of 12 guys on the regular roster, I was probably the 8th or 9th, maybe 10th or 11th (depending on who you asked), best on the team. I was not a home run hitter and I didn't have a cannon for an arm.

What I was however was a .650 right handed hitter that made my living by hitting the ball to right center and painting the right field line, I was fast and I wouldn't embarrass myself in the field. I was also willing to be the ultimate support player for the team by playing some catcher and riding the pine without throwing a fit or pouting.
All of those qualities had earned me a spot on an A level team that played about 200 games a year, so when I got to that team, I never tried to be anything other than that.What's that detective Harry Callahan said, "A man's got to know his limitations"?..Well I knew mine.

to the contrary, occasionally we would see some talented, young, up and coming ball player and invite him to play a tournament with the team. Inevitably, that player would, more times than not, forget what his game was and why we wanted him in the first place, and try to play outside of his game by swinging for the fences and attempting to do things he was not equipped for. The end result was, that he would be with us for a brief time and then we'd never call him again.

In photography, if you want to succeed and make a decent side income or one day a living, you've got to know your niche and play within you game.

My niche is sports photography. I can shoot wedding photography, portrait photography and industrial or landscapes, but I know that in CINCINNATI or DAYTON, OHIO, when it comes to that type of photography, I'm very good at it. In fact I feel I'm the very best at it. I'm also good at marketing and promoting what I do as well as learning more every day.

I have many friends in photography who are skilled at various disciplines and do quite well in say PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY, SENIOR PORTRAITS, WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY and then I have friend's that are highly skilled at PHOTOSHOP and various forms of post photo processing. They tend to make a nice living at it.

In fact, I know a guy in West Chester by the name of Russ McLaughlin, who is one of the very best family and portrait photographers in the world. The guy has become extremely prosperous at taking family and senior portraits. He demands the highest price and always gets it.

As a photographer, you have to know you game and stay within that game to succeed. When you have mastered that discipline and own that niche, then broaden your horizons and master another one.

To be financially successful in photography it is my opinion that you can not afford to be a "jack of all trades and a master of none". When I started Cincinnati Sports Photography I was on a mission to establish myself as one of the premiere sports photographers in Ohio. I knew that other work would come from establishing my reputation in that field.

Most people that try to scratch out an income as photographers, are never quite sure what kind of photographer they want to be.

In one of my next posts, I'll talk about branding and being selective on what pictures you choose to post on your online portfolio. Every picture you post in a gallery or on a web site is part of your resume and also represents the quality of your work and your attention to detail.

I believe that I get the jobs I do, from exotic sports car photos to senior and family portraits because of my sports photography.

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://cincinnatisportsphotography.com/

Photographic Mistakes — 10 Most Common Mistakes In Photography

2011-01-29T02:47:00.002-05:00

Lake Norman, North Carolina by Cincinnati Photographer Vincent Rush of Ohio Sports Photography

1) Not Knowing The Camera In And Out

The excitement of owning the camera makes you overconfident. Time to step back. Its time to know your camera — read the user manual, familiarize yourself with the dials, controls & modes of the camera and get ready for the test shots. After doing well at warm-up, now you are in a good position to explore the possibilities and the opportunities for photographs that makes sense. Photography is not just releasing the shutter; it is far more than that. It follows the entire procedure (as any other form of art).

Visualize: Carefully observe and spot an interesting subject or scene to shoot.
The Strategy: Adjust the camera settings for achieving the desired effect like attaining DOF or freezing the motion or capturing the motion & movement.
The Effort: Hold the camera firmly and press the shutter release.
The essence of the photography lies in framing the imaginations to your expectations which requires you to be thorough with the camera features, settings and limitations (as to what you can do with the camera you own). If the camera you own does not provide the aperture priority mode, photographing the depth of field is out of question.

2) Overlooking The Camera Settings
This mistake counts from my personal experience. As soon as I spot a beautiful scene / subject, I just pick my camera, zoom-into the scene and click. And in one instance, after looking at the result on the LCD, I realized something had gone wrong. The camera was set up for bracketing instead of the normal exposure. Having learned from my own mistakes, here is a quick piece of advice. Always check out the camera settings prior to going out for a shoot. Even though mistakes result in great results (sometimes), but overlooking the camera settings often result in missing the perfect shot and attributed as carelessness.

3) Not Having The Camera Handy
You have the best camera, perhaps a Nikon D7000 or Canon EOS 5D Mark II or a Sony Cybershot and the time you spot an interesting subject, perhaps a playful kid or a pet pass by, how would you feel when you miss that perfect shot. It hurts to miss the shot more than not finding an interesting subject when ready with the camera in hand. So, the best thing to do is to realize the importance of timing in photography and keep your camera handy for shooting surprise shots nature has planned for you. No I’m not asking you to keep the camera handy in the kitchen. But you get the point

4) Overlooking A Strong Point Of Interest
Having the camera in hand doesn’t mean that you are free to shoot. If you are there to make a mark with your photographs and want to create a masterpiece, look around to spot something that interests you, attracts you & lures you and then freeze that moment to make an outstanding photograph. If there is a particular person in the crowd or a specific flower in the garden which took you by a surprise, then separate that object from the rest of the clutter to put forth your point of view (and your way of expressing things visually).

5) Including Conflicting Subjects
When photographing, it is really difficult to draw a line as to what should be included and what be excluded of the frame. Be very thorough and particular about the composition of the frame. The composition techniques teach a lot about how & where to place the subject, how including lines, patterns, textures, perspective add in making a good photograph. But one thing which I have learned by observing the photographs is that you should never portray the competing subjects onto the same frame. It would be something like offering apples and oranges; and the interest of the viewer remains divided of the ambiguity.

6) Using Flash Inefficiently
The best camera mode for shooting is the auto-mode. Let the camera decide when to use the flash and when to slow down the shutter speed to compensate for low-light. That was my approach when I started off with my camera until I realized that flash fired by the camera in the auto-mode spoils the entire frame. I also believed the the flash was only to compensate for low-ambient light. This was my second mistake. The fact is that the in-built camera flash is a good source of light not only for low-ambient light, but also when shooting against other sources of light. The trick lies in using the flash efficiently. Experiment with bouncing the flash off the wall or try using it as the complimentary source of light or learn to use rear sync flash mode; all these activities will contribute in realizing the importance of flash in photography. Learn to use flash effectively.

7) Misinterpretation Of Lights
Light is the second most important element in photography (next to right time). It can either make the photograph or break the photograph. Lights play an important role not only in illuminating the subject, it affects the overall presentation of the photograph. For some subjects / scenes the direct sunlight acts as the perfect source of illumination (for textures), while sometimes angular light helps in portraying the depth in the scene. Consider to soften & diffuse the light when photographing the portraits. Learning to interpret the lights and its properties comes in handy for making the most from the available lights.
8) “Photo-shopping”: The Digital Attitude
With digital camera in the hand comes the digital attitude. The attitude of correcting the images during post processing. At the beginning you may just love to release the shutter without actually taking care of the basic elements of a good photograph. Photography is not the art of correcting the things off-camera. Photography is not about “photoshopping”. While post-processing is required for making some crucial adjustments, you can never get the natural colors, lights and expression with any amount of editing. It is a huge waste of time if you rely on photo-editors to get great colors and proper exposure.
9) Always Shooting At Same Level
Always shooting at the same angle and same level makes the photographs portray the subject as it normally appears to the human eye. It lacks expression and fails to convey the dynamics of the subject or the scene. Whereas photographing at various levels help in portraying strength, superiority, authority or negligibility of the subject. For example looking at the photograph of a building shot from the ground level makes you feel the enormity of the huge structure and portraying the same structure from a higher vantage point enable you to express inferiority of the structure. Put an extra thought into building a perspective.
10) No Concern For Zooming-In
The professional photographers use the camera zoom to get tight crops and to fill the frame with only the desired elements in the scene. Zooming in the subject and scene clearly helps in expressing the interest and delivering a strong focus on the subject or the scene. It adds a new meaning to the perspective. Zooming out to include unwanted objects results in clutter and induces distracting elements thereby killing the interest in a photograph.

In Youth Sports Photography; It’s Pros Vs. Parents

2011-01-25T13:15:00.001-05:00

In Youth Sports Photography, It’s Pros Vs. Parents

A link to an article that I was interviewed for by PDN (Photo District News)

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com

What They Don't Teach you in Photography School

2011-01-23T02:53:00.087-05:00

Cincinnati Reds Photo by Cincinnati Sports Photography and Ohio Sports Photographer Vincent Rush

What they DON"T teach you in photography school is how to become a successful photographer. Technique is only a small percentage of what it takes to succeed today. A book I read a few years ago and about 12 times since, "The Magic of Thinking Big" said that "Success is 2% mechanics and 98% attitude.

As an Ohio sports photographer who has been having good success in the Cincinnati Photographers market, I get asked quite a bit by the guys at the local camera store where I do business, "How do you keep getting so many cool jobs?"

First of all, let me say, that with the exception of sports photography, that I know that there are better photographers than me.There are better much, much better Photoshop specialists than me and there are also those who have more expensive gear, fancy studios, slick websites and even those that belong to "professional membership, dues paying clubs"

However, with all of that said, there are not a lot of photographers getting paid or at least paid what they're worth.

Part of that is naturally due to the supply and demand of today.

Demand is down because of the economy.

Supply is off the charts because everyone that has a digital camera now is a "photographer". You also have the large number of people that give away everything and collectively drive the market down.

I know of one such company that will shoot an entire year of high school football action and sell a DVD of a gazillion images, 20% of which are quality action shots and 80% garbage pics lumped in together, for $40.00. In a desire to be "liked" in their community they not only devalue the quality of service of a professional photographer, but in the long run, devalue themselves.

In today's world, marketing and networking is everything. A young photographer has to know how to self promote, network and make connections, along with providing outstanding customer service that goes above and beyond a 10% discount.

I recommend every photographer pick up a copy of Jeffery Gitomer's book, "Customer Satisfaction is WORTHLESS, Customer Loyalty is Priceless.

It seems to me that the one thing that many aspiring young photographers lack is self promoting skills, people skills, self image and confidence and the ability to create a brand.

Another pet peeve of mine is appearance. If you're on the sidelines and you look like a bum or if you show up to a consultation looking like a slob, you don't inspire confidence. You should treat every interaction like a professional job interview, because as a photographer, every job is an audition...for your next one.

Most of the photographers (Not all of course) in Cincinnati, that I meet, are either social wall flowers, arrogant and lacking people skills and have no real world business sales experience.

When young or struggling photographers ask me for advice, I recommend books such as , "How to Win Friends and Influence People", "Think and Grow Rich", any Jeffery Gitomer book and a series of other sales experts.

At the end of the day, no matter how good you are with PS5 or HDR techniques, it all comes down to personal marketing and personal branding.

When I began shooting sports photography a few years ago, I'll admit, I gave away a lot of 4 x 6 glossy action photos, to get my name out and introduce my brand to people.

The second year, I set up a site through SmugMug and started selling the pictures at the minimum prices to continue to establish my brand.

The 3rd year, I doubled the price of everything and the 4th year I doubled again.

Now that my brand and style are established, and making decent money and getting a lot of calls for family photos, senior portraits and team photos.

I have also read a half a dozen books on social media marketing, SEO, Search Engine Optimization and hundreds of books on sales and business leadership skills.

It's not enough to have a nice camera a couple of lenses and friends and family telling you that you are great. You have to earn the respect of your profession with diligence, ethics and talent along with dynamic people skills.

On a closing note for all young photographers coming out of school and hitting the streets; Your generation, while the most technically connected generation in history, is the most socially disconnected generation in history as well. If you want to succeed in any business, there is a wide open market for the young professionals that master the art of interpersonal interaction. You know, weird stuff, like eye contact, hand shakes, verbal communication and the art of making people feel better after they leave you than they did before they got with you.

The average social weakling believes that they will be able to Twitter, Facebook, Text and email their way to success. That mentality is creating a void in our society, that if you learn how to differentiate yourselves in this new so called "connected" world you will raise your value in it as well...and that when you start getting PAID!

In sports photography, people pay me what they pay me, because I can do what other cant, in a way that other don't. And for now that remains my secret.

Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography, Monroe Ohio.

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com

Balance Beam

2011-01-23T01:55:00.000-05:00

A casual portrait by a member of the Top Flight Gymnastics Team in Northern Kentucky

Photo by Cincinnati Photographer Vincent Rush

How to Photograph Winter Landscapes by Moose Peterson

2011-01-21T04:01:00.000-05:00

West Yellowstone by Cincinnati Photographer Vincent Rush

When Moose Peterson starts talking about photographing winter landscapes, you tend to pay attention. In fact, if you're like us, you take notes. As a renowned nature and wildlife photographer, Moose brings experience and expertise to the subject. He also brings an appreciation of the beauty of the winter world and a realization of its challenges.

Because we were taking notes, we can share his tips with you.

White Out
What was once the bane of winter photos is now past tense. You guessed it: blue or gray snow. Here's what used to happen: the camera's meter would read the vast white world as a vast overexposure, and to compensate the camera's autoexposure system would set faster shutter speeds or smaller apertures; either would effectively cut down the amount of light reaching the film or the sensor. Simply, the meter didn't know that all that white was what you really wanted. Moose remembers those days, and how he'd use +1/3 or +2/3 or more exposure compensation to let in more light and bring white back to white.

These days it's pretty much a non-issue. "With any Nikon D-SLR, I go with Matrix metering and aperture-priority exposure and that's it," Moose says. "I don't dial in any exposure compensation." And if some of the snow gets blown out—that is, overexposed—it's no problem. "White snow doesn't need to have a whole lot of detail for your mind to know its snow. In the majority of photos you'll take, you don't need to see the individual crystals of the snow."

In addition, it's also likely that the shadow areas of the scene will be filled in by all the light bouncing off the snow. "You won't have a lot of shadow area to deal with," Moose says, "and neither will your meter. The exposure range is mostly in the highlight area."

Things might be different when the sun's not out. "On an overcast or cloudy day, you might get a blue cast to the snow. I don't mind that so much at all—it helps suggest just how cold the scene is. What's the color of cold, after all? Blue."

But if you want the snow to whiten up, an exposure compensation of +1/3 or +2/3 should do the trick. Take a photo, check the LCD, adjust as needed.

Also, keep in mind that when you're shooting in snow, chances are you're not just photographing the snow. There's a person, a tree, an animal, a house...maybe a snowman. "And, once again, the snow in the scene acts like a giant fill card and bounces light around," Moose says, "and bounced light will be softer and more flattering for your picture."

Contrast
The winter landscape doesn't have to be all white to tell its seasonal story. For example, check out the sixth photo, taken on the Madison River in Yellowstone National Park. "What are you doing in a photograph?" Moose asks, and then he answers: "You're telling a story. Well, in the Madison River photo I put the autofocus sensor on the trees in the sun, which insured that they'd be sharp, of course, but which also biased the exposure toward the sun, so the shadows on the left went to black. I framed the shot for that effect, for that contrast. The story I'm telling is that there's a transition taking place: spring is coming."

Color
Winter will almost always provide its share of color—you just have to seek it out. Sometimes chasing the light will do the trick. (And when you catch the light, check its direction. "Look for sidelighting," Moose says. "It'll give you more definition in your subject because the shadows are revealing texture and detail.")

"What you're doing is fine tuning the photo," Moose says. "In effect, you're warming up or cooling down the winter landscape." How much fine tuning will suit the scene you're shooting? That's up to your taste and judgment; take a picture at any setting and check the results.

Moose also remind us that the colder the air, the better the color. "Cold air is clearer," he says, "and there are often ice crystals in the air that cause light to diffract; you get really brilliant, pretty-picture colors. So you want to be photographing at sunrise and sunset—the coldest parts of the day."

Moose calls the tenth photo, taken in the Bridger Mountains of Montana, "one of the top five sunrises of my life." To get it, he had to be there at 4:45 in the morning—in the dark, in the cold and in the storm. "Some of the best photo opportunities happen when winter storms begin and end," he explains. "That's when the drama comes—when the light is trying to burst through. I took this photo as the storm was clearing out." So check weather reports or the weather app on your smart phone.

Comfort Zone
"Snow photography is only fun if you're comfortable," Moose says. "The right boots are essential. Look for high-tech snow boots that are rated to keep you warm down to zero. Next, gloves and hat. I'm a glove fanatic, I admit it. I never go to an outdoor shop without looking at the gloves. For basic snow shooting, when you'll be out for fun for a couple of hours, I recommend gloves that are made for cross-country skiing; they're ideal—very flexible, with good insulation. For hardcore, out-all-day shooting, my choice is ice climbing gloves. They have extra insulation on the top of the glove that keeps your hands warm. Hats? A personal thing—you'll know what works best for you.

Gear Protection
"It's not like the old days when you had to weatherproof your gear," Moose says. "I've taken all the Nikon digital cameras, from COOLPIX to D3X, out in minus 20-degree weather and never had a problem.
"What you should think about, though, is taking your gear from a warm place—a building or a car—out into the cold. Don't breathe on any glass; if you avoid moisture in the beginning, you won't have moisture problems.

"My gear is in the camera bag when I'm not shooting. When I come back at night to my home or to a hotel, the gear's going to be cold, and if I just take it out of the bag I'll get the condensation cycle started, which is exactly what I don't want. So I take the camera gear out, put it on the counter or the bed, pop out the memory cards from the cameras and put a clean white towel over everything and let it all sit there until it comes to room temperature. All the condensation forms on the towel and is absorbed. You don't have to do this in a hurry, there's no rush—but do it. When it's all at room temperature, stow it back in the bag and you're ready for the next day or the next time.

"And if I'm in and out of a vehicle all day when I'm working, I keep a white towel on the gear when it's out of the bag."

Walk Right In (Not!)
"Think of where you're walking," Moose says, "and when you're walking there. You don't want to walk through a scene looking for subjects or vantage points and then realize that the nice virgin field of snow is now covered with your footprints. Think ahead."

Any Way the Wind Blows
"I always look for places where the wind is blowing. When there's steam or snow or ice crystals in the air, the picture tells the viewer, 'It's cold!' Again, what's the story? What's the message?"

In a word: winter. And though Moose travels to some exotic places—and even conducts a winter workshop in Yellowstone—he also tells winter's story from close-to-home locations. He took the seventh photo practically from his backyard and the second and third images about a block away.
So if you're lucky enough to live in a place where snow visits you, or if you're going to be a visitor to a snowy region of the country, keep your camera close at hand.

Lessons from Behind the Lens of a Legendary Wildlife Photographer, at his website, www.moosepeterson.com.

Tips For Macro Photography – The Extreme Close-Up by Christopher B. Derrick

2011-01-20T02:08:00.002-05:00

The Amway / LTD Diamond Ring.

Awarded by LTD (Leadership Team Development) to all newly qualified Diamond level Independent Business Owners. Produced by the same company that produces many professional and college sports championship rings, each ring is valued between $18-22,000.00.

Posted by Amway / LTD Emerald level IBO and photographer, Vincent Rush

Marco photography has always fascinated me because practitioners of the art/craft continually amaze me with the small details of our gigantic world. Much like a Seinfeld bit, Macro photography typically consists of finding an everyday object and photographing it at such close proximity that the perhaps mundane — now taken out of context — is startling and interest-piquing. Marco photography can be extra enjoyable and elucidating, as you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the myriad of minute details your camera records. Icicles hanging on a tree branch or side of house can become surreal when viewed through macro photography.

Avoid Camera Shake

When you shoot Macro, your Depth of Field is extremely shallow, so critical focus is paramount to get a more than good shot. And what’s the main culprit for soft focus in macro photography? You guessed it, camera shake. To avoid camera shake you’ll need to shoot at a higher shutter speed, use a tripod and/or a cable release. Also, never, never, never use the Auto Focus setting when doing Macro photography, because the computer can easily be tricked (not that it matters if you have a huge memory card, but why waste the time?). By manually focusing your lens, you have precision control of what tiny – but now huge – details will be the center of attention.

Composition

With macro photography, you can (and should) take your time to get the composition precisely perfect (or perfect for what you envision), so don’t hesitate to move up, down and all around the subject of your gaze. Unless you’re shooting a bumblebee or a humming bird, you have no time constraint, so using bracketing to get the best exposure to match the flawless composition. Bracketing, if you didn’t know, is taking at least three of the exact same photographer at different exposures (over, neutral and under) to get color accuracy & vibrancy, shadow & highlight detail and depth of field that you can compare and make the most dynamic selection.

Checklist

Here are some quick things to remember, sort of a checklist, for macro photography:
1. Simplify your image as much as possible.
2. Fill as much of the frame as possible with your subject.
3. Over-compensate for sharp focus.
4. Experiment with various angles to find the most aesthetically pleasing.
5. Be very aware of the background (which will be out of focus) and eliminate anything that will be distracting.
Macro photographs show you details of the world that are more often than not overlooked, because even the simplest subject can seem more than important and poignant when its surface details are being examined at such a high magnification. Remember, by looking closer – borrowing a phrase from American Beauty — you’ll see that you have a whole new array of subjects to photograph

20 Free And Useful Tools For Photographers

2011-01-19T16:15:00.001-05:00

20 Free And Useful Tools For Photographers is written by AdvancedPhotography.Net photography tips.

Photography is not only about taking the photographs. It is about making the photographs. While the purists believe in making good photographs with their cameras, the professional photographers are experts at photo editors, manipulating & retouching tools and follow marketing strategies to make the most from photography. Here’s a collection of free and useful tools for photographers, ranging from simple photo editors, organizers and showcase galleries to advanced marketing tools.

Photo Editing Tools

§ GIMP: GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is open source and free image editor released under GPL license. It enables you to retouch the photographs and provide features for eliminating or correcting len’s barrel distortion and vignetting effects. It supports all the platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux) and file formats ranging from commonly used file-formats (JPEG, PNG, TIFF, PSD) to special use formats like .ico used for creating icons.

Picnik: Picnik is an online photo-editor powered by Google. Picnik has a collaboration and integration with Picasa, Flickr, Facebook and Photobucket; so that you can directly pick the photos from these websites and simply start giving the finishing touch to your photographs. Picnik offers simple and easy way to make the photographs presentable by providing features for adding special effects, using advanced controls and fixing the photos with just one-click.

§ Pixlr: Pixlr is one of the most popular and advanced online photo editor. It offers various services for varying level of photographers. While beginners can opt Pixlr Express to make perfect pictures in a single click, the professional photographers can fine-tune the photographs by taking the control of Pixlr Editor like a pro.

§ Splash Up: Splash Up is an online photo-editing cum photo-managing tool. It enables you to edit multiple images at a time. It has all the bells & whistles of the professional photo-editor and simplifies photo-editing for a beginner, both at the same time. Its compatibility with majority of browsers and integration with social-sharing sites, make it one of the most outstanding online tool for photographers.

§ Pixelmator: Pixelmator is a photo-editing download utility for Mac users. It fulfills all the requirements of a basic photo-editor and provides some creative tools to further enhance the photographs. Its set of creative tools provide a collection of brushes, powerful color correcting tools, gradient tools, etc. It supports over 100 file types and allows you to easily import & export the files. Also, its integration with Aperture and social media sites make this tool suitable for online sharing as well.

Flickr: Flickr is the best solution for uploading, organizing, sharing and editing the images online. Flickr provides the platform for showcasing the works of amateur and professional photographers. Flickr organizes the images into various photostreams and group pools. Flickr also provides the copyright solution to the photographers by providing them the feature of licensing their photographs either under Creative Commons License (with various clause and specifications) or as copyright material.

§ Picasa: Picasa is Google’s initiative to provide a basic photo sharing tool with ease of creating web albums and sharing them over the internet. Picasa also features a very basic and hassles free photo-editor but instantly make subtle changes to the photographs. It also provides the facility of creating photo collage and photo movie. Picasa can be effectively used by the photographers to organize the photos and share the required albums with their clients.

§ Photoshop.com: Photoshop.com is an online product from Adobe. Photoshop.com is a multi-purpose tool; it enables you to easily edit the images with the help of highly efficient online tools (Photoshop Express Editor & Photoshop Express Style Match) and provides an organizer for keeping all your photos at a safe place for online sharing.

§ SmugMug: SmugMug is a multi-purpose photo sharing tool. It allows you to take benefit of online storage, social sharing and ordering the prints. Apart from these services, SmugMug provides you the platform for selling the images.

§ Shutterfly: Shutterfly is one of the renowned name for online photo storage. While it provides other services which are offered as premium services, its online storage and sharing services are free of cost.

Free Image Hosting

§ Photobucket: Photobucket is an image hosting and sharing site designed for photographers to simplify the process of organizing and keeping the images safe & readily available online. It is multi-feature site. Apart from the basic feature of hosting the photos, it also makes sharing easier. It enables you to share the photographs over social networking sites and enables the photographers to benefit from social media marketing. It also provides a feature-rich editor, slideshow application and flexibility of access through mobile apps.

§ ImageShack: ImageShack is a media hosting site which offers multiple tools for hosting the images. Sign up for free and start uploading the images from anywhere; from the browser (through Image Shack toolbar and sidebar) and from mobile phone (through various apps for iPhone, Android and Blackberry). It supports all the platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux) and also provides a Bulk Uploader for uploading multiple images.

§ TinyPic: TinyPic is yet another option for image hosting websites. It is Photobucket’s initiative to provide a registration-free uploading service. TinyPic enables you to easily upload, link, and share your images and videos on MySpace, eBay, Orkut Scrapbooks, blogs, and message boards.

Free Photo Marketing Tools

PicsEngine: An artist gets recognition by showcasing his piece of arts. Online marketing is one such tool which enables the professional photographers to showcase their work to the clients and general audience. PicsEngine is one of the best ways of doing this. It enables you to showcase the photo galleries; which acts as the photographer’s portfolio. You can either create an account with Picsengine to create fully-host galleries without installing anything or you can download its flash version to create self-hosted photo galleries.

§ iStockPhoto: iStockPhoto makes it easy for photographers to sell their photographs to advertisers, web designers, entrepreneurs and bloggers. It is an online exhibition cum sale platform; where the photographers offer their best works (the photographs) for sale at proces which anyone can afford. Getting started with iStockPhoto is fairly simple and three steps away; register for free, become a contributor and provide 3 sample photographs. If your photographs are approved by the moderators, you can upload multiple photographs and offer them for sale.

§ Wix.com: Wix gets you involved in becoming a website creator along with the photographer. Wix is a free website editor which allows you to create your own photography portfolio website free of cost. You need to simply choose a template for creating a website, click edit to drag & drop the items and get started by uploading your photographs for managing online portfolio for yourself.

Miscellaneous Free And Online Tools

§ Watermark.ws: Watermarking is one of the best (and cost-free) solution for establishing copyright for your photographs when published over internet. Watermark.ws is an online tool for watermarking the photographs to thus prevent misuse of the photographs. Just upload the images you want to watermark, customize the watermark style (by specifying the type, color and position) and batch process the images to get instant results. It supports various file formats (jpg, png, tiff, gif, bmp) used for web and devices and poses no limits on number of uploads.

§ Watermark Tool:The other option for protecting your images through watermarking is to use the Watermark Tool. This tool enables you to personalize the images by watermarking the images with selected text, color and position. It allows you to upload upto 10 images at a time, file size not exceeding 200 KB per image.

§ ImageMagick: ImageMagick is basically an image editor designed to work on multiple platforms. It is a software suite to create, edit, compose, or convert bitmap images. ImageMagick is free, open source and command line (supporting a variety of file types) utility for editing the images.

10 Inspirational Photography Quotes

2011-01-17T13:28:00.000-05:00

Photography is a creative art, which nourishes with each photograph that you click. While some photographers understand photography as a medium of communication, presentation of reality, others describe the photography in terms of expression. Here are 10 photography quotes from some of the renowned photographers, all establishing the fact that photography is all about creativity and imagination.

1. Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution.— Ansel Adams

2. I see something special and show it to the camera. The moment is held until someone sees it. Then it is theirs.— Sam Abell

3. Light glorifies everything. It transforms and ennobles the most commonplace and ordinary subjects. The object is nothing, light is everything.— Leonard Missone

4. If you are out there shooting, things will happen for you. If you’re not out there, you’ll only hear about it.
— Jay Maisel

5. Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera.— Yousuf Karsh

6. Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper… the photographer begins with the finished product.— Edward Steichen

7. Sometimes I do get to places just when God’s ready to have somebody click the shutter.— Ansel Adams

8. Which of the photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.— Imogen Cunningham

9. The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.— Dorothea Lange

10. A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.— Ansel Adams

10 Inspirational Photography Quotes is written by AdvancedPhotography.Net photography tips

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com

Joey Votto signs a three year Deal with the Cincinnati Reds

2011-01-16T13:24:00.000-05:00

Cincinnati Reds Joey Votto by Vincent Rush and Cincinnati Sports Photography

Mark Sheldon, MLB.COM

This just in -- the Reds and Joey Votto have agreed to terms Sunday on a three-year, $38 million contract with 1B Joey Votto, baseball sources told MLB.com. This is pending a physical, which is scheduled for Monday.

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com

11 Tips on How To Get Razor-Sharp Photographs

2011-01-15T10:50:00.000-05:00

Sharpness in the photographs tends to elude even the most seasoned photographers. That’s because sharpness is a perception; and that it is affected by many factors adds to the confusion. Also, note that sharpness and focus are different entities — an image can be in focus yet not sharp. Sharpness is controlled by many factors and at many stages of the photography work-flow. Basically it’s a product of the following:

Equipment, Settings, Technique, Post-Production

Thus here are some tips for getting sharp images.

Quality Of Lens: The quality of the lens can be the most defining factor for sharpness. Though in this age almost all DSLR lenses have excellent optics, some of the lenses manufactured by third-parties may not be have such good optical characteristics. The lens characteristics can introduce color fringing, linear distortion, coma, spherical aberration, falloff, and an endless list of scary photo-jargon. Also prime (fixed focal length) lenses tend to be better than general purpose zoom lenses which pose engineering challenges for the manufacturers.

Camera Quality: Cameras of the same grade don’t have a huge difference in image quality. But when you consider the differences between a compact, prosumer, DSLR and a full-format, the sharpness “and” the image-quality with be considerably different.

Poor Filters: Filters often tend to be the bottleneck as far as optics are concerned. A cheap filter fitted over costly optics can be as destructive as a cheap camera, a cheap lens or a combination of both. Invest in high quality filters.

Clean Optics: And while we are talking about lenses and filters, make sure that you have a handy kit to clean the front most glass/filter as and when you require. Here’s a short tutorial on lens cleaning tips and tools.

Small Aperture: The sharpness characteristics of every lens varies by the aperture and generally deprecates at both extremes. While you can do some experiments and tests to figure the sharpness at both ends, generally every good lens has acceptable sharpness through out it’s aperture. Very small apertures, introduce chromatic aberration which kills the sharpness in the picture.

Proper Focus: If the scene itself is not in focus, it will result in a blurry image no matter how good the optics are. So make sure that the scene is focus when you shoot. Also moving subjects can trick the camera to focus on unwanted points in the frame. So make sure you have continuous auto-focus turned on for moving subjects.

ISO: Shooting on high ISOs can introduce color noise in the result which even through post-processing doesn’t allow the recovery of sharpness. Details in a scene are resolved through the optics and the sensor but are lost due to the noise introduced by high ISO levels.

Camera Shake: Camera shake introduces motion blur even on properly focused subjects. And it tends to get worse as the focal length increases — the zoom levels amplify the camera shake too. A good vibration reduction (image stabilization) can take care of this in general conditions.

Mirror Lockup: Mirror Lockup feature lifts up the mirror (present in front of the camera sensor) a fraction of a second before the exposure is to be made. This eliminates motion blur occurring due to the shake caused by the mirror movement.

Tripod: When on shaky grounds, place the camera on a tripod. This comes in very handy for shots that require slow shutter-speed. Tripod is the most effective equipment to reduce motion-blur.

Remote Trigger: Alternatively, in the absence of a tripod place the camera on a stable surface and use a timer or remote trigger to take the shot.

Shutter Speed: A high shutter speed freezes motion. Also shooting at high shutter-speed takes care of the camera shake. So employ this technique to cover up for motion artifacts.

Capture Sharpness (in camera): The period when the camera makes and exposure and collects the image data to the sensor and saves it on to the memory is roughly referred to as the capture phase. Almost all digital cameras are bugged by Bayer Interpolation which kills sharpness. Shooting film is one workaround; some DSLRs featuring Fevon sensors don’t rely on Bayer Interpolation to resolve the image. During the capture phase, the image is captured in three distinct color components viz. red, green and blue. The Bayer filter (the one built into the digital cameras) does this by collecting these three color components at three different physical points whereas the Faevon sensor does this by collecting these color components in three different step albeit from the same physical point.To cut the long story short, shooting RAW avoids interpolation until the image is opened using the RAW software. This allows finer control over sharpness (and maybe improved algorithms depending on the software version). When shooting JPG, this is done in camera, and thus if your sharpness setting is low, details lost can never be recovered but only simulated.

Post Processing: Now that all has been accounted for, and you zoom the image to 100% only to find it still unsharp, don’t lose heart. All images require some final touches including some sharpness adjustments. Also referred to as output sharpening, this relies on applying some finishing touches to boost or enhance the sharpness effect. All those sharp images you see in the magazines and adverts elsewhere are post-processes almost always. So, launch your image-editor and fine-tune the sharpness to your liking, keeping in mind to avoid over-sharpening.

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com

Forget Resolution and ISO

2011-01-14T03:29:00.000-05:00

Resolution and ISO are silly numbers used to try to sell you more expensive cameras.

Resolution, expressed in megapixels, is no longer relevant. Forget it when comparing cameras. I've made great 12 x 18" (30x45cm) prints from a 3MP camera and 40x60" (100x 150cm) prints from a 6MP camera. 6 Megapixels is all anyone needs for anything, and every camera here has two or three times that.
Resolution is nothing more than a sales pitch to get you to pay more.

Now that every camera has double-digit megapixels, camera makers invented another meaningless number they can use to extract more cash from the innocent, called ISO.
ISO is a rough measure of sensitivity to low light. It only matters if you shoot in the dark, and then shoot without flash. As soon as your flash pops up, the higher ISOs aren't used anyway. Even if you learn how to use the higher ISO settings of your camera (few people do), there isn't much difference between cameras of the same type and era, regardless of cost. All the higher ISO settings do is make the picture look grainier, and the cameras that sport the highest ISO settings look horrible at those settings!

This said, DSLRs are a zillion times better in the dark than point-and shoots, and the newest point-and-shoots like the Canon S95 are superb for use at night without flash as well.

Don't buy a camera because a salesman tries to smoke you with gibberish like megapixels or ISOs. They have nothing more to do with a camera's quality than the number of spot-welds used to assemble your car
These things are easy to measure, which is irrelevant because the factors that really matter don't have numbers attached to them.

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com

Tips for shooting action shots with a digital camera

2011-01-13T02:27:00.001-05:00

Pudge Rodriguez in 2009, with the New York Yankees by Vinent Rush

Do you find it a problem to shoot great sports action shots? Whether you are shooting pictures of a soccer match, Major League Baseball, or a fast moving car, you may find it a great challenge to produce nice sports pictures of these subjects. In fact, the first thing you’ll realize is that "Point and Shoot" digital Cameras are bad for action shots. That is why first time users, new to digital photography often gripe about how lousy their action shots turn out.

This article will give you some tips for Sports Photography and shooting action shots with a digital camera. Apply these tips and I’m sure you have a better chance of getting a nice action shot.

1. Shutter Lag

One of the major reasons why a "Point and Shoot" digital camera cannot shoot nice action photography is due to shutter lag. On many digital cameras, when you press the shutter button, it may take an entire second before the photo is taken. A traditional, analogue 35mm camera can take the picture within 50 milliseconds. There is a world of difference between 1 second and 50 milliseconds.

What this means is that you need to compensate for shutter lag when shooting action shots. Give extra time when framing your shot, so that when you depress the shutter button, the photo will get taken at precisely the right time. Another option, of course, if to get a higher end camera which offers less shutter lag like a DLSR, Nikon D7000 or better.

2. Take Control Shots

Another factor influencing action photography is the shutter speed of your camera. If your camera allows a very fast shutter speed (say up to 1/8000 of a second), you can easily capture fast motion. If it only supports a slower shutter speed (say 1/640 of a second), then you won’t be able to capture such fast motion. One way to capture motion with a slow shutter speed is to use the panning technique. When you next shoot a fast action shot, try following through with the subject. Track the subject, shoot the picture, then continue moving the camera. If you practise long enough, you’ll be able to get a sharp subject with a blurred background – which is a nice effect. Try to keep depth of field in mind as well. The higher the shutter speed, the shallower the depth. When I am shooting sports photography, I like to try to keep my depth of field at 4.5-5.6. This gives me much sharper images. I rarely shoot higher than 1/1600th of a second.

3. Camera Write Times

The write time of the camera is also important when shooting action shots. Some cameras will chug away to store a picture in memory each time you press the shutter button. This, of course, is terrible for capturing action. One way around this is to ensure that your camera supports continuous shots. This way, the camera takes a fixed number of shots, before writing them all to memory at once.
Conclusion

We all know action photography is exciting and very interesting if the pictures are taken well. However, action shots pose a great challenge, especially to novice photographers. Do keep the above tips in mind the next time you take such shots, and I’m sure your results will be better.

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com

Travel Photography — Are You Really Making The Most Out Of It?

2011-01-12T00:02:00.000-05:00

Polaris Snowmobile Action Photography in West Yellowstone by Vincent Rush

Taking pictures while you travel can be a memorable experience. As time goes by, the memories of the trip fade but the pictures keep few memories alive forever. You can make these memorable moments better if you prepare well in advance for one important part of your trip: that is photography. What do you need to keep in mind?

Getting the right photography gear

Camera: A photographer on the go needs to be very careful about his/ her gear. Make sure you carry digital SLRs and Digital cameras. Avoid film cameras as many of my friends got their films spoiled during screening at the airport. If you are carrying a DSLR camera, make sure you also carry a compact digital camera with you. You will realize during the trip that you can’t take your bulky DLSR everywhere. Compact Digital camera comes in handy in such places and keeps those wonderful moments alive in your memories.

Lens: Make sure you carry a less bulky, normal use lens (like 18-55mm) for the normal trip. You may also like to carry one zoom lens (like 100-400mm) if in case you need it. I would recommend you carry something like a sigma 18-200mm lens or a 24-105L lens which will give you a good range in a single lens and will reduce the need of carrying two lenses which increases your baggage.

Batteries: This is one key element which can ruin your travel photography. Make sure you have fully charged batteries. Also, keep backup batteries for all the equipment you are carrying. You may also want to carry proper charging equipments to charge the batteries whenever you need.

Tripod: You may want to carry a good quality tripod, may be not very bulky but sturdy enough to hold your camera against wind. Don’t forget you have invested good amount of money in your camera. Tripod also comes in handy if you want to use the self-timer for a memorable group picture.

Weather: You must have checked the weather reports of the place you are going to. Did you actually think how weather can actually pose a problem in your photography? Make sure you carry water proof casing and the right bags for the equipments to keep them safe from any such situations.

Photographing people and places

When you travel you often meet people form different cultures and speaking different languages. It’s always a good experience and you would definitely want to capture such moments to remember for a long time. There are a few things you need to remember while capturing people and their personal places. Let’s have a look:

Security: With the news reports of tourists being attacked and other such stuff, make sure you do not carry expensive equipments in isolated places. You may not want someone to take your priced camera and lens from you. Also, take care of the local security norms. Do not carry or use equipments where photography is prohibited.

Cultural Issues: Check out the local customs. There are places where photographing other people can be a real problem especially women. In certain parts of the world taking pictures of women can land you in great trouble.

Capture environment: This is the interesting and the positive part. When traveling make sure you take landscape picture, long shots, aerial shots and with great DOF. Why? Well, capturing one person or small area will not give you the right feel of the environment you are experiencing. You can always debate on this. But such pictures will always remind you of the feel you had in such places and what you experienced.

Capturing people: Capture people in action when they are not aware of your presence. Is it contradicting from my previous point? Well, if you have checked the local customs you will know how much risk you can take. But make sure you walk up to the person and explain why you took that picture without their notice because you wanted it to come natural.

Document your trip

Make sure you keep a note of the all the places you visited and what picture was taken in what circumstances. You’ll want to thank me later.

So, pack your bags and get going… Do put down your experiences to share when you come back…

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com

9 Tips — How To Shoot Against The Sun

2011-01-09T21:30:00.000-05:00

Camden, Ohio Back Roads by Vincent Rush

Shooting into the light has always been a challenging task. Whenever we capture any subject against the light.It shows up dark (high contrast) and when we shoot portraits, it gives the squint factor. There are 9 tips to alleviate some of the issues while shooting into the light.

Safety comes first: Practice caution when shooting into the sun since the sun can burn your camera sensor and/or cause eye-damage if allowed through the lens for long durations (more than a few seconds).

Use a small aperture: A small aperture reduce the size of light source and helps avoid blowing the highlights. A small aperture gives you the starlight effect which shows up beautifully against the subject.

Use Sun Flares: While sun flares are avoided most of the times, creative use of sun flares can render a dreamy look to the entire scene especially the portraits.

Strong artificial light: A smaller aperture necessitates the use of extra lights. This helps compensate for the low light, to control the shadows and also to reduce the contrast in the entire scene.

Shoot in the magic light: It is always recommended to shoot in the soft, angular light of the sunrise or sunset rather than the harsh, bright light of the afternoon sun. Also shooting during the main part of the day can pose limitations to the composition and perspective since the sun is high up in the sky. Magic light (when sunrise /sunset) is one of the best time to shoot against the sun.

Use of GND filter: Use a GND (Graduated Neutral Density) filter which allows you to tone down brighter areas of the composition and help balance the overall light in the scene.

Use of Light Meter: The old adage “prevention is better than cure” fits this scenario. You can’t compensate or correct bad light during post-processing. So measure and correct the light during the shoot.

Use of Reflector: Use a reflector to avoid underexposing the main subject and reflect some light on the face of the subject to control the shadows.

Post-processing: Last but not the least, feel free to toy around with the image during the post-production to fine-tune the desired effect. With the new image editors the possibilities are countless.

SEO Tips for Photographers

2011-01-05T22:27:00.001-05:00

A Rod goes deep against Detroit by Cincinnati Sports Photographer Vincent Rush

Looking to boost your Google juice? Today’s guest blogger is Bill Nixon, the founder and principle of Smart Cabbage SEO for Photographers, a search engine optimization firm specializing in helping small businesses get ranked in the organic search results of Google, Yahoo and Bing. He gives all aspiring photographers an in-depth look at how to get your site noticed so clients can find you.

How to make the biggest impact on your website’s search engine rankings

You wake up on a Tuesday morning and open your email. The typical stuff is there. One company is having a sale, your airline miles statement has arrived and there’s that newsletter that you never read.

Oh but what’s this? There are two other emails that are unread. Last night while you slept, two potential clients contacted you through your website contact form. Two people searched for a photographer in your city, found your site, liked what they saw and contacted you. Does this happen to you yet? If not, read on….

Did you know that in every mid-sized to large city in the US, there are thousands of monthly searches for photographers? Put yourself in the searcher’s shoes. If you were looking for a photographer in your area, you would probably search for something like “Atlanta Photographers,” for example.

Using the Google Keyword Tool, we can figure out that there are almost 10,000 people each month that search for the term “Atlanta Photographers.” How many of those 10,000 people saw your website in the number one, two or three position? If you aren’t ranked in the top three then the answer is none of them.
We know from our research that if 10,000 people search for something, 5,000 will click on the website in position number one, 3,000 will click on the site in position number two, and 2,000 will click on the site in position number three. We also know that we will average somewhere between .05% – 1% rate of response. Thus, if we are in position number one for that search term, then we will receive about 25-50 monthly contact forms because of our ranking.
Without getting into closing ratios, let’s just say that it helps a lot to have 25-50 people contacting you each and every month asking for your services.
Two factors of SEO – On-site SEO & Off-site SEO

Search Engine Optimization is broken into two categories: on-site SEO and off-site SEO. On-site SEO is what you do on your website to optimize the chances that you get indexed by the search engines. Here is a quick run-down of the things you can do on SmugMug to increase your on-site SEO.

•Homepage meta description and meta keywords – Find these in your Control Panel’s Settings tab on the Search Engine line. This will show up in various ways in your search engine listings.

•Name/Keyword your galleries – If you want to increase your rankings for “Cincinnati Photographers” or Dayton Photographers" for example, you would need to put that exact keyword phrase in your title, description and keyword boxes on SmugMug.
•Caption your images – Each image has the ability to add a caption. This caption, combined with the keywords, title and description above will be picked up by Google in their search engines.

•Add Google Analytics – You can’t know how your SEO efforts are doing unless you are able to track your results. Google Analytics allows you to track your results. You can add your Analytics ID in the “Settings” section on your SmugMug control panel. You can find more information in the SmugMug help files here.

Off-site factors make more impact than on-site factors

Off-site factors of SEO make a way bigger impact on your rankings than any of your on-site work. Both are important, but a full 95% of your ranking increases will be because of off-site factors.

What are off-site factors?

Without getting too deep in the history of search engine rankings and how they have evolved over the past ten years, off-site factors gained their strength due to the high amounts of Search Engine SPAM that occurred to try and game the system.
Unscrupulous website owners would stuff keywords into their sites, make keywords the same color as the background of their site or make them in a 1pt. font size to try to hide them from humans and meet the search engines’ algorithm.
The search engines got wise to their tricks and figured out a way to get accurate and relevant results with off-site factors.
What are “off-site” factors?

Off-site factors are quite simply the links that point back to your website from other websites, the theme relevancy and the quality of those links. Now, don’t stop reading here and go out searching for a link building company. You may find one, but you will never be successful without the right linking campaign.

Links can be broken up into five different categories: voting, reciprocal, blog, content, authority. These may not be “official” categories but they are the categories we use when we are creating linking campaigns for our clients.
Each has its place in an SEO campaign, but some inbound links are much more effective than others in boosting your rankings.
Here is a breakdown of the different types of links that can point to your site.

•Voting Links: These are links from directories or other sites that carry a very low Google Page Rank. If a page contains more than 25-30 outbound links, that page will have very, very little effect on your search engine rankings. (if any) However, they are important in creating a theme-base for your site.

•Reciprocal Links: This is when you place a link from your site to another site in exchange for a link from their site to yours. These links also have very little effect on your search engine rankings, but are similar to “voting links” above in that they can create theme relevancy for your website.

•Blog Links: Blog links come from leaving relevant comments on others’ blogs. The link can be attached to your name as the blog commenter or in the footer of your comment as an html link. In either case, I am not advocating going out and spamming blogs in the hope that you will get links back to your site, but I am saying that if you have something relevant and important as a response, then you can certainly build links back to your site in this way.

•Content Links: Content links happen when other website owners write about you and link to your site. These are the most natural of the link building efforts and certainly have the largest potential to increase your search engine rankings. These also pose one of the biggest challenges to photographers as they don’t know how to get others to write about them. The best way to get content links is to get published on the myriad of blogs on the web that write specifically about photographers and events. Seeking to get published for your work is the single best way to obtain content links. If you are a wedding photographer, for example, a simple search for “wedding blogs” on Google will reveal hundreds of sites where you could submit your work for consideration. (It will also reveal one of our clients in the top five of Google for the search “wedding blogs”)

•Authority Links: In a way, these are “high-powered” content links. Authority links typically come from the highest ranking sites in your category, sites that end in “edu” and high-powered non-profit sites. Getting links from these sites will have the biggest impact on your rankings possible they are also the hardest to obtain.

A quick way to get a ranking boost

Here is a quick way to get a ranking boost on the search engines. Do a search for the keyword phrase(s) that most line up with the ranking campaign you are trying to win for. For example, if you are a photographer in Dayton Ohio, then you might want to win for these three terms:

•Dayton photographers

•Dayton wedding photographer

•photographer in Dayton

Perform a search for each of these terms and create a spreadsheet of the top 10 results from each search. This will bring up 30 different sites.

Visit each of those sites and see if it would be possible to get a link from each one. If they are directory sites, see what it takes to get listed. If they are individually owned photography sites, then see if you can make relevant blog comments on a post or two (no SPAM!)

If you can get links from these sites, then your rankings will increase. As always, I recommend knowing were you rank PRIOR to engaging in this type of campaign so that you can track your progress.

Re-Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com

Master The Art Of Action Photography In 8 Easy Steps

2011-01-02T01:20:00.001-05:00

Photo shot in West Yellowstone Montana by Sports Action Photographer Vincent Rush of Monroe, Ohio

Carry the right equipment: If you can, carry a wide range zoom lens which will help you in framing your subject.

Use the correct Settings: Set the camera to programmed mode or shutter priority mode. In order to freeze action you will want to be able to choose the shutter speed. 1/250 sec is a good estimate to start with.

Use the right Techniques: There’s more than just freezing the subject. Panning is a wonderful technique which exhibits your expertise as a professional photographer.

Anticipate: Be prepared and anticipate the moment. The more you shoot, the better you’ll get at it. Some of the most spectacular moments are captured only because the photographer used the shutter at the right moment.

Shooting mode: The camera by default shoots one frame every press of the shutter. You may want to set it to shoot in the continuous mode so that it keeps clicking while you keep the shutter release pressed. This way you’ll be able to take more the one shot for the action you want to capture. In the end you’ll always be able to pick the better of those.

Image Format: Shoot in fine JPEG. RAW format creates huge files. This means your card will fill sooner than you expect in the continuous mode. Secondly it also tends to slow down the frame rate because he camera buffer is still occupied before the camera can take the next shot.

Focus Mode: Set the camera to use continuous focus. You may have to dig into the menus to get to this setting. Normally the camera focuses only once when you press the shutter release button halfway. When you use continuous focus and hold down the shutter release button halfway and follow that running guy, the camera will continuously keep the moving subject in focus. Comes in very handy if the subject is changing the distance from the camera (like running towards or away from you).

Action in the Night: Lighting conditions are challenging in the night. Use the high ISO setting. Firing the flash will make sure that the subject is lit only for a fraction of a second even though the shutter speed may be low. This will eventually freeze the subject to a considerable extent since the subject was lit only for a brief moment.

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com

Spring Valley Academy's Andrea Hoover

2010-12-31T03:48:00.000-05:00

Andrea Hoover of Spring Valley Academy drives to the hoop against Dayton Dunbar on December 30th in Cincinnati at the 2010 Braggin Rights Classic

Hoover will be playing for the Dayton Flyers in 2011.

Photo by Vincent Rush of Cincinnati Sports Photography

Celina King

2010-12-29T16:43:00.000-05:00

Photo by Vincent Rush

Pictured is 12 year old basketball phenom, Celina King, playing at the 2010 Braggin Rights invitational tournament in Cincinnati Ohio.

Celina, at 12 years of age starts as a shooting guard for the Varsity High school women's basketball team, Spring Valley Academy.

Portrait Photography; Tips 6-10

2010-12-28T00:02:00.000-05:00

Portrait Lens

Portrait lens is a prime lens (fixed focus-length lens), which trades off between the geometrical distortions caused by wide angle and vignetting effect of telephoto lenses. Portrait lenses are normal lenses having a focal-length between 85mm to 105mm, appropriate for portraits. Most often a zoom lens in this focal-length range can be used as portrait lenses. This focal-length allows the flexibility of maintaining distance from the subject and while keeping the geometrical errors out of the scene when zooming. Portrait lenses generally have a wide aperture which helps in blurring the background and creating the bokeh effect to the advantage of portraits. Along with the portrait lens you must also consider investing in soft focus filters. It is a special kind of filter which reduces and softens the facial details like the unflattering textures and blemishes etc. to soften the overall photograph.

Composition — Framing Portraits Appropriately

Composition is the key to interesting and unique photographs. Framing the portrait right in the center of the photograph often makes the image dull and flat. Placing the subject in golden ratio or according to the rule of thirds compliments the frame aesthetically. It naturally draws the human eye to the subject. When shooting portraits filling the frame with facial expressions. Experiment with close-ups too. Apart from this the backgrounds and surroundings also play an important role in aesthetically complimenting the frames. They add a context to the visual story of the character. While clear and focused backgrounds on one hand add a context to the portrait (and at times compliment the personality), the blurred background induces the dreamy bokeh effect. Photography is a lot about experimenting with unusual and creative compositions. Framing the same concept by varying the angle of shooting helps in portraying third dimension onto the photographic plane.

An Element Of Interest Makes Portraits Visually Appealing

Portraits can effectively benefit from interesting elements like some action, movement or interesting formation. The smoke out of a cigarette held by the subject, or the movement of the hand or perhaps the subject captured amid a phone conversation not only affect and create a mood, they also add a dynamic element of activity and interest. This is the edge some portraits have which makes them professional and outstanding.

Create A Mood In Portraits

The context and the surroundings help set a mood of the photograph. For example, including dark backgrounds in context of a portrait heightens the seriousness of character in the composition and highlighting the eyes can heighten the emotion. Creating moods in the photograph depends on the overall lighting and the ambiance of the scene. The inclusion of elements like fog, snow, clouds, fire, etc also help in creating mood which goes a long way in making the photograph interesting and draws the viewers attention.

Digital Re-touching — The Final Step In Portrait Photography

To add the final professional touches to the work some amount of post-processing is required. Make subtle changes, like enhancing the complexion, eliminating dark circles or blemishes, correcting the red-eye and so on. Try to avoid manipulating the image and making too many changes. Work on giving it a professional finish.

Remember, portraits portray a person, their personality, character, style, surrounding, culture, mood and tradition. Some of the best portraits are shot with the subjects in the context of their natural surroundings. A good portrait does not only reflect and represent the actual person but also portrays your art and creativity as a photographer.

Posted by Monroe Ohio photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com

Portrait Photography; Tips 1-5

2010-12-27T00:27:00.000-05:00

Portrait photography is perhaps the most common form of photography practiced. Portraits are about people and representing their personality in the photographs. Portraits form one of the most prominent subject in any field of arts; it serves the purpose of communicating cultures, traditions, events and celebrations. Learning to photograph people is a great experience. Getting started with friends & family can help you eventually turn into a great professional portrait photographer. Portrait photography is just about tapping into the opportunities, discovering and implementing the right techniques. Visualize the people around you through your camera lens and capture their personality and character onto the photographic frame.
Types of Portraits

Portrait photography is an agreement between the subject and the photographer; to portray the subject’s identity on the photographic plane (in a pre-decided manner). Portrait photography is the medium of portraying expressions, personality traits, culture, traditions, moods and character of individuals. Portrait photography can be classified under various categories depending on what is to be portrayed, conveyed and the personal expression and creativity of a photographer. Head-shots are perfect for capturing expressions and you can opt for head and shoulders shot when you want to portray the personality traits of people. Portrait photography is all about posing people to reflect their social status, authority, physical attractiveness or personality.

What To Shoot (When Shooting Portraits)

Portrait photography offers ample of opportunities and poses. You can opt for either directing the poses or going in for unposed and candid shots. The professional portrait photographers have to go by the words of their subject. They have to portray the subject as requested by the client; the opportunities in this case are very few. For a freelancer portrait photographer, imagination is the limit. Considering portraits as the subject, you can choose to portray the people in variety of poses, each conveying a distinct mood. Focus on the eyes to highlight the expressions, zoom-in and get close-ups to portray the physical attractiveness, go for unposed and candid shots for naturally aesthetic images, experiment with high shutter speed and capture the movement and activity of people around you or simply frame the contextual shots. Photographing people in the context of their environment, speaks about their personality more profoundly

Establish Rapport With Your Subject

One of the most critical issue with portrait photography is to get hold of natural looking poses that represent what a person or subject is. The essence of great portraits lies in capturing shots which represent the individual character of the subject accurately yet creatively. As such there’s a lot of scope for the talent of the photographer to fill this gap. Portraits look great in natural and comfortable poses, but the human consciousness comes in the way of making great photographs. Just make your subject feel at ease with you and your instructions. Be friendly and informal with your subject and start the session with some practice shots. Some of the excellent portraits are captured with the person in context of his surroundings or workplace. These two attributes characterize the person by forming a part of their personality.

Lights — To Portray The Character Of Portrait

The lights play an important role in getting the right mood and setting up the tone of the shot (as in expression). Use soft and diffused light to get a … look. When portraying personality attributes hard light may be used creatively to highlight these characteristics. Light falling from a steep angle will tend to bring out the texture in the facial features like old-age wrinkles etc. While soft light tones down the facial details thereby presenting a more pleasing visual. Portrait photography shows up the best results with studio set-up of lights — studios allow you an excellent level of control over light and its characteristics. On the other hand consider shooting in shade when shooting outdoors.

Camera settings For Portrait Photography

The most important of all, its time to set your equipment to appropriate settings to get the optimum output. While putting your camera to auto-mode is a good start for beginners, consider tuning the camera settings for a better control over equipment to get much better result in the final shot.

Camera Modes: The modern day DSLRs offer various modes; each best suited for a specific purpose. While shooting in auto mode is the perfect choice for beginners, you can always put your camera to manual mode and tune the camera to your preferences. Portrait photography is largely concerned with portraying soft and subtle effects, therefore you can consider the following modes to make a mark with portraits.

Portrait Mode: Setting your camera to the portrait mode automatically sets the contrast curves to low contrast which are appropriate for portraits. In this mode the camera sets the other details like the saturation levels, sharpening etc. The portrait mode thus is pretty intelligent and reliable to begin with. The flash pops-out automatically and you are ready to pay attention to the composition.

Aperture Priority: If you are looking to greater control and want to tune up for the finer nuances in the shot, you may want to use the aperture priority mode. This allows you to override the flash and flash settings and let’s you control the depth-of-field in the scene.

Black And White Mode: Black and white can give you a classy timeless effect with portraits. However, with digital a lot of things have changed. Today the best black and white shots are converted from color during post-processing. This has a two-fold advantage: you get a color shot and a high flexibility to apply filters, channel mixing during black and white converting on post-processing. So, leave the black and white for later. Quick Tip: Shooting in RAW let’s you shoot in black and white but also allows you to change this to a color mode with the RAW converter.

Zoom-In: Portraits is all about capturing the expressions and the expressions are profound in close-up photographs. I prefer tight crops even at the cost of cropping out some part of the hair etc. This helps to portray the facial expression and features. However zooming out allows to include the dress and wearings which are a part of the subject’s personality. Zooming also allows you to recompose while being lazy to move back and forth to frame the subject. However zooming-out is not a substitute for being close to the subject. Being close to the subject will induce geometric distortions which are unflattering to the person’s physical features. That’s the reason portrait lenses start at a focal length of 50mm (bare-minimum) and above.

Posted by photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com

Why Your Camera Doesn’t Matter

2010-12-23T02:59:00.000-05:00

What makes a good photograph? Is it the photographer or his camera? It is almost like asking as to what makes a good painting or a good book. We all understand that an outstanding painting is the masterpiece of painter’s imagination and not his brushes. Similarly, a bestseller book is a result of writers own style of narration (and thought formation) and hardly depends on the paper, pen or typewriter.

In any field of arts, it is the talent of the artist which makes the difference. Just like a good painting is the outcome of painter’s own efforts and creativity; a good photograph is the result of photographer’s imagination. What contributes to a good photograph is not an expensive equipment but it is the photographer’s instinct, intuition, creativity, vision, imagination that make the difference.

The beginners and newbies waste a lot of time in running after expensive cameras and lenses and forget to focus on the integral element of photography — the technique. They get to realize the fact quiet late, that it is the artist that makes the masterpieces and not his tools and equipment. And during this process they often lose interest or get dis-heartened to see that they are not making great pictures.

There’s a particular process of turning reality into pictures — noticing the scene, visualizing the results, capturing them using the tools and showcasing them. A bottleneck in any of these stages will get you poor results. In the beginning the bottleneck is your experience (not your talent or creativity — a lot of which comes from experience). Once you are adept at understanding photography should it come to the camera. It is then when you may realize that under certain conditions your camera could perform differently or better or allow you more flexibility. And until then buying the greatest gear is all about giving in to your temptations — feels good to hold and all.

The primary purpose of photo-gear is to make the task simple for the photographers and learners. It in no way bestows interestingness (and attractiveness) to your captures, until you capture the shot with right technique. The basic element which go into making a mark with your photographs is your imagination.

Photography is the platform for showcasing your talent. Get hold of right technique, develop a creative vision and master your tools to get the desired results. Your understanding of photography concepts (that of exposure, aperture, shutter-speed, ISO, etc) and the way you interpret light makes the difference.

The attributes that set apart the photographs (as good) from the rest are good composition and lighting — none of which can be achieved even by the high-end cameras without the photographer. The camera does matter in making life easy for the photographer. It enables the photographer to easily shuffle between settings to achieve the required results. You can easily sift from aperture priority mode for attaining shallow DOF to shutter priority to capture movement and action. But then knowing the right thing at the right time does matter. What counts in photography is the knowledge of how to take and make photographs under varying circumstances.

It is the photographer, his technique and his knowledge that makes the masterpieces. Your camera can’t shoot great images if you as a photographer can’t envision the result and can’t command your camera to capture it too.

Posted by photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com

Duty, Honor, Country

2010-12-07T18:08:00.000-05:00

December 7th, The anniversary of Japan's Attack on Pearl Harbor

This is the actual coat of Rear Admiral Marsh

Posted by photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com

USA Today...

2010-12-06T19:13:00.000-05:00

Stadium to Stage

2010-11-28T21:25:00.000-05:00

Photo by Cincinnati Sports Photographer Vincent Rush

It wasn't the choicest of assignments for a sports photographer, covering the NFL draft. But there he was at the massive Jacob Javits Center in New York, and David Bergman had to come up with an idea.

"Most photographers stand in the pre-assigned position, they shoot a picture of the handshake and go home—I can't do that," said David, a New York sports and entertainment photographer whose images regularly appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated and other magazines.

"The first time I covered the draft I found a high angle to shoot from where you could see the green room, where the players were waiting with their families on one side, and the other players and the audience and all the excitement on the other sides. It ran as a two-page picture. Since then I've become SI's NFL draft photographer."

What's that about no good deed going unpunished?

"I feel like I have to get something new and different and unique every time," David said. "I take it upon myself to go the extra mile and make things just a little different."

David has worked hard to build a reputation as the guy who will come up with a shot that nobody else thought of.

"It's a big risk because you have to put yourself out there and maybe leave the safe position to get something different. Sometimes it doesn't work. But it's worth the risk because when you get the shot, it's a great feeling."

Case in point. David had been sent to University Park, Pa., by Sports Illustrated to cover a big game between Penn State and Notre Dame. David, the lone SI photographer, took plenty of action shots in the first quarter, then began to look around. What was different about this game?

"On a normal big game at Penn State, they do what they call a White Out. Normally it's just the student section—a big swath in the stadium that's all white."

But at this game, Bergman noticed, everyone was wearing white. "They called it the White House," he said.

"I realized that this could make an interesting picture. I left the field in the second quarter and went to the top of the stadium. I missed a lot of the game, but I was able to shoot the entire stadium, with everyone wearing white, just as the sun was setting."

It ran as a two-page spread in the next issue of Sports Illustrated. "I still get an email once every month from some Penn State fan somewhere in the country or in the world, wanting a copy of the picture." That's what Bergman likes to do and why he's in high demand.

"I like to show the scene. I like to show the setting. I like to give the viewer a feeling of place. It's not just a tight picture of the running back coming straight at me. It's the running back coming at me, and you can see the snow falling, and the stadium, and you get a sense of place."

Whether he's shooting the Nittany Lions at Penn State's Beaver Stadium, Avril Lavigne playing to a packed arena or an intimate portrait of, say, bassist Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy. Bergman's tool of choice is the Nikon D3. "It's my workhorse camera," he said. "It's built like a tank, and it's fast. I've shot in every kind of weather condition, from blizzards to monsoons."

Originally a music major, Bergman moves easily from the sports arena to the rock stage, shooting everyone from Ozzy Osbourne and Barenaked Ladies to Gloria Estefan and Seal. He shoots editorially for publications such as the British heavy-metal magazine Kerrang!, as well as commercially for the artists.

"Sports and music are alike in a lot of ways," Bergman said. "Specifically, concert photography and sporting events are very alike. There's an element of unpredictability. You have to deal with changing lighting. There's a limited space where things are going to happen, and you have no idea what's going to happen.
"The portraits, though, are a very different thing.

"I used to travel with four or five heavy cases of equipment just to do a single portrait. You'd have to bring an entire photo studio on the road." That was before Bergman discovered the compact, portable Nikon Speedlight system.

"That has really changed my life," he said. "I can get on the airplane with one rolling bag and one small sling bag with light stands, and I have an entire studio with me on the plane. I can travel with six Speedlights and do just about anything I could do with those four big heavy cases I used to travel with."

One thing about using lights that are so small is I can put them anywhere. I can put them under a couch. I can put them up on a ledge. I can hook them to a bookshelf. I can stick these lights just about anywhere. With studio light you just can't do that."

Bergman shot four World Series games, again turning to the Nikon D700 "and my favorite Nikon lens, which is the NIKKOR 200-400mm zoom."

Each of the resulting images, shot from centerfield, actually comprises 675 individual photos shot over 53 minutes.
"When you stitch these together into one giant photo it's ridiculous," he said. "It would be nearly 30 feet wide at 300 pixels per inch."
He almost makes it sound easy. Bergman knows, however, that a good picture is hard work, whether you're shooting a stadium filled with baseball fans or just the family.

"When I pull out the camera it's because I want to make a picture," he said. "I'll go through the extra effort because I want to make pictures that people remember."

See more of David's work visit his website. http://www.davidbergman.net/

Professional Sports Photography Tips from SI's Robert Beck

2010-11-27T11:44:00.000-05:00

My friend and mentor, Amway Diamond Alan Leininger

Robert Beck is a Sports Illustrated contract photographer with over 25 years experience shooting all manner of sports events. He's as comfortable applying his skills to his son's flag football game as he is to prowling the sidelines at the Super Bowl. We recently asked him to share some tips from his A-list of sports shooting advice.

• The first thing I look at is the background. Whatever the action is, the background will complete the picture. I don't want a busy background—a lot of fences or light glaring off a fence. A lot of people in the stands are okay, but I don't want one person walking by or just standing around. Some sports are good with the bench as background, like lacrosse or football, with coaches and players behind the action. Shooting Little League is trickier. The field is an odd shape, and I try to crop out distractions. I shoot the batter so the bench is in the background as opposed to two parents and otherwise empty aluminum stands reflecting light. The rule of thumb: real clean or real real.

• The first lens in my kit is the 70-200mm zoom lens [AF-S VR Zoom-NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G IF-ED]. Very sharp, very fast, and if I have to shoot through a fence, I shoot wide open and the fence won't even show. It also offers me a lot of flexibility in composing; too tight, I zoom out, too loose, zoom in. My next lens is the 200-400mm [AF-S VR Zoom-NIKKOR 200-400mm f/4G IF-ED]; fabulous for any sport, just perfect.

• I'm shooting D3 right now almost exclusively. I also have a D700 and a D300. Focusing is quick on all, but the D3 is a little faster in its burst. But I suggest you don't get caught up in shooting sequences. In reality the high point of action is really one or two frames, especially in sports where a ball is struck. The ball is only going to be in there for one frame, and if a kid is fielding the ball, the ball's only there for three frames. Generally, five frames per second is fast enough.

• The truth is that professional sports are almost easier to shoot. The younger the kids, the less you can anticipate—they don't have a sense of timing like the pros or older kids; the young kids are all a little bit off the timing. Be prepared.

• Some parents go to a game and just follow their kid. In soccer or football, that's kind of hard because it means they are not in tune with the game. Just follow the game and shoot the ball and the flow of the game; you'll get more good pictures, and when the ball gets to your kid, you'll be on it.

• When people see a great pro sports shot in a magazine, they don't realize that picture was culled from 600 or 700 images. You may not get a good shot of your kid in one game; think in terms of a season and hope for ten or 12 good images. If you get one or two good images from a game, you're in there. And don't give up because you didn't get one—referees get in the way of pros, too. Keep shooting.

• Check the schedule of the games. You're going to get the best light in the early morning or late afternoon. Shoot more at those games. In the middle of the day the light is harsher. But if you have to shoot mid-day, use your Nikon's Active D-Lighting. Turn it on in your camera menu; there are several levels of it, but all of them work very well to open up shadows. If your son is playing a baseball game in the middle of the day and you properly expose it, you'll lose his face because of the shadow of his hat; Active D-Lighting will keep that detail open.

• I shoot in manual. Over the years I've learned what the settings are for various situations. I’m always within a little bit—and now with the preview on the back of the camera, it's a no-brainer. If I were to use an auto setting, I'd go with shutter-priority and then move my ISO up or down accordingly. I'd try to keep the shutter speed at 1/1000 or 1/2000 second. I like to shoot wide open because it makes the subject stand out. If you're shooting your kid, keep a very shallow depth of field—it'll make your kid pop out from everyone else. Most pros shoot wide open for that pop out factor.

• With any lens from a 400mm on up—including the 200-400mm—I'm using a monopod; 300mm and down I can hand hold—and I prefer to be mobile.

• On my D3 I can change the focus tracking setting so that the camera will hold focus longer on a moving subject even if someone else crosses in front. In football if I'm following a running back and players cross in front of him, I don't want the focus to change too quickly, to lock on to the other players. But in swimming or in water polo I want the focus to change quickly. In the camera's menu I have the ability to change the time the camera will hold the focus.

• Frankly, I don't worry a lot about exposure. The [RAW] files are amazing on the Nikons. I can be a stop-and-a-half to two stops underexposed and still get detail. If you're going to make an error, underexpose, don't overexpose. I use Matrix metering when I'm shooting wider pictures—a group shot, a field shot; otherwise I use spot metering. And when I meter, if I can't meter off a uniform, if there's no gray spot, I meter off the grass. That'll give a good reading of what the overall exposure is going to be.

And there you have it—Robert's rules of keeping sports orderly.

Ferrari at Paul Brown Stadium

2010-11-23T02:13:00.000-05:00

Ferrari 360 Spyder

2010-11-07T01:58:00.000-05:00

Ferrari 360 Spyder. Ferrari pictures, images and automobile photographs, by Cincinnati Photographer and Dayton, Sports Photographer Vincent Rush of Monroe, Ohio and Cincinnati Sports Photography; http://www.CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com

Over the next few days, I will be posting some pictures from a photo shoot I did for a very important client in Cincinnati on November 6th.

A year or so ago, when I began a blog, it was for the purpose of putting fresh content on the web, promoting my name in Google searches and opening new opportunities to me as a result.

I really don't know if anyone actually reads it, but it effectively serves its purpose. Such as this particular assignment.

Senior Picture Shoots

2010-10-17T03:45:00.000-04:00

Eaton, Ohio high school senior Tessa Melling who happens to also be a second baseman for the Eaton Eagles, poses at Miami University Redhawks, womens softball field in Oxford, Ohio.

"Protect This House"

2010-10-03T19:00:00.000-04:00

"Protect This House". It's commonly known as being the marketing slogan for sports apparel company Under Armour. But for Monroe Hornet football player Jake Centers, it has more to do with the armour of Ephesians Chapter 6 versus 10 thru 18.

"Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

"Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.

"And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints...." Ephesians 6:10-18

God's armor brings victory because it is far more than a protective covering. It is the very life of Jesus Christ Himself.

"Put on the armor," wrote Paul in his letter to the Romans, "...clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ." (Romans 13:12-14)
When you do, He becomes your hiding place and your shelter in the storm -- just as He was to David. Hidden in Him, you can count on His victory, for He not only covers you as a shield, He also fills you with His life.

"I am the vine; you are the branches," said Jesus. "If a man abides in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." (John 15:5)

Since living in the safety of the armor means oneness with Jesus, we can expect to share His struggles as well as His peace. Remember, God offers us His victory in the midst of trouble -- not the absence pain. So "do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you, but rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ..." (1 Peter 4:12-13)

Committed Christians who face torture for their faith continue to testify to the supernatural strength--even joy--that enables them to endure unthinkable pain. They affirm with Paul--

"that in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.... For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers.... will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:37-39)

This wonderful truth has become reality to all who believe and follow Jesus. When you put on His armor, His life surrounds you and keeps you safe in Him. He is your precious friend, and you are His! So "put on Christ." (Galatians 3:27) He is your victory!

I was in the locker room waiting on coach Brett Stubbs of the Monroe Hornets to address his men before taking the field on Friday night against the Eaton Eagles.

Each player was in his own mental place, meditating on the task at hand. The only sound was an over sized "boom box" blaring out some rap music, laced with profanity, "F Bombs" and the likes.

I happened to look to my left and there was this one player reading scripture to himself. As he closed the book and lowered his head to pray, I snapped the picture.

Jake Centers is a special young man. A good kid with a loving Mom, who is at every game Monroe plays. The struggles he has had to overcome, may not be that foreign in today's cultural landscape but they are his own mountains none the less.

Becoming a born again Christian this past year has given him a new found strength to deal with life's pressures. It has also caused him to have to deal with another sort of adversity. The kind of adversity from friends who don't quite understand his new walk.

When I became a new born again Christian there were many who poked fun at my new lifestyle choices. They routinely challenged me on the steadfastness of my new found faith and wondered how long the fad would continue.

That was some 20 yeasr ago. And while I still screw up and still make many mistakes that would be considered "Un Christian Like", many of those who proved to be real friends, came to respect my choices and appreciate the fact that I did not pass judgement upon them as non believers at the time.

Today, many of those friends are now born again belivers themselves.

So how does one "Put on the armour of God"?

This life in Christ begins with knowing and trusting each part of the armor. The first part is TRUTH -- God's revelation of all that He is to us, all that He has done for us, and all that He promises to do for us in the days ahead. This wonderful, everlasting TRUTH is written in the Bible, revealed by the Holy Spirit, and realized through Jesus Christ.

It cuts through all the world's distortions, deceptions, and compromises. When you study, memorize, live, and follow TRUTH, He enables you to see the world from God's high vantage point. For He is the Truth! Putting on the first piece of the armor means feeding on truth through daily Bible reading and making it part of yourself.

Posted by photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com

2010 Monroe Homecoming Royalty

2010-10-02T03:57:00.001-04:00

Monroe High School in Monroe, Ohio celebrated their Homecoming by naming Logan Stanger and Taylor Hartman, King and Queen for 2010

2010-09-29T01:58:00.000-04:00

Reds fans didn’t expect much when Jay Bruce was called up to the Reds in May of 2008, other than relentless greatness.

The Bruce whose walk-off homer gave the Reds the NL Central title Tuesday night was the Bruce fans initially expected to be the next Ted Williams – roughly every night, thank you.

“It’s been some ups and downs for me, but I’ve battled,” Bruce said, blinking champagne from his eyes in the postgame clubhouse. “This is unbelievable. There’s nothing like it.”

From the time Bruce became the Reds’ No. 1 draft pick in June 2005, he was tabbed a future star. After hitting his way up and out of Triple-A in May 2008, Bruce provided immediate dividends by going 11-for-19 to start his major league career. Expectations flew off the charts.

Bruce returned to planet Earth and finished with a .254 average (21 homers, 54 RBI) his rookie year.

In 2009, Bruce had some wondering if he would ever make it. He hit .223 with 22 homers and 58 RBI, and also missed two months with a broken wrist.

Come 2010, Bruce again has been streaky. A midseason funk included a paltry July, when he had no homers and five RBI for the month.

But, Bruce since Aug. 1 is hitting .319 with 12 homers and 25 RBI. For the year, he is now at .275 with 22 homers and 66 RBI. Defensively, his strong arm and range have made him one of the top right fielders in baseball.

Was Bruce thinking homer on his game-winner?

“No, no, no, no,” Bruce said. “I was just trying to get on base. It takes 25 guys to do it.”

Manager Dusty Baker started Bruce on Tuesday, even though Bruce was 1-for-17 lifetime against Houston starter Wandy Rodriguez. Baker had sat Bruce when the Reds faced Rodriguez in Houston recently.

Bruce went 0-for-3 to start the game Tuesday, then pounded a Tim Byrdak pitch to Kingdom Come.

“Hey man, law of averages,” Reds manager Dusty Baker said. “Tonight it didn’t quite work, but I’m glad he was in there to face Byrdak and be a winner. Sometimes you’ve got to stick with guys. Sometimes people don’t understand that you’ve got to show faith in them, in order for them to grow and get better.”

That is Bruce, who at the ripe old age of 23 has been through plenty in the majors.

“I feel like I’ve learned a lot,” Bruce said. “The guys here, players, coaches, everyone has really stayed with me and stuck by me. I really appreciate that.

Bruce Almighty Leads Cincinnati Reds to the Promised Land!

2010-09-28T22:46:00.000-04:00

Reds Top Astros 3-2, Clinch NL Central

Cincinnati Claims National League Central Division Championship

CINCINNATI -- The Cincinnati Reds defeated the Houston Astros and clinched the National League Central Division championship on Tuesday night.

Fans spent Tuesday snapping up tickets ahead of the historic game. It was the first time the Reds won the National League Central Division title in 15 years.

A Jay Bruce walk-off home run sealed the deal for the team.

Bruce homered on the first pitch from Tim Byrdak in the bottom of the ninth for the 3-2 victory that secured the NL Central title.

It was a fitting finish to the unexpected championship drive. Cincinnati has won 22 games in its last at-bat, second-most in the majors.

Left-hander Aroldis Chapman (2-2) pitched a perfect ninth, topping out at 101 mph while showing playoff opponents the nasty stuff they can expect.

Bruce latched onto the first pitch from Byrdak (2-2) and lined it over the wall in center, sending teammates sprinting to home plate to pummel him after he touched home with the title-winning run while fireworks went off overhead.
With the title, Dusty Baker joined Bill McKechnie as the only managers to lead three different NL teams to the playoffs. Baker also has made it with the Giants and Cubs.

The Reds sold 30,151 tickets for the clinching game -- above-average for a cool September weeknight -- and took the field almost tasting it. Second baseman Brandon Phillips said he doesn't drink and has never taken so much as a sip of champagne.
"Everybody is looking forward to seeing me do it," Phillips said. "I don't know how it's going to taste. I don't know what's going to happen."

Most Reds were novices at the sip-and-spray tradition. Four female fans in the upper deck wore shirts that, side-by-side, urged the home team to "Show Us The Bubbly."

They showed some defense when Drew Stubbs stretched above the wall in center to steal a two-run homer away from Carlos Lee in the third inning, drawing a standing ovation.

The crowd was on its feet again in the sixth, when the Reds loaded the bases with none out. Phillips tied it at 2 with an infield single to the hole at shortstop, but Bruce grounded into an inning-ending double play.

Bruce made up for it on his next swing.

The Reds celebrated their title a day after Philadelphia clinched its fourth straight NL East title - no surprise there. The Reds' recent history made them a most unexpected playoff team.

The Reds hadn't reached the postseason since 1995, when Davey Johnson took them to the NL championships series, then lost his job because owner Marge Schott didn't like him.

After that, Cincinnati lost its way.

The Reds went through three owners, five general managers and seven managers without once making it back to the postseason. They came close in 1999 under Jack McKeon, losing a playoff for the wild card to the Mets. Ken Griffey Jr. arrived the following year, raising expectations for a long run of division titles.

Instead, the bottom fell out.

Griffey was hurt often and the Reds plunged into a streak of nine straight losing seasons, their worst in a half-century. Not even the move into Great American Ball Park in 2003 made much of a difference. Junior came and went. The losing went on.

Cincinnati finished fourth last season, its second under Baker, but the franchise thought it had the makings of something and kept the roster intact.

Right call.
The Reds got into the race in mid-May and didn't crack under pressure. Instead, the defending-champion Cardinals fell apart. The two teams were separated by no more than three games from mid-May to mid-August, matching each other win-for-win.
An emerging core of young players pulled it off.

First baseman Joey Votto grew into an MVP candidate this season, ranking in the top three in batting, homers and RBIs. The Reds' youth-laden lineup became the NL's most prolific, leading in batting average, runs and homers. The defense became one of the NL's best.

And Chapman put some sizzle in the stretch drive when he was called up in August and hit 105 on radar guns.
It was an emotional night for Baker, who won his fourth division championship as a manager. He also took the 1997 Giants, 2000 Giants and 2003 Cubs to the playoffs. He's the ninth manager to lead three different franchises to the playoffs, joining McKechnie, Johnson, Tony La Russa, Jim Leyland, Billy Martin, Lou Piniella, Joe Torre and Dick Williams.
Baker's father, Johnnie, died last November after a long illness.
"It's really special for me this year because I think about my dad a lot," he said. "Last year was very difficult. Every midnight call I got I thought was about my dad. He wasn't supposed to live past the All-Star break, then he wasn't supposed to live until August, then he wasn't supposed to live until September. He lasted until I got home.
"So I just knew when the season started that my dad was with me big-time."
The Reds won't be a postseason favorite, given their inexperience and their struggles against other top teams. They've gone 58-28 against losing teams, only 30-41 against those with .500 or better records.
For them, just getting there was a breakthrough.
Had the Saint Louis Cardinals lost their game against the Pittsburgh Pirates, that would have also given the Reds the division title. A Cardinals loss would have also triggered fireworks.
The team had a big fireworks display after the win.

Posted by photographer Vincent Rush, Cincinnati Sports Photography and Dayton Sports Photography of Monroe Ohio. Vince Rush can be contacted by phone at (877) 858-6295 or by email at vrush@rushintl.com or visit http://CincinnatiSportsPhotography.com

Cincinnati Sports Photography by Vincent Rush

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