Beautiful day for a ball game

I went to the Philadelphia Phillies vs Cleveland Indians spring training ball game today with my wife and friends Robert and Rafael. We were supposed to have a fifth but Chris came down with a nasty sinus infection and couldn't make it (these pics are for you buddy!)

First pitch was at 1:05PM and the weather was perfect - 81 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. I wasn't expecting such a large crowd for a Monday afternoon ball game - this is the last time I underestimate the power of the Irish! The Phillies were decked out in their St Patrick's Day green uniforms and there was green as far as the eye could see. We even had a guest appearance by the Phillie Phanatic! In the eight inning they announced that it was the second largest crown in BrightHouse Field history!

In the end, the hometown (sort of) Phillies prevailed 6-4. I may gripe about some of the 'nuances' of living in Florida, but spring training certainly isn't one of them!

(Click on photo to see full sized image on Flickr)

And now for something completely different

I'm the Director of Information Technology at Sunbelt Software, a technology company in Florida. We have some pretty cool toys. I wanted to try to utilize some of them with multiple off-camera strobes to see what kind of shots I could get. I managed to convince another IT'er (and fellow camera buff) to be a model for the shoot - thanks Fred!

Before we started, fellow co-workers Daniel and his girlfriend Alanna stopped by and pitched in. Daniel is also an off-camera lighting goof so he was a great help with lighting ideas. Everything was falling in place except for one thing....

I was at the ballgame last night and as such, I had to crank up my ISO to 1600 in order to keep up with the action. Yeah, you guessed it. I forgot to change my ISO back to a reasonable 200 or 400 for this shoot. ARGH!!!!!! Thankfully I was able to save a few of the shots - you can still tell there's a little noise, but for the most part, they look ok. Let that be a lesson - ALWAYS CHECK YOUR CAMERA SETTINGS BEFORE YOU SHOOT!

[UPDATE: I should note that both Daniel and Fred snapped some of the shots tonight as well - I can't take credit for all of these beauts!] ;)

(Click on photo to see full size image on Flickr)

Take me out to the ballgame...

After work tonight, my friend Robert and I headed over to Brighthouse Field to watch a spring training game between the hometown (sort of) Philadelphia Phillies and the Cincinnati Reds.

The weather was great - maybe a bit chilly - and the game was a blowout (Reds won 6-1), but it was still a blast. I got several hundred shots of the action on and off the field. Because it was a night game, I really had to crank up the ISO to be able to stop the action, as a result, some of the photos had more noise than I care for.

(Click on photo to see full size image on Flickr)

Safety Harbor cottage

I got the opportunity to photograph a wonderful home in Safety Harbor this morning for Rick Tennant, a realtor that works with my wife. What a great house this is! The weather was perfect and the exterior photos turned out really nice. I was a little concerned about the interior photos for it was extremely bright out - a condition that normally leads to blown out windows in interior photos.

Knowing this, I packed my flashes and spent a lot more time in each room to make sure that I got the proper balance between outside and inside. The homeowner was extremely patient as it took over two hours to get all of these shots.

The end result is I think I got a nice set of photo's for Rick to use to help promote this house. Now I need to try to keep my wife away from this particular home as she would be first in line to buy it!

(Click on photo to see full size image on Flickr)

A perfect Sunday

What a beatiful day today. I started off with some much needed yardwork but had the itch to take some pictures. I called my friend Robert up as I knew he was doing a workshop today and met up with him and George at the Clearwater Aquarium.

I have never been to the aquarium before so I didn't know what to expect. The Dolphin show was a lot of fun and Nicholas (one of the dolphins) is quite the ham - he was all to eager to pose for us in the windows of the dolphin tank. After about two hours of this, we headed out to lunch and then across to Tampa.

There was an art festival in downtown Tampa this weekend - I couldn't believe how many people were there! I bumped into a co-worker (Hi Nancy!) and my father-in-law and his partner. The highlight of the art show was a Santana tribute band called "Supernatural". These guys rocked the house. I spent an hour taking shots from every possible angle. As the day was drawing to a close, I knew we had one more stop left - Tampa General (to take the Tampa skyline photo).

I arrived about 5PM and got some of the best skyline shots I've gotten to date. Seriously - doesn't the above photo need to be included in any Tampa Chamber of Commerce literature?!? We stuck around until 7PM to try to get some night shots. I managed to get a pretty decent panorama of the city at dusk:

It was a long day (over 600 shots!) but it was worth it - the weather was great, I got out and took some photos and managed to get a couple of winners in the bunch. What more could one ask for?

(Click on photo to see full size image on Flickr)