Time For A Web Site Re-Design

As I've noted in past posts, I am in the midst of a total web site re-design as it became glaringly obvious after Photoshop World that mine was in dire need of retooling.  I've been working on a new design as time has permitted since I returned from PSW as well as pouring through all of the photos on my various hard drives to look for images that could replace some of the ones I've used before. I've found many, which means processing time and effort, plus I've been re-processing the ones I've used before given my discovery (see  Monday's Blog post about monitor calibration) that they were processed too dark.

My current web site was created using Wix.com's web site, and aside from the need to be more selective with the images I have used to show off my work, the web site has been nothing but a disaster. After I created the Wix site a year ago, I signed up for Wix's Premium Package which eliminates all of Wix's banners, ads, etc. from the site. Even though I used an HTML5 template, the site has always loaded slow, it does not play nice with iPads, the slide show scrolling of images isn't smooth, and Wix's customer support has been abominable in terms of working out the bugs. I'm not the only one - I started a thread on their support page right after I began having the problems, asking Wix how to fix the issues with iPads, etc. To this day (it's been a year), Wix has not done anything to correct the issues. The thread now contains hundreds of posts by others complaining about the same thing. You'd think Wix would have noticed, but noooooooo.

The icing on the cake was when I accidentally discovered last week that Wix had renewed my Premium Package automatically, without any notice to me, at the end of April. They charged my credit card with the renewal amount and that was the straw that broke this camel's back. Can you say dirtbags?

And then Squarespace dropped into my lap, as if a gift from the Photgraphy gods. While at Photoshop World, +Scott Kelby  was singing the praises of a new web site hosting company that he is using for his sites - Squarespace. After taking a peek at his new Sports Photography site, I was sold. Taking a page from the Grand Poobah, I have been redesigning my site using Squarespace and it is a dream to use. The templates are geared towards making beautiful, simple photography portfolios and they're a snap to use. Great flexibility in altering the templates to one's liking is possible, allowing me to change the design of the template and make my site more personal. 

I've decided to make some Gallery category changes, such as breaking up the "Sports" gallery into two - one for just football images and another for all other sports. I'm in the middle of processing many new images to include in all of the Galleries and am sorting through the old ones, deciding which will and which won't make the cut. It's a time consuming, difficult process to weed out images and make sure only the best of the best make the final cut but it has to be done. I've had way too many marginal images featured on prior web sites and I have no one to blame but myself. I must ignore any sentimental attachment I may have for any given image and select the ones that will be displayed with a cold, analytical heart.

Look for the new site soon (I hope) and as soon as it's finished, I intend to have a serious Come-To-Jesus chat with the folks at Wix. Can you say refund?

2013 USTA Pro Circuit Challenger

After the spring cleaning trip to the cabin in North Georgia, I hit the ground running as soon as we returned late last Thursday afternoon. Play began in the 2013 USTA Pro Circuit Challenger tennis tournament on Monday and I needed to get out to the courts for the Thursday evening matches so I could begin to compile images for the USTA and the Tournament folks.

I photographed all the matches from Thursday evening through the finals on Saturday, dodging a constant drizzle and rain every day. On Saturday, the doubles final went off as scheduled but the ensuing singles final was delayed some 4 hours due to the rain. The final match finally began at 6:15 pm and by the time it concluded and I finished up shooting, I made it home around 8:30 pm. After processing images for the local paper, I was finally done around 10:00 pm.

I always enjoy shooting the Challenger event but was not counting on being at the tennis courts from 10:30 am Saturday until 8:00 pm or so. I was hoping that play would wrap up by 2:00 pm and that I would then have all afternoon and evening to work on my Guest Blog Post for Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider Blog. In the end, it was all's well that ends well with the Blog written and transmitted before Monday afternoon's deadline but I still have tennis photos to process.

I'm Shooting In The Rain (And Definitely NOT Singing)...

Image courtesy of Filmoria

Gene Kelly has nothing on me. In the 1952 film "Singin' In The Rain", he may have had a huge smile on his face as he did his song and dance in the rain but dealing with rain is a common occupational hazard for sports photographers. The only difference is that we don't flit around singing as we try  to get the job done. But as long as you  remember to pack the trusty rain gear for yourself and your equipment, rain is nothing more than a nuisance. You resign yourself to the fact that it is what it is and you go about taking care of business.

Jean-Ives Aubone

Such was the case last night as I set out to shoot some of the quarterfinal action at Forestmeadows Racket Club in the 2013 USTA Pro Circuit Challenger event in Tallahassee, Florida. Play continued under a constant drizzle that would intermittently increase and decrease in severity during the evening's featured matches which caused a 45 minute rain delay in the first match, a doubles contest. At the conclusion of the first set in the ensuing singles match, the skies opened up again but instead of a rain delay, one of the players defaulted due to a nagging shoulder injury which brought the evening to a merciful end.

Vahid Mirzadeh

I was looking forward to the doubles match since it featured two former Florida State players who are honing their games in the Challenger Circuit with the hopes of making it on the ATP tour someday. 2009 ACC Player of the Year and NCAA All American Jean-Ives Aubone teamed up with former FSU teammate Vahid Mirzadeh which seemed like old times as I spent many hours photographing them for FSU Sports Information during their careers at FSU. Unfortunately, this was not my boys' night as they went down to the big hitting team of Aussie Greg Jones and Canadian Peter Polansky 6-4, 6-3.

Greg Jones

Peter Polansky

Aside from the obvious nuisance of standing in rain and trying to keep thousands of dollars in camera gear dry, rain makes for crappy images. When you're shooting at a shutter speed calculated to freeze a tennis ball traveling at 100 mph+, not to mention a racket head that is whipped over the top of the ball, rain drops are also frozen in place and images look like they were shot with a lens and/or a sensor that hasn't been cleaned of dust and schmutz (my term) for years. Unless you know that it's raindrops that have been frozen in place and not gobs of dust and dirt that yields those telltale light gray/white specks, anyone seeing images shot in a drizzle look terrible.

Because of the limited available light due to overcast skies and the drizzle which was coming down at 6:00 pm, I started out with an ISO of 800, f2.8, and a shutter speed of 1/1000. As the match and the evening progressed, I pushed the ISO to 1600 as I shot the match with two D3S's, one with a 400mm f2.8 lens and the other with an 80-200mm f2.8 lens.

Alex Kuznetsov - ISO 6400

By the time the singles match began, I was at ISO 3200 and even pushed it to 6400 before the match was over in order to keep the shutter speed at 1/1000 second. I tried staying at ISO 3200 but at 1/1000 the images were noticeably underexposed. I knew that if I dropped the shutter speed  the racket heads would be seriously blurred so I upped the ISO. One thing I've learned the hard way - if you shoot at high ISO's and underexpose images, the noise level is much worse than if you push the ISO envelope and start out with a good exposure.  With high ISO, underexposed images, as you try to correct the exposure in post processing, the noise levels in the shadows is exacerbated. Even though you may shudder at the thought of going to a ridiculous ISO like 6400, trust me - the noise level in images is much less noticeable if the image is properly exposed. The images above and below were shot at ISO 6400 and after running them through PhotoNinja for noise reduction in post processing, they may not be as sporty as images shot at ISO 200 but they are more than acceptable given the challenges of marginal photo lighting and rain.

Tim Smyczek, ISO 6400

As I mentioned earlier, the singles match between Alex Kuznetsov and 5th seed Tim Smyczek ended after Kuznetsov defaulted following the conclusion of the first set (won by Smyczek 6-4). Smyczek is the defending champ at this event having won the title last year (ironically after his opponent defaulted due to injury at the end of the first set). Kuznetsov has been laboring with a gimpy shoulder during this year's tournament but played through the injury in the earlier rounds of singles and doubles. His goal was to clinch a Wild Card singles berth for the upcoming French Open and in order to do so he needed to reach the quarterfinals in Tallahassee.

With his quarterfinal appearance last night, Kuznetsov secured the Wild Card entry into the French's main draw. Having punched his ticket to Paris, I understood Kuznetsov's decicion to call it a night after dropping the first set.  The French begins on May 26, less than 4 weeks from now and Kuznetsov was wise in avoiding any possible long term damage to a shoulder that would keep him from playing for the first time at Roland Garros.

Stitched panorama of Stadium Court

The rain delay during the doubles match did result in one positive - it gave me time to switch lenses on one of my camera bodies, change shooting locations and try an experiment - a multiple image panorama of the stadium court. Just before the match resumed, I grabbed my 17-35mm f2.8 lens and attached it to a camera body. I moved to the spectator tent area,  positioned myself directly behind the umpire's chair, and fired off 9 vertical images which I intentionally overlapped as I swung the camera from one side to the other. Using Photoshop, i stitched the images together for what turned out to be a pretty cool 180 degree panorama of the court as the players warmed up to resume the doubles match.

As I sit here this morning and put the finishing touches on this post it's raining outside. The weather forecast is not promising for today and semifinal action is slated to begin at 2:00 pm and then 6:00 pm. I fear that I'm in for more of the same tonight but one can hope. If it's more of the same, I guess I'll just have to be content with more  schmutzy images.