Weekly Header Challenge -- Signs of Autumn

It's time for the Weekly Header Challenge!

"Headbanger" Participants

Fishing Guy 

Kathy 

Imac 

Lew

I'm joining the group above for this weekly challenge.

Visit the other participants' blogs to see their entries!

Theme ~ Signs of Autumn

Chosen by Lew.

I chose a somewhat different set of images for Signs of Autumn.  You know it's fall in the U.S. when there are football games wherever you look--high school sports fields, university stadiums, almost any sports channel on TV...

Here is my header image; I cropped it because I wanted the focus to be on the players, just after the ball was snapped.  I didn't have to crop it any further to use as my header image.

Since I'm currently working on these images for this particular football team (the Crusaders), I'm sharing a small montage of images which encapsulate the game.  Even though I'm only through somewhere in the second quarter (I have hundreds left to edit!), I think the images I've chosen below show a thorough story of what this autumn sport is all about.  Enjoy the game!

Assistant coach gives some pre-game instruction.

Pre-game team prayer.

Pre-game creative shot--when I actually have time to get creative!

The coin toss.

Referee meeting.

Trying to make his way through the defense.

Blazing right past the sidelines.

Defensive tackle.

Racing across the field.

Mid-air catches.

Sun setting at the high school stadium.

Fumble recovery.

Celebration in the end zone!

Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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Weekly Header Challenge -- Tell A Story

It's time for the Weekly Header Challenge!

"Headbanger" Participants

Fishing Guy 

Kathy 

Imac 

Lew

I'm joining in the group above for this weekly challenge.

Click on the other participants' blogs to see

what they've come up with!

Theme ~ Tell A Story

Chosen by Kathy.

For Kathy's chosen theme this week, Tell A Story, I tried to choose images that tell a story in and of themselves.  I love event photography--my favorite genre--in which I can use a series of photos to tell the story of the day.  I have plenty of those, but I wanted to challenge myself to use images where each tells its own story.

For my header, I chose a recent image I had used within a Header Challenge blog a few weeks back, but it wasn't a header.  Here is the uncropped image:

The bride and groom are the focus of the story, but there's so much more going on--from the birdseed being thrown, to the event photographer, to a few attendees with their phone cameras out, to the smiles and joy on the faces of the other attendees, to the cars--one of which is the "getaway vehicle--beyond.  I love all the details in this photo, and I think it tells a beautiful story.

Here are the rest of the images I chose this week.  I'll simply caption each image with a title, and let the image tell its own story.

Summer Vacation.

Post-Game.

Gasp!

February.

Guy in the Kitchen.

Those are my photo stories.  I'm going to keep this theme in mind as I go out and about with my camera over the next few weeks, and try to capture stories along the way!

Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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Weekly Header Challenge -- Recent Photos

It's time for the Weekly Header Challenge!

"Headbanger" Participants

Fishing Guy 

Kathy 

Imac 

Lew

I'm joining in the group above for this weekly challenge.

Click on the other participants' blogs to see

what they've come up with!

Theme ~ Recent Photos

Chosen by all of us.

This week is a "bye" week, meaning that in the absence of fellow Headbanger Craver, we decided on the theme of Recent Photos.  We're guaranteed to get a wide variety of images this week, I think!

My header image was taken about ten days ago; my garden harvest has slowed down significantly even since then.

The rest of my images today have all been taken in the past week.  Here we go!

Yes, this is our car.  Yes, it is a BMW.  We purchased her in April, but since I wanted to blog about how we came to be her owner, I took these recent pictures.  If you want to read about how this classy lady came to be ours given our incredible journey these past few years, visit this post on our personal family blog.

Back to my garden harvest, my friend Becki taught me how to preserve veggies by fermenting them in Fido (pronounced fee-doh) jars; I took that newly acquired knowledge and have been "going to town" experimenting with my garden veggies!

We attended a wedding last week!  I took only a few pictures--I mostly wanted to get some pictures of Fernando and me since we were dressed up--but here are two that I took of the bride and groom.

Sending them off with birdseed!

My final images are the most recent, taken for a client just a few days ago.  I was hired to do photography for a high school football team's home games, and this was the first game of the season.  I'm sharing three images from that day; be thankful it's only three--the client gallery has 300+!!

My Danny is in the middle--the trio sang the National Anthem!

One action shot, in the rain--we're the team in the blue.

I'll be off to visit you shortly; please leave a comment for me!!

Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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Weekly Header Challenge - Right Place, Right Time

It's time for the Weekly Header Challenge!

"Headbanger" Participants

Craver VII 

Fishing Guy 

Katney 

Imac 

Lew

I'm joining in the group above for this weekly challenge.

Click on the other participants' blogs to see

what they've come up with!

Theme ~ Right Place, Right Time

Chosen by Tom.

I panicked this morning, because I totally forgot that it was Headbanger Day!!  Then I checked my Lightroom catalog, and realized--I had already designed a header for this week, and uploaded all my photos!  Everything was ready to go.  So here I am, barely on time once again.  Here is my header, full image style:

These football pictures are definitely a matter of being in the right place at the right time.  Fortunately, I was the team photographer, and I was allowed on the sidelines.  Right place, check.  I have tons of great images, because of a little luck called the right time.  Many plays were way across the field, or my lens didn't zoom enough, or...  But I have a good number of images where the play happened close enough to me, at the right angle, to make the images great.

Many Right Place, Right Time images are a matter of finding your spot, anticipating what's going to happen, then waiting.  With a little luck, you'll get that shot at just the right time.  Here are the rest of my images; some have been featured as header images in the past, simply because they were taken in the right place and at the right time.  Enjoy!

The below shot was pure luck--we were at Andy's (frozen custard shop) with another family, good friends of ours who were moving.  We were there for one last ice cream together (we had introduced them to Andy's frozen custard after we met them).  I had brought my camera to snap some pictures when we heard the whomp-whomp-whomp of military helicopters landing at our local airstrip a mere three blocks away.  Shot between the trees, right after dusk, silhouetted against the sky--sweet.

Cubs win!

Sneaking the camera out for a restaurant shot.

Butterfly landing on purple coneflower.

Boat tour going under the Thousand Islands Bridge.

Girl water-skiing on Lake Bonaparte.

Now I kinda want it to be summer again.  Hope you have a super day!


Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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Weekly Header Challenge -- Unexpected Photo Result

It's time for the Weekly Header Challenge!

"Headbanger" Participants

Craver VII 

Fishing Guy 

Katney 

Imac 

Lew

I'm joining in the group above for this weekly challenge.

Click on the other participants' blogs to see

what they've come up with!

Theme ~ Unexpected Photo Result

Chosen by Tom.

I really struggled with this week's theme, but I finally decided to go through my football images and see if there were any I could use.  I was the team photographer for the Crossroads Crusaders, a traveling homeschool football team, and I figured I could find some unexpected results in the gobs of pictures I took.  I decided on my header by way of this story:

We were down near St. Louis for a game against another homeschool team, the Panthers, a few weeks ago.  We were really beating them, too, so the guys were in high spirits.  At halftime, they grouped in the end zone to rest (it was in the 80s, so very hot for them wearing all their gear) before the second half began.  I started snapping candids of the players, who were laughing, smiling, and generally having a good time together.  Here are some shots I got...

Then I came across Marcello, whom the kids call Bus--because when you run into him, it's like running into a bus:  you just fall down.  And you don't want him falling on you, either.  He knew I was aiming the lens at him (he told me later), so he made a face.  This is what I found when I downloaded all the images from the game:

My full header image.

I edited it with the words, "But Coach, this IS my game face!" and put it on Facebook, where it became an instant hit with all his teammates and friends.  Glad I could help him out!  When I processed all the images, I found that Marcello had made a face every single time I aimed the camera at him!  Here are the rest of his faces.

To be fair, Marcello is a super nice guy, so in his honor, here he is leading his team out of the locker room at their homecoming game.

Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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