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

Visit my website
Stop by my family blog
Follow me on Facebook

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

Visit my website
Stop by my family blog
Follow me on Facebook

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

Visit my website
Stop by my family blog
Follow me on Facebook

Weekly Header Challenge -- Summer is Here!

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 ~ Summer is Here!

Chosen by me.

June 22 marked the first day of summer, so we know, calendar-wise, that summer is here!  Here are all the ways I love that summer is finally here...

My header image, uncropped:  Diving right in to summer!

Summer is here in all these ways:

Water sports on  Lake Bonaparte...

Ball games...

Fireworks...

Summer flowers...

And harvests from the garden...

Canning adventures...

And food on the grill...

Farmers market...

And festivals for fun...

And finally, sunsets on the lake.

Summer is here!!


Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

Visit my website
Stop by my family blog
Like me on Facebook

Weekly Header Challenge -- Any Sport Not Played with a Ball

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 ~ Any Sport Not Played with a Ball

Chosen by Mac.

I believe this is the only sport I've photographed which isn't played with a ball.  Unless chess or Scrabble is a sport...

I cropped my header image (above, if you're reading this the week it was published) so you can't tell just what that object is they're trying to catch.  Here's the full image:

Frisbee, and some serious air time!

For years, our guys have been involved in an informal Frisbee league which meets weekly throughout the summer.  Today, I'm featuring images I took at one of the games last year.

This sport is technically called Frisbee football, and involves passing, catching, throwing, blocking, etc., in order for your team to get the Frisbee into the goal--someone has to catch it in the end zone.  There isn't supposed to be physical contact, nor can you run once you've caught the Frisbee.  I tried playing it once--there are several dads who play--but gave up halfway through and decided that photographing it was much more to my liking than running around on a hot, humid summer evening.

Photographing sports means a fast shutter speed to freeze the action.  This also means a higher ISO, especially for this game played in the evening.  By the end of the night (dusk) I had my camera set to ISO 8000 to obtain at least a 1/500 second shutter speed (fast enough to freeze most sports).

I also take a lot of multiple images (in burst mode) to capture the action.  I try to keep just the best shot that captures the action; otherwise, I end up with hundreds of images!

Brothers chasing down the Frisbee.

Don't collide!

This was a nice trip down Memory Lane for me, and since it's supposed to be in the 80s today, it feels like a Frisbee day!


Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

Visit my website
Stop by my family blog
Like me on Facebook