Amanda and I took a brief field trip Wednesday night to check out the scenery around Danville as the sun was setting. We wound up taking photos on the Main Street bridge over the railroad tracks, and I shot this three-photo panorama.
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Kentucky vs. Radford
Marquis Teague gets a hand on the ball as a Radford player attempts to go up for a layup.
On the eve of Thanksgiving, I shot the Kentucky vs. Radford basketball game for the Advocate-Messenger. The game was a slaughter — UK won 88-40. The first half was more fun to shoot because by the second half UK was so far out ahead that the game was already decided and no one seemed to be pushing very hard to score.
Kentucky vs. Marist
I get to serve as the Advocate-Messenger’s back-up photographer for UK games this season, which is an awesome job. I’ve been a Kentucky basketball fan since I was 5 years old and my pastor gave me a UK sweatshirt, so this was somewhat dreamlike for me. It had been several years since I shot a basketball game but I shook the rust off enough to get some decent shots. UK won 108-58.
For more on the game, visit Vaught’s Views.
Spider in my window
We have a cool little spider guarding our living room window for now. This evening, it was spinning a bigger web.
Night Lights
The bright "star" in the center is Jupiter. I guessed it was Mars, but Amanda's guess of the fourth-brightest celestial body visible from Earth proved to be the correct one.
I shot some extended exposures on my tripod at two different Danville locations tonight — along Clark’s Run Creek and at Hilldale Cemetery. Amanda joined me for the expedition to the cemetery.
Reflected sunset in Perryville
Amanda and I headed west to Perryville Monday evening in search of good sunset photos. After checking out the scenery at Perryville Battlefield, on our way back to Perryville Amanda spotted a lit-up house and a lake that was reflecting the house and the sunset. We stopped by the side of the road and I snapped this shot.
Kentucky vs. Jacksonville State
UK tailback Jonathan George (25) scrambles for a first down inside the 15-yard line.
With our staff photographer Clay Jackson occupied taking photos of Centre College’s homecoming, I picked up the photo assignment of UK’s homecoming football game against Jacksonville State University. Given UK’s performances in the last few games, I was worried the team wouldn’t put together much offense, which makes it more difficult to get good photos, but UK did not disappoint, scoring 38 points to Jacksonville’s 14. I probably shot UK on their best game of the year — this was their highest point total of the year and another win this season is only halfway likely at best.
Moon HDR
I took the photos for this image shortly after Midnight Tuesday in a field across from my home.
My plan was to create three panoramas of the same scene, one at -2 EV, one at 0 EV and one at +2 EV. TO do this I locked my tripod’s right/left swivel and turned on auto-exposure bracketing, which allowed my T1i to shoot three shots in a row at the different exposures and grab all the clouds in the same place before they moved.
I shot one AEB set pointed toward the street, with some sky at the top. I shot a second AEB set in the middle of the sky, and my third AEB set pointed at the moon.
While the plan worked and I did generate what seemed at first like a very nice HDR panorama when I compiled everything in Photoshop, it had various anomalies and blown-out or oddly-colored portions, especially along the streets.
In the end, I wound up just using Photoshop’s shadow/highlights and brightness/contrast controls on the +2 EV panorama to simulate a fancier HDR image. It wound up looking even better than the actual HDR, plus it doesn’t have any anomalies.
HDR Sunrise from Downtown Danville
An impressive bunch of clouds filled the sky over Danville this morning, so I headed to Main Street and took some photos standing in front of the courthouse, then pulled them onto my computer and worked some Photoshop HDR magic to bring out the street and sky at the same time.
Centre College vs. Austin
Centre running back Matthew Farrell (26) breaks an Austin tackle during the fourth quarter Saturday.
These are photos I took during Centre’s rout of Austin Saturday afternoon.
