Bay Area Bandits

In late February I was sharing some of my pictures from Tucson with a friend from work. She liked what she saw and asked if I might be interested in helping her out with a project she was working on. It turns out she is a co-owner of a women's football team and they were looking to take some promotional photos. I immediately said yes. It wasn't until she had walked away that I was like, "crap! What was I thinking?" You see, most of the photos I take are of landscapes and buildings, or other things that don't move all that much.

What was I going to do? I didn’t want to let the Bandits down. After much deliberation I e-mailed my friend to set her expectations appropriately (low, that is) and then called my friend Lauren for a tutorial on photography. Our tutorial focused on the following features:

1) How to interpret the histogram feature on my camera to properly set exposure level.
2) How ISO effects exposure level and quality of the picture and how to use it in conjunction with the exposure level button.
3) How to use white balance and set it in a variety of light conditions.
4) How to use the single point of focus feature as well as locking focus.
5) Understanding different shooting modes.

Armed with these new techniques I went to meet the Bandits and do a 2 hour photo shoot. The focus they wanted was not pictures of them in their gear in typical football poses but rather a focus on muscle groups, their strength and the fact there could be a femininity in football. Here is just a taste of what we ended up with.

Note: I also had a 2 hour tutorial on Photoshop with Lauren that helped in the final presentation.