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As time permits, I offer my thoughts on some of the events I am able to photograph. Crossmen stuff in my officeI was playing with my cameras tonight and started taking photos of various stuffed animals, coins, and batteries I found around my office. I quickly got to my drum corps knick knacks and then decided to focus on everything connected to Crossmen I could find in my office. With my son marching there for three years, plus being a long time fan, I found a lot to keep me busy. My new Square Perfect SP200 Studio Kit arrived today, so that provided for nice backgrounds to try with the various items. I found quite a few pins for the Jazz Club. There was one of these wrist braces. Several years of Crossmen Yearbooks A number of CDs (somewhere around here there should be tour DVDs but I couldn't find them) And, of course, Bones. Here's the full gallery of images.
Top Pictures 2013 - Part 3The marching band season started the week after Labor Day. I shot events for Tournament of Bands and US Bands. I also spent a good bit of time photographing the Penncrest Roaring Lions Marching Band where my daughter plays clarinet in her senior year. So a football game every week and one or two competitions each weekend made for a busy fall. Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the marching band season. Monsignor Farrell The Monsignor Farrell High School is a 1-Open band who competes in the USBands circuit. Their show was "Sound & Fury of the Skies" and was basically about the weather. There were a number of props to convey the theme. The band is small and had just one guard member who was very captivating. It wasn't obvious to me until I saw them again that it was just one person doing all that guard work. Early in the season I was at a show in Delran NJ on a dark and rainy night. At one point the one guard member holds up an umbrella and happened to be positioned perfectly so that I could get this shot. The dark night made for a completely black background and the rainbow colors of the umbrella really stand out despite the difficult stadium lighting. Nazareth The Nazareth Area Blue Eagle Marching Band 2013 show was titled "Tales of Love: Triumph, Tragedy, and Trickery" and included music by Glinka, Puccini and Rossin. I always enjoy their shows and usually find a top picture from their band. This year the band hosted two competitions on October 12. At the show in the afternoon I was shooting through the pit and caught this flute player with a great blurred background as the back stands were filled with students who performed earlier. I really liked the composition and colors on this shot.
Northern York The most fun I had this fall was shooting at MetLife Stadium. The stadium was so interesting compared to most of the places I get to shoot. It was fun trying to capture the environment. I know many of the students will be excited to watch the Super Bowl this year and will say "I marched on that field." I tried to get pictures of each band that showed some part of Met Life that clearly identified the location. One of my favorite such shots was this one of Northern York. The guard member was on the podium and struck a pose perfectly positioned between the jumbotron and MefLife sign. I quickly switched to my second camera which had the 24-70 on it to get the shot. Urbana One of the great features of MetLife was the jumbotron. I tried to keep some awareness of what was being shown there and trying to use it creatively as background. There were several video cameras in operation, including a mobile one on the sidelines. I tried to keep an eye on where the field video camera was focused so that I could possibly find a shot where the video and the video subject were both in my shot. This shot of the Urbana High School Drum Major was the best of those shots as the video camera was right next to me focused on the drum major.
Top Pictures 2013 - Part 2For the drum corps season I shot for Drum Corps International, Drum Corps Associates, Drum Corps World and my drum corps history website corpsreps.com. My travels took me to California, Texas, Indiana, New Jersey, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Over the course of the season, I was able to watch shows progress and see some exceptional performances. Here are just a few of my favorite pictures from the drum corps season. Blue Knights There were many corps that were fun to shoot but none more than Blue Knights. The stunning guard costumes, unique marching style, acrobatic moves, a small stage and a giant blue ball - not to mention incredible performers - made for great pictures. The NoBeginningNoEnd theme carried through the music and visual presentation. While the great action provided opportunity for great shots, this shot was particularly fun because the performers were very aware that I was taking the picture. I walked down to the end zone, knelt down and made eye contact, then took the shot. I believe this was the first show (Minneapolis) they started this way with the giant ball carried in a sack onto the field.
Madison Scouts The Madison Scouts 2013 show "Corps of Brothers - 75 Years of Survival" included many interesting visual elements. Brass players using their horns as machine guns, a helicopter, the May You Never Walk Alone logs, the Drum Majors conducting the crowd in singing the corps song, a rotating company front and these two images. The first is a guard member walking across the snare drums. I got this shot several times from different angles including one straight on where I shot the whole sequence which you can find on Tumblr http://corpsreps.tumblr.com/post/57176043650/a-run-across-the-drums. This picture was from the DCI show in San Antonio. I found this image to be particularly striking as the fallen soldier is carried off by his friends as the corps plays May You Never Walk Alone with the crowd singing and corps alumni in the crowd standing for their corps song. It was a very powerful moment in the show. Reilly Raiders The Reilly Raiders are an alumni corps who perform in exhibition with a style reminiscent of the 1970s when I marched. At the West Chester show they performed their Irish themed show. As tribute to the Crossmen, the corps played Russian Christmas Music and invited several Crossmen legends to play with them. As the show concluded the Reilly Raider snare line was joined by a rather young man in uniform. As soon as I caught sight of him, I ran over to where he was and got down to eye level, and was ready to shoot when he struck this thoughtful pose. At the DCA Alumni show a month later, Brody came on the field with a snare drum and as soon as the photographers caught sight of him, we were all there taking his picture. He is a genuine photographer magnet. The Cadets The Cadets "Side by Side" show made use of these large column props all season but mostly they were not having much impact - for me at least. At the West Chester show they found a way to create excitement with the props by having guard members climb and hang on them. Even better was the mellophone player who climbed up, played her closing solo and dropped her horn to the hands of a guard member below. The sequence of events took me a bit by surprise and though I did get a great shot of the soloist playing her horn, I did not get the horn drop. Two nights later at Allentown I was ready and caught the horn on its descent perfectly.
Top Pictures 2013 - Part 12013 was a good year for my photography pursuits. I had ample opportunities to photograph great performers and travel around the country over the summer. I sold some equipment I wasn't using and added a new camera (Nikon D7100) and several new lenses (bought used on Ebay) including the Nikon 24-70 f2.8. This blog post will discuss some of my very favorite pictures out of the 90,000 I took in 2013. Avon Grove High School The indoor color guard and drumline season ran from January through May. There were many great shows but one of my favorites was the Avon Grove High School color guard. The show was called Blinded By Grief and the soundtrack for the show was Abide With Me as performed by Emeli Sande at the 2012 Winter Olympics. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj2LqGvKsLw Through the show different guard members walked around with a blind fold - as shown in this photo. I found the visual to be very moving, especially in combination with the music which is a favorite hymn of mine. This page http://aghsmusic.weebly.com/indoor-guard-2013.html has some information about the show including a video of the performance. Black Watch Black Watch is one of the top indoor guards in the activity. I have the pleasure of seeing them a few times a year. Their shows a filled with amazing equipment work and great visuals. Their costumes are always interesting and make for great photographs. At the conclusion of their show they added this move which I was all prepared to capture when I suddenly discovered my camera was not focusing. I quickly manually focused and got the shot. I later figured out that I hit the Manual/Automatic switch on my lens by mistake. But I was pleased I did not miss this shot. Here is a link to some clips from the show which ends with the move captured in this picture. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6lg5wFuAr8
Yosemite National Park - Half Dome Just before the start of the drum corps season, I had an opportunity to spend three days alone in Yosemite. I had a great time exploring the park and taking pictures of things that were not moving. One of my favorite pictures from that visit was one of Half Dome as the sun was setting. This was taken on my last day there. There were a number of photographers setting up for a shot when I arrived at a little bridge. I found a good location and waited as the sun began to set. I was very pleased with this shot, getting the golden color on Half Dome but still getting good detail and color in the water and trees.
Penncrest at Garnet ValleyGarnet Valley PA 10/4/2013 - With both football teams 5-0, the game promised to draw a huge crowd, so my wife and I arrived at the stadium about an hour and a half before game time. People were already in the stands. The away stands filled up pretty quickly as a group of enthusiastic students dressed in white (some in white body paint) occupied a large section of the stands. The band arrived and chased out a few who refused to believe the rest of us that the band was going to need that space. Then the game got underway. Some bad calls and some mistakes put Penncrest in the hole early and by half time there didn't seem to be much hope of a comeback. Fortunately I was there for the band and not the football team. The band did their "No Matter the Weather" show and performed very well. I was excited to find things happening in the show I hadn't noticed before, like this cymbal visual. I found out today that has been there all along. I was just in the right place to catch it this time. Now if they would really polish up those plates, there would have been a great reflection of Sally. I was also happy to find my daughter in a place I hadn't found her before. You would think with only 9 clarinets and just two with senior medals, she would be easier to find. The Garnet Valley band came out next and did a Pirates of the Caribbean show. The Penncrest band director's daughter was easy to find this year as part of a lovely trio. A nice GV band parent came over to me and said "the crew will be coming to life soon" and pointed me in the right direction. Normally at away games I stay back a little and pretty much in one spot, so I might have missed the moment were it not for the heads up. After both bands finished their half time shows, the two bands got together on the track and played the Penncrest favorite "Hey Baby!" demonstrating that friendship can exist even among rivals. Unfortunately I only had my 70-200 so I didn't get any good pics of that performance. I also understand the GV students made cookies for Penncrest. We hung around a bit for third quarter and then got a jump on traffic. It didn't seem like the game was going to turn around and with the huge number of people there, it would have taken forever to get out of the parking lot. |
