A 'lil HooHaa

Messing with the blogging world since 2005

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Thank goodness the week has started…

I know that everyone longs for the weekends and all the things you can do.

Especially weekends which, for the most part, feature nice weather — in November.

Alas, sometimes weekends are so packed with fun that it’s tough to not smile when it’s over and done with. After all, the body needs a rest. For me, the start of the weeks means getting back to the job hunt, searching, writing cover letters, sending out resumes and whatever else I can do to find some employment again. For others, Monday’s return means back to the daily work grind.

This week, I welcomed the return of the job hunt.

I won’t lie — I had a great weekend. But it was filled with long days, shorter sleep cycles and a tiring body by the time Sunday night rolled around.

So I wanted to give a little glimpse, in photos, of what my weekend was. Note that most of these photos were taken with my iPhone. The ones I took with my main camera will eventually be on my Flickr stream!

It began Friday — 11-11-11 — when there were a couple of geocaching events celebrating that day. One was in Oneonta, the other in Ithaca. It was a cold day, though. So outside hiking was likely going to be short.

So starts the weekend of driving.

An interesting fire hydrant I saw in Ithaca while we were looking for a cache.

The first event was solid and a group of us headed up to Ithaca. We found some caches along the way and at one point, I felt my phone vibrate and then ding several times in rapid succession.

At our next stop, I checked to see what all the texts were for.

Several friends had wanted to note that the Phillies had signed Jonathan Papelbon for $50 million bucks. So, on the day when the Phillies make a splash, I’m not reading anything and relying on a few tweets I can dig up about it.

On a side note on this — I have mixed feeling about this move. Is he the best on the market? Yes. Is he an upgrade over Ryan Madson. Probably. But to bring in someone with a reputation such as he has? Who can tell. It’s my hope that the likes of people like Halladay, Lee, Hamels etc., can calm Papelbon down enough to make me actually like the guy. I’ve had a lot of fun cheering against him over the years, though most times it doesn’t end with me being happy. So maybe I can be happy soon enough with him. Who knows.

The subs at the Shortstop Deli in Ithaca are outstanding!

Anyway, back to the regularly scheduled blog…

We got to Ithaca and did a little caching before heading to the event, which was a good time. I saw some people I hadn’t seen in quite some time, so that was nice. After, we went and found a couple of caches.

In between said caches, however, we stopped at the Shortstop Deli, which is a must stop whenever I am in Ithaca. I love the subs there. The bread is awesome. It’s one of my favorite places to get subs.

So, with it now being dark (remember, it comes earlier now), three of us set out to find one of the new caches in Ithaca. It’s a 4-star terrain.

We had heard about this one and arrived at the park.

Turns out the cache is about, oh, 20 feet in the air in a tree. After using a phone-a-friend to make sure we had the right tree, we started scanning. With the assistance of a flashlight, the cache was spotted. Sheesh!

Brent signs in... as he's way up top!

Brent, being the ever-crazy cacher who will be willing to do most anything to nab a find, said he was going up. After finding a way to head up the tree (which included his pockets emptying with credit cards, cell phone and other things), he slowly made his way up the tree. Once there, he nabbed the cache and helped us in logging. It was a team effort indeed as those of us left on the ground tried to make sure he knew where to go and where the footing would be best without killing himself!

After getting back to the area, the second part of the Oneonta caching event was held (at 11:11 p.m.). Surprisingly, many people were there for this part, too. It was nice to chat for a bit, before finally calling it a night.

The alarm went off early Saturday.

With a lot of plans in place, I made an early exit and headed to Schenectady to shoot some urban disc golf. This is all part of a bigger project I am working on, so it was nice to test some things out to see what I can do with the camera and such.

We spent several hours scouting some places and trying a few things.

In the end, I got some really good videos and have several other big ideas in place for future shoots.

I also got to see some different parts of Schenectady I hadn’t seen before. There are some interesting looking places for photos and videos, so I put those in the back of my head.

A great lunch!

At this point, too, we were getting a little hungry, so we stopped at a place called Clinton’s Ditch. It’s a nice little place, not far from the General Electric plant. It was clean inside, modern looking and had some good workers. Jeff knew the place, so we sat at the bar to eat.

The bacon cheeseburger I got was incredibly good.

Jeff, who is normally a right-handed player, has an injury, so he was chucking left-handed.

Following that, two of the four of us were going to play a round. One of the others was going to play a few holes, so I decided to tag along and do a little filming and photography.

There are certain ways to shoot disc golf and I need to learn how to do it so the videos can be better. One of the better shots was catching Chuck almost hit an ace on the first hold. He clanged off the basket, coming just inches away from getting the ace.

After a few holes, I had decided I was going to head back. I was going to take a shortcut trail back to the parking lot until I realized I was missing something.

My camera bag.

Crap!

Inside the bag was my 17-40 F4L lens. Nothing else, but that is enough to make me panic. I knew where I had placed it down when shooting a few things. So I walked quickly back (along with Jeff, who was calling it a day as well) and got back to the spot and I saw the bag still there. And the lens, of course, still in it.

Whew!

2CW in Binghamton.

After my heart stopped beating so fast, it was back to the car and home so I could unload the memory cards and charge my battery as much as I could before bolting out the door to head to Binghamton with a few friends to watch 2CW, an independent pro wrestling group based in Central New York.

As normal, it was a top-notch show. Some great action and I am a big fan of photographing wrestling, because you can get some crazy shots. These guys put on a good show, too, so it was fun to watch. Most of the matches were quite solid. The championship match stole the show. A couple of local guys got some great reactions. Truthfully, there were only a couple of matches that weren’t that great and it didn’t hurt the card too bad.

The best part was that this was the first time we went to one of their shows where it started within 15 minutes of the scheduled time and it ended at a decent hour!

Still, it ended up not being an early night.

By the time I got home and did a few things, it was probably 1:30 or 2 by the time I went to bed. That alarm rang in the AM again as I headed over to take some photos and watch several friends play in a flag football championship.

The day was beautiful, too, so that made it even better being outside.

Warren scores a touchdown during a championship victory.

The game was even better as the team I was watching put a hurting on the team that was top seeded and came in unbeaten. I had watched these two teams play a few weeks ago and it was a beat down the other way. Alas, a 40-13 score made this one a laugher in the championship as it was quite a dominant performance on both sides of the ball.

Flag football is interesting to take photos of because it’s a pass-happy game, yet it’s still tough to see where things are unfolding. But it gives cool chances to see different things, like people pulling the flags, balls being caught, and different things that sometimes can be very hard in regular football. The biggest thing is being able to see faces better because with the lack of major contact, helmets and pads, you can see expressions and such when shooting. That makes it more fun.

Following the championship triumph and chatting for a bit, I headed to Oneonta to do some maintenance on a few caches and join some others for the same and some caching. It stayed a beautiful day, which was nice. One of my caches was missing (as expected) because of the flood and the area wasn’t as “nice” as it had been in the past, so I decided to archive that cache.

Two more of my caches at the same location got through the flood and were fine.

It shows a little wear, but this made it through the floods!

However, of those two, the one golden ammo can (placed by someone in honor of another cacher reaching 1,000 finds) I have in this spot had been moved by the flood. Too, part of its hiding spot was gone. I’m glad we did this walk because we got to see that everything was dry and safe (I can’t imagine what it was like during the flood!) and each of the caches were re-hidden a bit better.

I also got to hit up a new cache, which was nice to grab a find to end the day.

And with that, the weekend came to an end. I slept well, I might add. Now, back to my grind of the job hunt. Hopefully, something will come along soon. That, in turn, will likely start giving me a better appreciation of these action-packed and fun weekends, no matter how tiring they are.

I can hope, anyway!

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook by clicking the button on the right side of the page!

Kids and the camera — things to remember

Mayla trying to check out the camera and how it works...

Kids and cameras — they seem like they go together like peanut butter and jelly. It’s perfection.

I’ve been lucky in that I have several friends who have had kids, so I’ve had the chance to take some images of their kids as they grow up. I’ve also had the chance to really try some things out with styles of shooting photographs and vantage points and things like that.

This post is about that — my thoughts on taking photos of kids and things to think about when shooting photographs of your or other people’s kids. With digital SLRs becoming so much more affordable for people, more and more people are going to be getting cameras and will have the chance to really document their kids growing up.

These tips aren’t really on the technical side, so you aren’t going to get info about camera settings, F-stops, aperture and all that good stuff. This is going to be more of a tips post, with my ideas of how I’ve gotten good shots (and with some examples, too)!

So, without further ado, here are my tips…

1, Get up close and personal.

Let me see that camera...

You never know what kind of shot you can get by getting really close to the kid.

Note the photo at the top of this post. I went to the fair with Marc, Chrissy and their daughter, Mayla. We all sat down to eat some dinner, so I started snapping photos of Mayla. As I snapped away, she seemed quite interested in what I was doing. So I kept getting closer with the camera. As that happened, curiosity got the better of her and she started grabbing at and checking out the camera and the lens.

Could I have gotten close up photos with a zoom lens? Of course. But by being closer to Mayla while I shot photos, it made her wonder what was going on. Maybe it was the shutter. Maybe it was the bigger camera. Maybe it was just interesting. But out of that, I got a chance to really get some interesting photos.

One of the keys here, is keeping focus on the person. As you can see from the smaller photo, Mayla’s hand stayed out of focus, but she remained sharp. When I saw what she was doing, I worked on making the focus more on the right side of the photos so it would stay focused on Mayla’s head and not her hand as it came closer and closer to the lens and the camera. I like both of these shots, but the one at the top of this post is one of my favorites because of the way she was grabbing at that point and seemingly framing herself in the process.

 2, Don’t be afraid to pose them.

Mmm... popcorn!

Matt and Pam had their daughter with them at the Ultimate Idol finals in Oneonta a month or so back. Through some of the show, Adrianna was munching away on popcorn. However, I couldn’t get a shot of her eating the corn as she was either too quick for me, or was looking a different away. My attempt at being stealthy wasn’t working, either, as any time I aimed the camera at her, she’d either not eat the popcorn or just kind of stare away.

Busted!

So, I had to resort to the next best thing… letting her know what I was trying to do!

With help from Matt and Pam, we got Adrianna to eat up on some popcorn as I snapped away. I got some good shots of the action, but ones like this where some of the popcorn was coming out of her hand worked out well.

I realize that many times, photos of kids come when they are just, well, being kids. But I’ve also found that kids can be hams when a camera is trained on them. And they will do some funny things for the camera. Even better is when you show it to them after and they get a kick out of things. Then they seem to love that camera even more!

3, Keep the camera on the kids.

Oh no!

This is a photo that I want to hold onto and when David graduates high school, have it blown up to like 11×14 and frame it. I’m sure it’s one he might want to take to college with him, no?

One thing about kids is reactions. They do so many different things. They make faces. They do dances. They do crazy things with their hands or feet. Capture as many of these things as you can.

This image was taken when at David’s grandfather’s house for a little gathering. He was sitting on the tractor, pretending to drive it. But when he talked about the front loader, his Aunt Chrissy noted that he couldn’t do that because other little ones were there. And when asked what could happen, David made this face, basically showing it could have a bad ending.

If I didn’t have the camera trained on him, I would have missed it.

So the moral of all this is if you are going to take photos of the kids, don’t just point the camera at them for a second or two. Keep it on them when they are doing different things because things can change else can change in a snap of a finger. You’ll never get everything, but you might get yourself a couple of the doozy faces!

4, Facial expressions are a must!

Ooooooh!

The normal smiles are great and all, but when you get the goofy faces… well, ya know.

That kind of attaches with the last part to keeping the camera on the kid. If you just snap one or two when they look cute, you’ll never get the fun things. Take, for example, Mayla in the above photo.

What is this photo telling you? Was she curious? Surprised? Impressed?

This is also a lesson in looking at each of your photos on the computer, not just the camera screen. If you delete photos from your card while still looking at the camera, you might miss some great ones. Photos like this look better blown up rather than on a 2- or 3-inch screen on the camera.

5, Get on their level

David and his cars.

Let’s face it, kids are tiny people!

So, you can’t always take photos from your vantage point because then you might miss some good stuff. So get down to their level. Lay on the ground. Get down on your knees or into a catcher’s crouch. Put the camera on the ground and shoot straight ahead. Whatever you have to do to get to their eye level or lower, it’s going to be worth it.

Take the photo of David above. I could have easily stood above him and took images of him playing with his cars. But he was sprawled out on the ground having a good time. What better way to capture and document this time than by getting down there with him? Now this was easier as I stood off a porch for this shot and didn’t have to do much to get to his level, but no matter where you are in spots like this, it’s worth getting dirty if you have to in order to capture shots like this.

6. Go way above.

David and Scotty looking up.

Go the complete opposite as the last tip. But, again, don’t shoot from your vantage point, go higher.

Get on a chair. On a step ladder. Or, as I do, hold the camera as far as you can above your head, aim down and shoot away.

The shot I took of David and Scotty above was by doing that. It took several shots because I was aiming blindly. I didn’t want to take the camera off them, however, as I was afraid they’d look away and I’d miss the shot. So I somewhat moved the camera a bit while shooting, hoping to get the right shot. I also played with the zoom on the lens a little in hopes of framing the shot well.

If you have kids that will hold the pose a bit, you can do more. But if it’s more of a reaction shot, as above, you might want to just snap away and hope for the best. That’s the thing with kids photos, sometimes there’s no chance to set it up!

7, Black and white rules (at times!)

Smiles!

This is more of post-processing, especially with digital cameras. If you are still with film, then you’ll be needing black and white film.

Let me say that I love black and white in most cases. But with kids especially. Black and white gives the photo something special, I think. An old-time feel. The best part is that color, often enough, is not needed with the kids. Black and white gives that cool feel to things.

Take the photo of Mayla above. Does it need color? What exactly would color have done to this photo? Though color is a wonderful thing (and I like it more often than not), black and white gives this photo a cool touch, I think. The shadows, the shades — everything — just seems better in black and white with this shot.

The best part about digital photography is you can go back and forth from color and black and white to decide which you like better. Heck, you can try sepia and everything else, too!

8, Capture the moment

Tanner giving his father five.

This can be said for just about anything of which you are taking a photo.

But even more with kids. For this, I’ll use sports as an example. This becomes the journalist in me when it comes to this. Not everything has to be an action shot. You are capturing a story. Documenting something. It’s more than throwing, catching or hitting. (Though action shots are important, too… read on!)

Christopher watches the game.

Sporting events — or performances, or parties, or anything else — put kids in a situation other than in their normal setting. So document it. Show all sides of it. Take for example the above photo.

Dean, who helps coach his son’s team, gives Tanner a slap of the hand as Tanner heads out into the field. It’s a simple shot, but one that speaks many words. It shows a connection between father and son. It shows a connection between coach and player. It shows so much more than a hit or a catch. It’s a priceless moment caught in time. And it happens often. But too many times, people don’t have their camera up anymore. The game hasn’t resumed or anything like that.

There’s no action.

Emily picks out a bat

Let’s remember, too, that in youth sports, there are usually a lot of kids on each team. That means most don’t play every inning or every minute of every game. That doesn’t mean photo chances aren’t there. Take the photo of Christopher as he watches the game. Look at the glove. Check out how he’s just watching. It’s not a shot that is taken often, but it has that interesting factor. Something different.Same thing with the photo of his sister, Emily. It’s not a shot that screams action, but it’s an important part of the game as she’s finding a bad she thinks will work well for her.

That’s what I mean when I say capturing the moment.

It seems, in many cases anyway, that people are always focused on the action. I don’t disagree with that. I’m a big fan of sports photography and consider it my strongest point when it comes to a subject. But sports allow so many ways of thinking outside the box when you are shooting a game or an event.

Sometimes, it even comes down to not shooting the people you are there to take photos of.

This past spring, I went to a track meet to see my niece and nephew participate. I got action shots of each that I was quite happy with. But toward the end of the event, my other niece Catherine arrived. She had been at ballet practice and still had a whole heap of energy and was jumping around, doing gymnastics-type moves and running around.

By turning the camera on her and snapping a few shots, I got one of my favorite shots of the whole year. A simple shot, but there’s something about it that I really liked because of the colors, the framing and the spur-of-the-moment feel. And if I had been focused only on the action, I never would have had this chance.

Catherine.

In the end, remember one thing — you aren’t just capturing images or memories, you are documenting life as these kids grow. No matter the age — from birth to teenagers — these images are a part of their growing. Capture more than the memories that everyone else can do.

Think outside the box. If you do that, I’m sure the shots you will come up with will be keepers and ones to help you remember the growing process. As we all know, kids grow fast. So while they are still small, silly and fun — capture them on that memory card and have something to look back on!

You can see more photos of my friends and families kids on this Flickr set. And if you have any tips that has worked well for you, share them here as well in the comments section!!

***

Reminder! Contest going on! I am holding my first (of hopefully many) contests this week. It runs from Sept. 11- to 12:01 a.m. Sept. 18. You can see all the details on the contest post. Enter for your chance to win!

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook by clicking the button on the right side of the page!

The Ultimate Idol winner is…

Way to go Liz!

After several years of amazing performances, Liz Walker broke through.

Two performances that stood out among 10 finalists of the Oneonta Ultimate Idol made it difficult to pass over Liz again this year. One year after being the runner-up in the annual competition held by one of the area radio stations, Liz wowed a large crowd (estimated at 800-plus) with her vocals and the way she carried herself to be the Ultimate Idol and win the largest purse to date in the competition — $3,000!

Liz during her second song

Besides that, she won a custom-written song and a recording session at a local studio and she’ll open for American Idol finalist Melinda Dolittle at a concert in a couple of weeks. Very cool!

She earned it.

With a contingent of fans that included her friends, family, her boyfriend Gid and his family, and several of us from the softball team, Liz by far had the loudest and best group of fans.

When she belted out Fantasia Barrino’s “I believe” as the 10th and final singer of the first round, there was no doubt who the person to beat this year was. She had the crowd going absolutely bonkers.

Take a peek for yourself:

Pretty awesome, right?

Many of us thought she got jobbed in last year’s Ultimate Idol when she was named the runner up. This year made it that much better when she won.

Her second song — the judge’s choice — was an older song and one that many people might have not heard before. Makes it tough when you are the final contestant of the night, eh?

She had to sing “Misty Blue,” the Dorothy Moore version — a song that was recorded in 1976. No worries. With that big crowd backing her, she slayed that song, too, getting one of the best ovations of the night.

A couple of images from that song performance:

Liz at Ultimate Idol!

Owning the stage!

And, of course, I must add the video of the announcement…

Congrats to Liz! It was well-earned and you really wowed the crowd last night!

  • To view other photos from Liz’s winning night, visit my set on Flickr.
  • You can visit this set on Flickr to see photos from her semifinals performance.
  • Video from her semifinals performance can be seen on my Flickr, too (just a small clip).

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com.

 

Tackling Central Park

I’ll have some other posts coming up about my recent vacation — both caching and non-caching. But, I wanted to start out with Central Park. Ever since the trip to Maine got, unfortunately, canceled, I had put my eyes on trying to complete an amazing multi-cache in the Bridges and Arches of Central Park.

This is part of the description from the cache page:

An extensive multi-cache (offset) that brings you on a tour of Central Park’s historical bridges and archways. Bring a calculator if you intend to solve in the field!

hit counterWelcome to the Bridges and Arches of Central Park! This ambitious challenge takes you on a grand tour of the most famous park in the world. Central Park covers over 800 acres of greenery and recreation areas in the middle of Manhattan, so prepare for a long (but pleasant) walk.

It was long, indeed.

For the day, four of us logged probably 10-12 miles traipsing through Central Park. Now, I’ve never been to Central Park, so that was fun. And, it was one of the cooler days of the week, which was nice. Still, that many miles and getting other caches in the park (including a longer whereigo cache), meant jumping around a little and having to find a lot of things as we broke off trails and such.

Essentially, the goal is to find all of these bridges and arches — 32 of them total. In the end, you do some math, get the final coordinates and go seek said cache. While at it, of course, there are many other caches in Central Park to grab.

Here’s Darren, Jim and Heather getting the needed info from one of the spots:

This day wasn’t just about all the walking though. Allow me to give a brief look at some of the things that were used/done during the day.

We came into the city with Darren’s truck — not a small one, either. That meant finding parking, too. We did eventually find parking, many blocks away. We got to the starting spot, just to get a call from Jim and Heather saying they, too, were having problems finding parking.

Once they arrived, we started by going into the Apple Store — which is quite the spot — in the hopes of loading Darren’s GPS with the Central Park Whereigo cache. No luck.

Then it was off on the hunt.

We did a handful of the bridges and arches and caches while we were in the midst of doing the Whereigo cache. Once finishing that, we then set forth into finding all the bridges and arches needed for the final. Mind you, we’ve already done a ton of walking (2+ miles according to my pedometer).

For the rest of the Bridges and Arches cache, we did the following items:

  • Walked
  • Paid a guy on one of the ponds to row us from one side to the other.
  • Climbed hills
  • Took a subway
  • Rode a carousel

Heather and Jim being paddled across the water:

Turns out that guy paid $12 to use the boat for an hour. Darren forked over $10 to take us across. Not a bad deal for that guy, eh?

We hit a handful of caches that day, too. One was near this statue, of which Darren seemed to like:

Back to the Bridges and Arches cache, however. A lot of these were really nice. I probably should have taken more photos, but I have to be honest — as the day drew on, it got harder and harder to stick with it. The feet started to hurt and even though it was cooler than in previous days, it was still pretty hot. It was all starting to catch up with us. So as we got nearer and nearer to the finish, it was to the point where we started to kind of push onward.

At one of the arches:

We stopped and did a couple of virtual caches as well, and here’s the group getting the needed info at one of them:

After doing the final ones at the one end of the park, we had to go back to the other end to get one last one. We did that as night was setting in and we all stopped at some benches to figure the final coordinates. However, knowing about where the cache was, nothing was adding up. Now, this got frustrating.

We knew things were wrong, but thankfully I had the phone number of the cache owner. Problem was, we couldn’t get him. Jim and Heather couldn’t get two people they knew who had done it. And as it got closer to 8:30 p.m., the reality that we might not be able to finish this cache was setting in and it was very annoying.

We opted to walk to a place we were going to eat and halfway there, I got the phone call from the cache owner. Yes! We figured where our error was and we soon had the real coordinates and were on our way to get the final cache. We found that with relative ease and the best part is each finder gets a coin for finishing. I left a couple of my pathtags and we happily signed the log book before heading off to finally eat dinner.

Oh, I got a big hamburger and fries — I had earned that meal! Good stuff.

After that, it was a taxi ride to where the truck was parked and then we dropped Jim and Heather off at their car before heading back to Darren’s place. What a day turned out to be.

In the end, we figured 10-12 miles worth of walking. In the end, we found 14 caches, but the Bridges and Arches was the crowing achievement. It was one heck of a challenge to do and I’m glad to say I got to do it with the others who went along. It was a fun time for sure.

During the day, we also did ride the famous Central Park Carousel, which for $2 it was something that had to be done. Not that carousel’s are thrilling rides, but being that close, we had to do it. This carousel has been in operation since 1871, so that’s pretty cool. It’s really old-school and kind of neat how it’s just set in the park.
The best part is knowing this park — which is so country-like — is in the middle of New York City.

I’ll have more about the vacation and other items soon.

One other thing — starting Monday (24th), I’ll be back to updating the photo blog on a regular basis. Stop by!
More later!

Night, snow… caching? Why not?

OK, I know I usually go in order, but I’m interrupting the order for good reason.

Went on a caching trip Wednesday (more on that soon… after the Middletown event report). Anyway, we had a rough afternoon and figured we’d end it with an easy cache called a “Lame Rest Area Cache.” Yeah, on a guardrail at a pulloff.

Problems?

Snow. When they plow through, it builds up. However, with a day filled with many DNFs… we couldn’t cash it in, could we?

(For the record, I did note later that it wasn’t noted as winter accessible as originally thought. Alas, we did find it! Thankfully I was the guy doing the recording, not the digging!)

I’ll have the full story with this adventure and the rest of the day soon.
More later!