It's time for Summer Sports!

Friends getting together to play an eventful game of volleyball at Valley Forge Christian College.

SERVICE!  This student is ready to get into the game.

Martin Garrett serves up yet another one for the team.

A beautiful day in Phoenixville, PA during.  What a great way to break from final exams.

Experimenting with Nature Photography

Close-up of the flowers that grow here at the beautiful campus of Valley Forge Christian College.

Finding beauty in every aspect of God's creation.

Experimenting with focus and bokeh with some amazing colors.

Portaits

Senior Portraits for Andrew Moore at Valley Forge Christian College.

Andrew Moore will be graduating with a BA in Digital Media & Communications.  After graduation, Andrew plans on continuing his passion for Digital Media by creating Motion Graphics and Videos for companies and commercial use.

NCCAA Basketball Championship 2012

Roberts Weslyn player #11 has a breakaway down court for 2 points.

Thrown in for Roberts Weslyn in the second half.

Colorado Christian gives pressure to the defense.

Off the back iron for a gain of 2.

Taking a look at the score board as time quickly counts down to the end of the game.

On the base-line for her second free-throw.

Roberts Weslyn tries to take the lead with another free-throw.

Concentrating on how she can effect the outcome of this game.

Lighting

Hey everyone, it's a new week, which means I have new pictures to show you.

Last week in my Photography & Convergent Journalism we discussed the use of external lighting and flash.  I was really drawn to a particular part of the lesson that talked about ratios in lighting.  The example that we used was in wedding and portrait photography; the subject of the shot seemed to be perfectly exposed while the background was much dimmer.  A simple contrast would show a 3:1 ratio, while a more dramatic approach would show a 5:1 ratio.  Basically, the difference is in the appearance of the shot due to the different stops between lights.

Instead of drowning you with too much information, how about you have a look for yourself at what I came up with that night.

Keiler Brown, a Digital Media Major, looking for something to do on the 24" iMac computer in the Digital Media Center at VFCC.

Sports Broadcasting at VFCC

This week is all about my favorite part of being a student here at Valley Forge Christian College, the Digital Media Major.  One of the classes that is offered at VFCC inside of the Digital Media Program is Sports Broadcasting I and II.  The class is comprised of about 10 students who rotate on a week by week basis to broadcast the Men's and Women's basketball games on Campus.  These students also have the chance to travel with the teams to the NCCAA Tournament in the Spring to broadcast the entire event.  This class is a great class to take if you want to know all about the "behind the scenes" aspect of a sporting event, while at the same time being able to actually use all the equipment that is needed to produce a stunning broadcast.

The pictures below provide a small glimpse into the responsibilities of our Sports Broadcasting team.

Ben Franco, the Sports Broadcasting professor at Valley Forge Christian College, directing the team during the VFCC Patriots and Penn State Lehigh Valley.

All smiles just after an amazing slam dunk by Lance Harris.

Mixing between the two different cameras on the control board.

Witnessing an amazing play on the court, the camera operator smiles as he continues to "capture" the moment.

A view from the camera operators perspective during the game.

Our sports announcers describing the game stats and eagerly awaiting the outcome of this intense game.

Advantages of Using Depth-of-field

This week I wanted to feature one photo that truly brings out an amazing feature that you can achieve on virtually any DSLR camera.  The use of depth-of-field is an amazing technique that allows the photographer to separate the subject from the background, as seen in the photo below.  On a standard 18-55mm lens with an aperture of f/3.5, it may be hard to achieve the same photo as this one.

This particular picture was taken with a 50mm prime lens with an aperture of f/1.8.  In order to get such a soft background, I mad sure that I gave enough distance between my subject and the background, which is why you only see the subjects face and not his whole body.  Testing a variety of lenses with different f stops will give you different results and I think it is great practice for anyone who wants to go into the field of photography.

Capturing the subject with a soft focus on the background in Philadelphia, PA.  Pictured: Michael McGary of Valley Forge Christian College.

A New Perspective (Philadelphia)

Philadelphia is a beautiful city, if you know where to look.  For this shoot I was able to gain access to the top floor of an apartment building off of Locust Street in downtown Philadelphia.  Along with 4 four other friends, I wasted no time in capturing this moment.  We set up our equipment and continued shooting until we got exactly what we wanted.

This is my favorite shot of the city that I took over the weekend.  This picture is actually an HDR photo (3 different exposures merged together).  However, I made sure to keep the realistic aspect intact to achieve a specific look.  The sun was giving a harsh exposure on the right side of all the buildings, so in order to see the detail throughout the image, i decided to merge the 3 different exposures to achieve an image that the natural I would really see.

As the sun began to set, we took to the streets to capture the real beauty of Philadelphia, the lights.  In this photo I used a long exposure to capture the light trails that you see.  The photo was taken on Broad Street while car were passing by.  My shutter speed was set at 10 seconds with an aperture of about f/22.  In the future I will experiment with different aperture sizes and more light.

This is my rendition of an HDR shot of City Hall.  It's a little more surreal than what I originally planned, but it was fun to experiment with.  Problems I ran into with this photo include the grainy texture in the blacks due to the high ISO on the camera, difficulties with focus since I had to keep my aperture completely open to bring in enough light, and compensating for exposure and gamma amount in Photoshop.  Overall, I like the way this came out, but I hope to work on my HDR skills in the future.

Capturing Emotion

This week my assignment was to capture "true" emotion in photography.  The subject could be anyone we knew or someone that we randomly saw while going about our day.  My first thought for this assignment was to capture the bright and transforming face of my friend Adam Mason.

My goal was to get Adam to play video games with my roommates while I walked around snapping of picture after picture of Adam and my roommate in deep concentration.  This is what I came up with:

The process was tedious but I learned a lot while shooting.

• It is important to keep your camera up and constantly look for new expressions of the subject.
• Make sure your getting a variety of shots with many different focal lengths.
• Make sure there is plenty of light for shooting these pictures; for a crisp image you will need to use a quick shutter speed.
• Finally, don't wait till the night before your photos are due to start your assignment; allow yourself plenty of time to choose your subject(s) and shooting area.

Beauty at Valley Forge Christian College

This picture was taken outside of Solomon's Porch at the beautiful campus of Valley Forge Christian College.  When I look at this picture I think about all of the links involved to make this chain stay strong together to serve an over all purpose.  It reminds of a family or a community that comes together over a common goal.  Their purpose is to stay strong through whatever comes their way.  Just like a chain, a strong family can hold together.

This picture was also taken at my college in Phoenixville, PA.  I love this picture because the part of the image that is in focus is the reflection from far away, while the ground that surrounds the puddle is slightly out of focus.  I believe that it is always a good sign to see something clear whether or not your look at a reflection.  A clear image lets you know that you have accomplished something great or are on the right path in doing so.  Even with the blurred vision that comes our way from time to time, we can still look for a clearer picture up ahead.