Sunday, August 7, 2011

Steeplechase!

 click on the pix for bigger views!

Last week's best shot at the track was taken with a remote shutter on a mini tripod sitting in the grass right next to the hurdle where the horses jump for the Steeplechase races!  I set up the camera, but it was actually WTEN producer Dave Mink that pushed the button on the remote.  I had my hands full with the TV camera. My Canon 7D was set to take continuous shots in rapid succession once the shutter was pressed in the hopes of getting a decent one.  Surprisingly, the camera was still going off when I went to retrieve it, even though my pal Dave was no longer pushing the button.  Let's just say there were an awful lot of images to erase!

Besides cropping for more of a panoramic type shot, there was quite a bit of editing done to this photo... Here's the original...

First off, I increased the saturation in both the sky and the grass and upped the contrast just a little. There was another camera on the ground in front of the banner covering up the C and the H, so I had to get rid of that and rebuild the letters...


Next, I cloned out the people's heads that are peaking over the hedge.  That's me, Dave Mink and intern Jenna Cottrell under that lead horse...

There was also a distracting red helmet over the lead horse's hind quarters...

I got rid of it.  For the pic, I think we'll just assume that the jockey on that horse was riding a couple inches lower!

That's about it.  The shot was taken with my 10-22mm lens at f/4.5 at 1/2500 sec with an ISO of 400!