Sport photography, much like ballet photography, is all about catching the action. Outside in a Davis sunny summer day provides an extra benefit: The light is adequate. In fact, the light is more than adequate. it's downright harsh. That provides its own problems. Overexposure of the highlights becomes a problem, along with too-dark shadows. What I'd really like is a nice cloudy day. The volleyball players would like that too. It was probably 100°F that day.

Check out the rest of my volleyball photos from that day.

This was probably my favorite photo that I entered into the 2008 Yolo County Fair. This one was a sure thing; my golden ticket. This one was definitely going to win me a blue ribbon. It's my best category, after all: "Nature, wild".

Unfortunately, I submitted my entry form at the last minute, late late at night, and my eyes were not lining up the table rows in the class descriptions. I accidentally wrote down the number for the "Abstract" category. It doesn't exactly fit that description, don't you think? Well the judges didn't think so either, so it won nothing. Bummer.

Fortunately, I entered several other photos, and even ended up winning a couple blue ribbons. All in all, I'm pleased with the outcome, and I walked away with my winnings of $12. It cost me about $200 and ten hours to print and frame all these photos. Not a good business model, I suppose. Of course that's not really the point. This was a great excuse for me to get some of my photos framed, something I haven't done in years.

Next year, I'll read the directions a little better, and double-check my entry form.

This is my latest photo shoot for Shannon's ballet studio. Shannon takes classes with Pamela Trokanski's Dance Workshop, and I have taken photographs at a number of performances. This was part of the "Fairy Tales" performance in February, 2008. You can see some more photos in the Fairy Tales Gallery. This photo was taken of the latter part of "The Little Match Girl" when the Angels show up to take her away. Very moving, and the dancers performed beautifully.

As I have mentioned before, the conditions in which these photographs are taken are about as complicated as you can get. It's a dark theater with fast-moving subjects and I'm not allowed to use a flash.

I got a new camera last year, and this was its first opportunity to shoot a ballet. I'm very pleased with the results.

I shot this ballet performance at 1600 ISO. For those who don't quite grasp the gravity of this statement, let me explain. In the dark ages of photography, sensitivity of film (that plastic stuff) was rated by its ISO. 100 ISO meant that it took more light to expose it so you would use that film outside in the sunshine. 800 ISO was particularly "fast" which meant that it took far less light to expose the film, so you could use it indoors or at twilight. The tradeoff was that ISO 800 film was very grainy, so it didn't look as smooth and sharp as 100 ISO.

In the grand new renaissance of digital photography, ISO values are still used (for simplicity's sake) to adjust the sensitivity of the digital sensor. Interestingly enough, the side-effect of increasing the ISO of a digital camera looks very similar to film, though the graininess is called "noise".

So, let's get back to my original statement: I shot this ballet at 1600 ISO. This allowed me to use a moderately fast shutter speed (1/320) so I could capture the action. Still, though, there is very little noise. Why is this?

More history: For the first five years of digital photography, everybody was all concerned about "how many megapixels" does the camera have? This camera has 1.3 megapixels, this one has 3.2, this one has 5 megapixels! Back then sensors were in their infancy and that sort of thing mattered. NO MORE! Now, just about every new camera you purchase will have 7 or more megapixels, which is WAY more than enough for most applications. NEWS FLASH: IT NO LONGER MATTERS HOW MANY MEGAPIXELS YOUR CAMERA HAS. In fact, it hasn't mattered for about three years.

So, what matters? Technology marches forward, so what's getting better? Sensor SENSITIVITY is getting better. With a new camera, you can take a photo with less available light, higher ISO, and it will still look very good. The amount of noise introduced into an image shot at high ISO is diminishing with each generation of digital cameras and will continue to do so. At the same time, cameras will begin to support higher and higher ISO settings and the photos that come out of them will still be usable. I shot this ballet with ISO 1600, which is as high as my camera goes. The new Nikon D3 goes up to ISO 6400, and I've heard that you can barely notice the noise at that speed. Incredible!

As cameras take better looking photos with higher ISO, great-looking low-light photos become a reality. This is just the beginning!

I visited a couple state parks during my last trip to Orlando, Florida. At Wekiwa Springs State Park, I took a walk on a great nature trail that went through some of Florida's "wilderness". It was as wild as I was going to tolerate anyway.

I was struck by this scene. I'm used to seeing tall palm trees in tropical locations. Here, though, I found these palms that were very short and much of the brush we came across was thick with it. The scraggly trees were a nice contrast to the short palms.

Sometimes no matter how fast I set my shutter speed, there's always something that moves faster. Let's see... Hummingbirds beat their wings up to 80 times per second and my shutter speed was set to 1/250 sec. That means it managed to go through about a third of a flap through while my shutter was open.

This shot was taken at ECCO at that same butterfly bush as the previous Monarch photo. I guess more creatures than just butterflies like that plant.