How It's Spun

Another Saturday and another full day of shooting winterguard. Again, winterguard is all about the colorguard and it is done indoors.

Once again, one of my favorite images of this past weekend was a rifle shot. This time, this performer was spinning the rifle, which creates a nice visual effect, when viewed from up in the stands.

When I shoot winterguard, this is a type of shot I love to capture. I call it the hand-eye coordination shot. You can really see the concentration while she spins this rifle.

When I compose colorguard photos, I tend to shoot most of them at an angle. I do this for a few reasons. One of them is that the depth-of-field is razor thin and if you shoot straight on them, there is a good chance the camera's auto focus will lock onto the bright white object in front. If that happens, the face will be slightly out of focus. By shooting at an angle, the rifle and performer are almost in the same focus plane. Thus, even if the auto focus locks onto the rifle, the performer should be well enough into acceptable focus.

Another reason why I shoot at an angle is that it fills up the frame better. It also reduces limbs from being chopped off at bad spots and it also makes the shot more 3D-ish and more dynamic. By dynamic, I am referring to motion and not dynamic range.

Lastly, I decided to use a different method of noise reduction. I left the contrast noise in tact and only concentrated on the color noise. The color noise is what bothers me. The grain type of noise doesn't. I have come to the conclusion that no matter how great the noise removal software is, it will noticeable soften your image and you will also lose that subtle detail and make your image look a little plastic. That is why I only remove color noise from now on.