A day at the races

Duck races that is! Rubber ducks to be exact. Small yellow monsters meandering down a boat channel to their final destination of a PVC pipe catch system. Exciting and speedy as it sounds, the photo opportunities aren't as bad as you'd think.

Charity events and the like are great places to get good pictures. Happy people doing happy things everywhere. Activities, preparation, behind the scenes, etc. Main thing about shooting at this stuff is to keep your eyes open and be ready. I tend to just walk the place, camera around my neck, searching for something.

This event was just after the swimming invitational so I had to quick drive over there. You're going to get most of your assignments daily and they'll usually be back to back. Murphy's law includes your ability to have gaps between things to get there.


I was told that I only really needed to get shots of the actual duck race, but there were cute kid things going on so it can't hurt to get some images. This one is gladly not in the harsh sunlight that was going on that day, but under a nice tent. It was a quick photo. Got a candid shot, then got their names from mom. Always good to show mom you're not a creep by telling them who you work for.

The rest of the event was really pretty simple. Walk out onto a dock, shoot down the channel toward the start. After that I waded through the crowd of people watching and literally grabbed the next image by holding my camera over other people's heads. Stupidly, right over the water too. Had someone bumped me hard enough I might have dropped my camera in the channel.

I'm not six feet tall so shooting over other people is rather difficult. It's one thing I really don't like about my physique. Sometimes you gotta do what you can to get the shot.

This is like the 4th festival that I've shot. The photo department actually joked to me that I'm their "festival photographer" exclusively. They definitely are places to get good feature images.