A Night At The Races

This will be short and sweet for now and I'll update with more text later on.

This assignment was about the local race track closing it's doors after years of entertainment for the locals here in West Michigan. People aren't happy to see it go, especially the people employed by said track.

Basically when I got to this place I had to contact the reporter that was going to be around interviewing people, and then sort of shoot some of the people that she interviewed. I did this for oh, about 5 minutes. I seldom stick to who the reporter talks to because well, they're not looking for interesting events, they're looking for talkative people or someone who knows stuff.

This guy was gambling on the races obviously. He's just sitting there. Why spend time shooting him a ton?

Instead I went around and looked for more of the people that are truely affected by the closing. The people that are involved in the races.

These guys are deep in the racing world. The man on the right has been working at horse tracks for ages. He'll have to move across the country to find new work.

The same goes for the jockeys. They travel to where there is work for them.

Here's my detail shot on the left. You get these at every assignment. They can really make your entire shoot turn out better. If you're being paid per photo or get a bonus per photo, then you need to get good details all the time. Think about it, it's better to have the affect of two photos than just one. They tell the story better. I hope to get at least three shots in the paper.

On the right is another angle of the guy above. Shoot lots of angles. High, low, really high, really low. Definitely don't just stand there and shoot from your normal height all the time. You'll have photos that all look too similar.

Variety baby!

Oh yeah, by the way, all of this was shot with a single Nikon SB800 strobe held off camera. I bounce it off walls like crazy. You should too. On camera flash = bad!