Sowle Sister

This girl had great expressions as she worked the walls with her board. For being so young she was pretty daring with her moves and I was impressed! I could have cropped in on this image but I wanted the viewer to see a little of the shape and depth of the bowl she was skating in. The clouds had covered the sun for a minute here as was happening on and off that morning.

Camera info: Nikon D200, 70 - 200 mm 2.8 VR lens, f4.5 at 1/640th, ISO 100, cloudy white balance

Post processing: cloned out a few dark spots in the concrete, ran PunchDrunk by Kubota but masked it from her face, ran The Edge and PopSickle (changed blending mode from hardlight to softlight) to sharpen and bring out details but again, masked off of her face, levels for global brightness, then Touch of Light action to lighten just her face a little.

Babes on Boards

Our photo club field trip in March was to the Lee and Joe Jamail Skatepark in Houston and it was the first time I had ever been to a skatepark, or tried to photograph skateboarders. The event was titled "Babes on Boards" and I was thinking it would be Roller-Derby-types of women, and while there were some of those, there were many little girls too. Some were led by a parent down a gentle slope, teaching little ones as young as about 3 years old how to balance. One pre-teen girl had her arm in a bright red cast and she did NOT sit on the sidelines and watch. I wanted to use a slow shutter speed with panning for motion blur images but found it hard to tell where the girls were going inside those empty swimming pools --- I just couldn't follow the action very well. Still I did get some action shots with stopped motion and I had a great time watching those crazy-brave girls.

Camera info: Nikon D200, 70 -200mm 2.8 VR lens, f5.0 at 1/640th, ISO 100, sunny whitebalance
Post processing: duplicated the background and cloned out distracting spots in the concrete, ran The Edge, PopSickle and Krypto Glasses actions from Kubota and reduced the opacities to my taste and masked away areas that did not help the image, added a levels adjustment for brightness.