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Beer league hockey photos



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Yes, when all else fails in hockey simply use your stick as a hatchet! It works!

I'm still on injured reserve with an ACL tear, so I've been shooting my beer league team's games with the new 70-300mm lens. It's not ideal -- it's a slow lens for indoor sports -- but I've gotten a few decent pics that for online. They'd probably make prints if kept small (8 x 10, for example). 

I got my best results with ISOs ranging from 800 to 1600, allowing me to shoot at shutter speeds ranging from 1/640 to 1/1000. I processed in Lightroom but used Nik Dfine 2.0 to get rid of some of the noise.




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  Aaron being chased by one of the Marauder's main goons.

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Check out more of my work on my SmugMug site; here are four galleries of exciting beer league hockey action. And if you don't play hockey, but want to -- stop fucking around reading the internet and get down to your local rink. Life awaits! My ACL injury was a total freak thing -- but be careful of groin pulls and wear a cup. Those pucks are little bastards.

--S.H.

These photos are ©Steve Hymon and may not be used elsewhere without my advanced written permission. All rights reserved. 

Hipstamatic & downtown Los Angeles



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That's unlovely Broadway Street in downtown Los Angeles, a street that begging for some gentrification -- there's easily a dozen old movie palaces that are either closed, rarely used or have been converted to flea markets. 

Depressing for the nation's second-largest city? Sure! On the other hand, it sure is photogenic! 

The above photo was taken with a great combination for urban scenes on the Hipstamatic app for iPhone - the Libatique 73 lens and the D-type plate film. Try this somewhere with a lot of buildings.

Killing time at work? A few other recent blog posts that may interest you: Bridal shop on Broadway, Reflections on a duck pond, Los Angeles subway in black and white, Summit Lake in the Eastern Sierra and Snapshot of a dog going to the vet

Stole your mom's credit card and want to stick it to the old lady who ruined your life? Buy some prints of my work from my SmugMug site! Hint: the metallic paper is the way to go even if it costs a little more. 

Like social media? I think it's mostly stupid but I have a Twitter account anyway because everyone else does and I'm a follower, not a leader. 

--S.H. 

This photo ©Steve Hymon and may not be used elsewhere without advanced written permission. All rights reserved.

Bridal shop on Broadway



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Broadway in downtown L.A. is basically a flea market -- albeit a photogenic one. I liked the color in the above store set against the otherwise dreary nightscape of the street. 

If you're bored, here's my SmugMug site. And follow me on Twitter -- I occasionally remember I have an account and tweet something profoundly stupid even by social media standards. 

--S.H.

This photo ©Steve Hymon and may not be used elsewhere without advanced written permission. All rights reserved. 

The not quite full moon



I was wondering how the new Nikon 70-300mm lens would handle the moon. Answer: pretty well -- took this at twilight earlier this week. 

There's a lot of noise and I'm not sure how to get rid of it without losing the great detail on the moon. I'm sure there's a way to do it via layering in Photoshop but I don't know the process. Anyone with a good idea out there? Please comment if you do. 

My SmugMug site and portfolio

--S.H.

This photo ©Steve Hymon and may not be used without advanced written permission. All rights reserved. 

Addendum: here's a full moon shot I took on Sunday with the same lens and a tripod. The one above is better. 


Mallard squared



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A mallard photo from my visit to the Huntington Gardens last weekend. This one earned "photo of the day" from the Huntington's Facebook page, meaning I'm now an extremely famous photographer. Bow before me and chant compliments, Internet People! 

In all honesty, I was just trying to get a closeup of the duck and barely noticed the reflection until I was processing the photo later. Yes, it's good to be very unobservant when practicing the art of photography. 


Waste hours of your work day cruising my SmugMug site and purchasing photos and other merchandise for modest amounts of money. And follow me on Twitter

--S.H. 

The above photo is ©Steve Hymon and may not be used or reproduced elsewhere without my advanced written permission. All rights reserved.

Reflections on a duck pond



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Another one from trip to the Huntington Gardens on Sunday. The reflections were created by a bunch of screaming kids at the side of the pond trying to get the duck to look at them. The duck was like "FU and your dumb parents!" 

I used my new 70-300mm lens at 300mm to help smoosh together the reflections. 

Yep, this photo and all others on this blog are available for purchase at my SmugMug site. And follow me on Twitter

--S.H. 

The above photo is ©Steve Hymon and may not be used or reproduced elsewhere without my advanced written permission. All rights reserved.

Hummingbirds at the Huntington Gardens



Click here to see the above super-size! Anna's hummingbird, female. 
 

Click here to see the above super-size! Anna's hummingbird, male. 
 

Click here to see the above super-size! Anna's hummingbird, male. 

I had a good day photo-wise at the Huntington Gardens on Sunday -- the above trio of hummingbird photos was captured within the space of 30 minutes in the desert section. 

I just stood near some plants that hummers like with a 300mm telephoto lens on my Nikon D5100. It was really just a matter of waiting for a hummer to land or hover in one place long enough to get the lens to focus and the camera to fire off a few shots. 

It also helped that it was late afternoon and the light was very nice. I figured one picture might turn out -- and then got total wood when combing through Lightroom last night and finding there were three pretty good ones. 

The images had some noise, perhaps courtesy of the telephoto lens. After cropping and making a few basic fixes in Lightroom, I used Dfine 2.0 to help reduce the noise. It definitely helped. (Note: Dfine offers a 15-day free trial; so far I've found it does a better job at noise reduction than Lightroom). 

I'll post some other nice photos from the Huntington as the week goes on. 

Whoops -- almost forgot the usual caveat: I'm as loose as a common street whore. Prints and merchandise featuring all photos from this blog can be purchased for modest prices from my SmugMug site. If you have any questions about pricing or print sizes, just email me at steve.hymon1@gmail.com and I'll answer promptly. Also, follow me on Twitter

--S.H.

These photos are ©Steve Hymon and may not be used or reproduced elsewhere without my advanced written permission. All rights reserved. 


Chair with a view



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Another one from last night's foray into Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles. Good idea, not terribly well executed -- I'll work on exposing better next time.

My SmugMug site

--S.H.

This photo is ©Steve Hymon and may not be used or reproduced elsewhere without my advanced written permission. All rights reserved. 

Grand Park (again)



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Los Angeles Grand Park and L.A. City Hall. Under-exposed. Should have brought my tripod. Not total puke. But could have been better. 


And this: I bet no one -- no one!! -- has ever thought of taking a photo from this spot before! 


My SmugMug site


--S.H.

This photo is ©Steve Hymon and may not be used or reproduced elsewhere without my advanced written permission. All rights reserved. 

Sammy loves his Lightroom preset!

 
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Sammy the Dog. I'm loving this preset by onOne in Lightroom called "vintage-Grandma's Lemonade," used for the above photo. Makes digital photography look more like film.

My SmugMug site. And follow me on Twitter.

--S.H.

This photo is ©Steve Hymon and may not be used elsewhere in any medium without my advanced permission. All rights reserved.

Skateboarder at beach



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I can't decide if this one is a big piece of crap or kinda interesting. I was goofing around trying to get some photos of the dog -- dog wasn't cooperating -- and noticed the people on the bike path were being silhouetted by the setting sun.

Yeah, I know. No one's ever tried that before. 

Well, as the benevolent dictator of this blog, I get to post as many crappy photos as Google will allow -- so here goes. Judge for yourself. 

Many more images to gaze up on at my SmugMug site -- buy a print! -- and follow me on Twitter

--S.H.

This image ©Steve Hymon and may not be used elsewhere without my advance written permission. All rights reserved. 

Beer league hockey



As I may have mentioned, I recently did a shred job on one of my ACLs, meaning I'm on injured reserve for the rest of my hockey team's season. Naturally, I took the money I would have spent playing hockey and spent it instead on a 70-300mm telephoto lens. (No, it never occurred to me to save the money). 

I gave the lens its first real workout last night at my team's game. The one above is my favorite. A bunch of guys standing in front of the goal, waiting for the arrival of Senor Puck. There's all sorts of things technically wrong with the photo -- badly exposed, lot of noise, etc. -- but I dig it because it captures the intensity of hockey. 

I played around with the processing to give the photo a vintage feel -- I used the onOne "Vintage-Retro Warm" filter for Lightroom 4. I wanted the image to have that film look that best captures old rinks late at night in some far-off decade (never mind that the photo was taken in a new rink this decade). I'll probably be hating on it in a couple of days and change it up, but I likey for now. 

More pics from last night's game on my SmugMug page. And follow me on Twitter as I occasionally remember to tweet something really stupid. 

--S.H.

This image ©Steve Hymon and may not be used elsewhere without my advance written permission. All rights reserved. 

Los Angeles subway



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Here's one I took for work last week -- the subway pulling into the Civic Center station in downtown L.A. Yeah, go ahead -- insert your joke here about transit and traffic in L.A. I can take it! 

I used my Nikon 10-24 wide angle lens and opened it up all the way to 10mm to see what an approaching train might look like, suspecting there'd be some neat lines. There wasn't a lot of color in the original, so I converted it to black and white and bumped up the clarity. 

Check out more of my work on my SmugMug site, where all sorts of prints and other merch is for sale. I'm a whore: you want it, I'll sell it! 

--S.H.

This photo ©Steve Hymon and may not be used in any media elsewhere without advance permission from Steve Hymon. All rights reserved. 

Presets for Lightroom to make digital look more film-like



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UPDATE: please see my Sept. 28 review of VSCO presets for Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw. They're good! 

One of the challenges of digital photography is making digital photos not look like they were created by a computer. This is a struggle at times, especially with some images created by my 10-24 wide angle lens at the shorter focal lengths.

As anyone with an iPhone knows, there are some dandy apps available that take crappy phone camera photos and, at the least, make them look like they came from crappy film cameras. At the least, many of these apps give a photo a lot more character -- the kind of character once associated with film.

I'm not sure that filters for processing photos from big digital cameras are as good. But I recently downloaded some free presets for Lightroom 4 by onOne that work pretty well. Again, the key word here is "free."

I took the above photo with my new 300mm lens on my Nikon D5100 and then used the onOne preset "Grandma's Lemonade." I like it. The photo doesn't have that digital sheen and does have that film look.

Below is a more problematic photo, taken with my wide angle lens at 10mm. I fixed the distortion as best I could and then added the 'vintage-retro warm' filter from onOne. It's not perfect and no doubt film would likely look better. But it's more film like, without the hassle of buying, developing and scanning.


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Thoughts? Any useful tips or tricks? 

 --S.H.

These photos are ©Steve Hymon and may not be used elsewhere or reproduced without advance permission from Steve Hymon. All rights reserved.