Feeding My Passion

Making pictures of sports events is different than the bulk of my work so far, and it presents its own set of things to learn, which I generally don’t do often enough to learn. I could have turned this into my 1-day picture story assignment, but I think most of the pictures are ok, not great or even good. Perhaps I’m being a little tough on myself. I was trying to do some different things (motion blur, close portrait, action, establishing shot, etc.), but none of them worked particularly well, for one reason or another, the fault being mostly mine and lack of practice with the techniques I was attempting.

But hey, it was a beautiful day for a bike race!

One of the most thought-provoking and mind-bending things I experienced at the race was the number of amateur photographers with killer gear. While the guy I met (I’m still searching for name and website address) was probably the king of the amateurs since he had traveled from the Bay Area (San Fransisco and surrounding areas), which is about 2 1/2 hours away, and he had a 300/2.8 on the very newest professional Canon body, an EOS-1D Mark IV. We were shooting side-by-side, and I heard the flutter of his shutter, like a hummingbird’s wings beating the air, which at 10fps, turns out not to be much of an exaggeration.

He said, with some embarrassment, that he shoots 2000-5000 frames every time he photographs sports or almost any other event. This raises a few questions for me, most of which I’d rather discuss with my professor and class than ruminate on here.

(2000-5000?! Really?! And I thought that was going a little crazy when I took over 250 frames at the martial arts studio. I feel positively frugal!)

Here is my relatively modest contribution to the bazillions of frames that were taken during the races.

I left California in 1990 after graduating from Elk Grove High School to attend the University of Missouri-Columbia (aka MU). After going to school (and not finishing…yet, hence my current status as a student in my very last class), living in Boston, back in Columbia (without finishing school, of course), getting married, working in Oregon and Indiana, getting divorced, working in Michigan, I’m now living with my family in Merced, California (again!).

One of the requirements to become an English teacher in S. Korea is a criminal background check, and I need to get one from whatever state I’m a resident of. Since I’m not required to get a California driver’s license until my Michigan one expires, I haven’t gotten one and therefore I’ve been a Michigan resident. Getting a background check in Michigan while living here would be more of a hassle, and I want to get started on my paperwork to get to Korea, so it was time to do it.

On Thursday, I spent about 3 hours at the Department of Motor Vehicles (it’s BMV in Michigan and Indiana, as in “Bureau”) getting my license (only missing 2 on the written test – boo-yah! – although calling it written is a huge stretch since it only involves reading rather poorly worded questions and checking the corresponding  boxes) and registering to vote, both of which help officially establish my residency.

So I’ve got my little temporary paper license with my even littler plastic one coming in 2-4 weeks (“Usually 2,” said the nice lady at the counter who works in easily the busiest job I’ve ever seen in my life.)

It feels like in many ways I never left, or more accurately, like I never gave up my California mental and spiritual citizenship. I’ll always carry it wherever I go, and I suspect most people carry (lightly I hope, and not drag) their past with them in one way or another.

Nice to be back.