Hey, I'm back!

    It's
sure been a busy week! Last Sunday I covered the "Trees for Life 10K Fun Run".
It was a great success! Everyone involved had a good time. Most of us
(the volunteers) arrived at about 6:00 A.M. and it was still dark. I couldn't set up
my photography gear until the sun came up, so I helped set up traffic cones,
spray-painted directional arrows on the running path and set out drinking cups
with Gatorade and water for the runners.

The race was scheduled to begin at 8:30
A.M. I was wandering around trying to find the best vantage points to shoot from
with a 200mm lens, when suddenly someone announces "Runners, five seconds
until race begins!". I freaked because I was in the middle
of changing lenses and I had to try to run over to the starting line while
fumbling with a big zoom lens and a small little wide-angle lens. I got the lens
on and began to fire away as the runners were leaving the gate. I realized after
that I had the shutter speed way to slow and it wasn't in sync with the flash.
The pictures still worked out, but they look a little surreal. Fortunately that
was only the first 5 or ten photos that turned out that way. I shot well over
200 photos that morning with the digital SLR.

I submitted about 12 of the very best
ones to the local news paper. Hopefully they will publish a few of them.

So, here's some of those photos:

This is the winner of the race. I heard
he completed it in about 37 minutes. He was far ahead of the rest of the pack.

There was a great mix of runners in the
event, ranging from kids, to people in their 70's.

 

Here's a funny one; these two were tied:

I was about 100 feet away when I shot this one, so I couldn't
hear what this couple were talking about, but it's an interesting shot:

Here's the two who were tied again:

Father and Son. I really like this one because you can see
that they're having a lot of fun. That's what it's all about.

Three people finishing:







Some of the older competitors:







This gentleman did very well...

And so did this one:

And the final photo:

So that was the run. I spent the next few days editing the
photos one my computer and burning CDs of the images for everyone involved. I
haven't been that busy in a while. I was going to bed really late and getting up
a little too late--with barely enough time to get to work. Regardless of the
business though, I really love doing this kind of work. It's so much better than
the other job. Working hard in photography makes me feel good because I love it.
The payoff for me is the positive reaction that I get from people who appreciate
the photos.

It's the weekend and I'm not sure exactly what is on my schedule
for Saturday. I might look for some garage sales, but I think I'll just take the
camera out and shoot some pictures. I bought a new camera Last Friday and I'll
talk all about that soon.

Gnite!