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It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to to have some photographs taken of your kids at a big swim meet. Maybe you want to document that once in a life time event. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, I am not the person you want. I am not for hire...

If you do happen to download content from the site, remember its not for commercial applications.

WHY?

Swim meets typically span multiple days and consist of an exhilarating couple of minutes (or less) when your child is actually participating in the activity that you got up at some ungodly hour to drive and/or fly for hours on end to get to… followed by a mind numbing wait for the next event (often measured in hours). Its also usually hot, humid and crowded. Sounds like fun right? You want to know where you can sign up...

So why? We do it because we love our kids… or we hate ourselves and are looking for some sort of self-inflicted punishment. or maybe some combination of the two. Anyway - the kids have a good time and we as proud parents need to document it.. So the smartphones come out and sorta meh pictures get captured to upload to fb, insta or whatever…

OKAY, SO WHERE ARE YOU GOING WITH THIS?

It comes down to the boredom and the need for inflicting more self punishment… Stay with me for a minute, it will make sense.

A techy geek by nature, I decided that the best way to solve for the boredom issue was to bring some technology to the party. Technology that will keep me engaged in the thing that my kids love to do so much. What better way to do this than photography…

I know absolutely nothing about photography... So what better way to learn than to drive right in and buy a professional level camera from one of the most technically complex, least intuitive manufactures there is.. SONY. The manual on this thing is THICK.. but we aren’t going to read that anyway - so it doesn’t matter. The menu system is VAST and filled with abbreviations that make absolutely no sense - even after you look them up. Watching tutorials on you tube will lead to bewilderment as professionals with years of experience with the SONY line will walk the menu and get stumped.

But it is a thing of beauty.. Throw a G-Master telephoto lens at it and clack off 10 frames a second each at 42.5 MP.. You can be half a world away and capture the moment like you are right next to them.. It also sounds like a machine gun on full auto.. CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK.. People turn and look at the noise and stare in awe and wonder. All the while you are thinking.. Shit - I am going to have to go back and review all of these photos later… and in the time that it took that thought to cross your mind - 35 more photos have been captured at 42 MB a piece (assuming your are using compressed RAW, god help you if you selected uncompressed).

THE LONG SLOG

After a day of capturing each start, turn, stroke and splash.. Its time to download the 2500ish photos and settle in for a long evening of experiencing a wide variety of emotions ranging from disinterest as you have looked at the 72nd image of the same lap down the pool, frustration as the perfectly timed photo is completely ruined because the camera decided now was the right time to shift autofocus to the random person walking on the pool deck behind your kid, to extreme rage as the perfect shot that is in focus, has amazing light ends up having the primary subject completely obfuscated by a random person stepping into frame. But just as with the swim meets, photo editing provides those brief moments of sheer exhilaration - when almost everything lines up and you get the shot.. The kiddo is accomplishing some amazing athletic feat, the lighting doesn’t suck, and your dumb luck held out - the picture is unobstructed, has composition that can mostly be cleaned up with some heavy cropping and best of all is in focus (sort of)…

UMM, GREAT.. SO GET TO THE POINT

So I take pictures of my kids - great - no one cares but our friends and family.. Even they have a hard time feigning interest for long… To kill the time between my kids heats, I take pictures of their team mates races and will post them here for the parents to get high resolution versions that they can print or do whatever with.