Need feedback on my Paintball photos

GMonet71

Here are a series of shots from this past weekend. I am considering cropping the photos to focus in on the action more.

I need help on a basic level. My photos look dead IMO due to poor color. I had to bring down the contrast a lot so that you could see what is going on behind the netting, Austin concerned for his dad. I worked on the photos in RAW on CS2. When I was shooting in JPEG I was getting better results. I thought switching to RAW would be better but so far it is not.

I am going to calibrate my monitor at home (could use a suggestion as what to use) because the photos look much better at home than here at work.

I will added the captions to help describe the actions.


Oh no our Happy Elf is loading without looking. It has gotten bad for our Happy Elf as he is now left alone, 3 vs 1. Austin , Russ's son sees what is about to happen to our happy elf.

Russ is looking again as he finishes loading. Balls are dropping because he knows what is coming up the field, 3 Bad Elfs!

Notice the first shot now on the bunker. Things are getting bad now for our Happy Elf. Austin continues to look worried.

Notice there are many more shots on the bunker as our Bad Elves are enjoying the fact that they have our Happy elf surrounded. Austin looks like he knows the end is near.

I decided to leave Austin out of this next one cus he looked pretty distressed. I barely got a peice of one of the Bad Elves coming in to bunker Russ. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of shots so you will have to imagine the end. Our happy Elf is shot as he is pushed back by the Elf that came to bunker him. Once pushed back it was all over as another Bad Elf shot our Exposed Happy Elf all up his side. The End.

Adrian van Ammers

How to save bright colors for the web

GMonet71 wrote:

Here are a series of shots from this past weekend. I am considering cropping the photos to focus in on the action more.

I need help on a basic level. My photos look dead IMO due to poor color.

This might be part of the problem http://www.smugmug.com/help/srgb-versus-adobe-rgb-1998 This explains why you should save in srgb profile to send your carefully created colors into the virtual world of the www :
There is a lot more to know about monitor calibration. Look here http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html#Monitorsetup

Hope this helps a little.

gus

Crop that scared kid on the right...man he's behind the net & still freaking out.

I got banned from paintball...holding people down & executing them etc etc

ScottMcLeod

Hmm... as a photographer who used to shoot airsoft photos & video, you're not really engaging the action.

(I hope you're looking for comments about composition as well... not just colour).

Get low, get high, get close, hell, even try to sneak around with a guy and get in over his shoulder. Long zooms are your friend, frame someone lining up a shot, slow-shutter someone dodging balls, take the shot of a guy walking off the field after getting nailed with that "damn, I wasn't quite fast enough" look on his face, adrenaline leaking out of his body, and his arms & equipment limp at his sides.

... hope that helps?

Maybe for something like this, it would be an advantage to be shooting in sRGB JPEG (more shots, "... before my camera ran out of shots") before you move to RAW?

GMonet71

Adrian - reading up on it now, TY


Scott - More action, got it. I will try harder to be more involved. Some of your suggestions are very hard because of the high risk of getting the camera shot. Paintballs will damage a camera pretty good, the paint gets into everything. Even most magazines only have a few of these types of shots because of the risk to the equipment. You are totally right, it those few type of shots in a magazine that make you think "awesome".

Humungus - You’re hilarious After roaming around here for a while now I think you avatar is very appropriate.

PossumCorner

Ummmm. What is paintball?
I think the colours look fine, my problem is not understanding the content. Like, somethimes I think my dog photos must be pretty boring to people, just a dog hopping over a hurdle. But this looks to me like someone standing still in front of a tent, looking tense. He's not even jumping over anything. It must be a paintball thing.

GMonet71

Possum, you are dead right. I guess my goal will be to convey action that people understand not just paintballers. Taking photos is alot harder than playing paintball

ScottMcLeod

GMonet71 wrote:

Adrian - reading up on it now, TY


Scott - More action, got it. I will try harder to be more involved. Some of your suggestions are very hard because of the high risk of getting the camera shot. Paintballs will damage a camera pretty good, the paint gets into everything. Even most magazines only have a few of these types of shots because of the risk to the equipment. You are totally right, it those few type of shots in a magazine that make you think "awesome".

Humungus - You’re hilarious After roaming around here for a while now I think you avatar is very appropriate.

I've seen things that you can wrap your camera in (and screws into a lens adapter thing) to shoot in the rain. They're also bright yellow to avoid someone shooting it.

Alternatively, make yourself a plexiglas box with a 1/4-20 screw mount in it for the camera, and a hollow bottom so you can get your hands in, and an empty back so you can get your eye against the camera.

It'd take about 20$ at your local hardware store, and some planning. I can see it in my head :-P

GMonet71

Adrian - You were correct. In saving the RAW photos to JPEG in CS2 the file format I had chosen Adobe instead of sRGB. Going to fix all my photos tonight. Very good catch, helped my out tremendously.



Scott - I am going to search the internet for some type of cover/protector. Somebody has got to make something like the yellow cover you described. Also, your are right about shooting in JPEG and being able to get a longer string of shots. Even though my first attempt at RAW was a mess up I liked editing the photos in RAW. I am thinking of trying to shoot in Small RAW next time to see how long of a string of shots I can get.



One last question can you set the Canon 20D to shoot just RAW and not RAW + JPEG? I have not been able to figure out if this is possible.

ScottMcLeod

GMonet71 wrote:

Scott - I am going to search the internet for some type of cover/protector. Somebody has got to make something like the yellow cover you described. Also, your are right about shooting in JPEG and being able to get a longer string of shots. Even though my first attempt at RAW was a mess up I liked editing the photos in RAW. I am thinking of trying to shoot in Small RAW next time to see how long of a string of shots I can get.



One last question can you set the Canon 20D to shoot just RAW and not RAW + JPEG? I have not been able to figure out if this is possible.

To my knowledge, RAW is RAW. You can't shoot in small raw. Small Raw is full size RAW file with a small JPEG.