5@50: Sneakers in the sky and pigeons on the ground

The rules of my game are simple: get five pictures with a 50mm lens one a single jaunt through Portland.

This is what I saw today.

See more of my efforts HERE.

Every street is a stage

I walk the streets in my city, Portland, whenever I can. In the summer, there’s no lack of colorful folks on the street. Musicians and street performers abound. Here’s a few I’ve photographed this year.

 

Sometimes you have to dive right in for the shot

 

Sometimes you have to come prepared to properly cover an assignment. This past week was a good example of just that.

I was given the assignment to cover paddleboard yoga in Southwest Harbor. I’ve never shot paddleboarding yoga but knew that to get the most interesting shots I would have to be close to the action. To get close to the action, I would have to be in the water.

So I grabbed my wetsuit and my underwater bag for my 5D Mark III and headed to Echo Lake to try to make some interestingly beautiful photos.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been in the water covering something. The reason I bought my Ewa-Marine underwater bag in the first place was to get shots of my friends wakeboarding while I sat in a tube in front of them.

The underwater bag makes it pretty difficult to change camera settings, and lens settings, once the camera is in the bag. You have to have a generalized idea of what your exposure will be before throwing the camera in. In these situations, I like to use a larger depth of field to help make sure things are in focus.

Besides settings being difficult to change, it’s pretty hard to look through the viewfinder while your camera is halfway submerged in water. What I like to do is try to use Liveview to better compose my shot instead of nearly drowning.

I was surprised how easy it was to shoot video while in the water. I was worried it would distort the moving images too much, but to my surprise, they stayed sharp.

Whenever you can get closer to the action, do it. Most of the time it makes for better photos, because you get to work on layering and filling the frame more. Had I of stayed on land, I would have been very limited with what I could have shot (see the second photo in the gallery) and the tranquility of the sport might have been lost.

 

The Frame: Late night at the State House

Maine House of Representatives Sergeant at Arms Normand Arbor and page Alyson Pelletier rip notices off the wall as legislators leave the House early Wednesday morning after passing a two-year budget. Troy R. Bennett | BDN
Maine House of Representatives Sergeant at Arms Normand Arbor and page Alyson Pelletier rip notices off the wall as legislators leave the House early Wednesday morning after passing a two-year budget. Troy R. Bennett | BDN

The time stamp on this photo reads 12:45 a.m. The smile on page Alyson Pelletier’s face spoke for most everyone. Lots of folks were unhappy with the details of the two-year budget the Legislature had just approved, but nobody was sad to go home.

I stayed until the bitter end, as the budget bounced back and forth between the Senate and the House for the various procedural votes. I was hoping to get fist pump pictures or maybe a high-five. But that didn’t happen. Everyone was too exhausted.

I filed out the door of the House with everyone else and heard a gleeful ripping of paper. That’s where I found what might have been the only smile in the building, on Pelletier’s face.

– TROY.

5@50 June 11, 2015

Whenever I can, I head into downtown Portland and come back with five pictures taken with my trusty 50mm lens. Then I post them here without Photoshop tricks or crazy cropping.

It’s a personal challenge. Click on the 5@50 tag below to see more.

A BDN Maine blog about visual storytelling in Maine

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