Winter Games

...from the 'sporadic musings' department...

Gearing up

As I write this, the Intellicast site displayed this (8 am on Monday):

I admit that's Celsius but damn, that's cold. For our American readers, that translates to -30°F. My weather station says 63% R.H. which makes it feel even colder. Thank God there's no wind. 

It's been cold this winter (so much for "Global Warming"). I'm going to say 10 days so far in the -30°C or colder range. There's only a foot or two of snow on the ground up here so far: we missed all the fun that Buffalo and the east coast has had. And we didn't have much of a summer. I actually own 5 different pairs of longjohns, ranging from the heavyduty level 4 stuff from XPS that I bought at Bass Pro, through my old merino wool, polyesters and the cotton weave that I'm wearing right now sitting in my living room. Life's a challenge in God's Country...

Thankfully it's supposed to get a bit warmer later in the week but I really don't want to go out. That said, I watched the guy across the road start and warm up a snowmobile with plumes of smoke and vapour coming from it (I told you. I'm not going out to take pictures!), all bundled up against the cold. Then I have to comment: a pretty, young, blond girl who was likely a guest at the inn, dressed in a slim, stylish snowmobile or ski suit, stood outside and chatted with him: no gloves, no hat, out for a cigarette. You have to be nuts.

Shot through my picture window from the comfort of my computer chair. I think they were heading out to the ice fishing huts on the lake. Certainly not for a long sled ride without face masks. 

I'm getting ready to shoot the Ontario 55+ Senior Winter Games on Wednesday and Thursday. We got some volunteer photographers together, divided up the sports as best we could and we're going to do our utmost to capture some images. Since I was helping to organize, and did what I could to convince people to volunteer, I had to let them choose which sports they would take: so I ended up with the exciting, Badminton and Table Tennis (I ended up shooting others! See below).

Nobody ever accused my mother of having stupid children. These are both INDOOR sports!

Stay tuned, I can't publish other people's pictures  (without specific permission) but here are links to the Ontario55+ site where they're being posted:

website: http://ontario55pluswintergames.com/

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Ontario55plus?ref=hl

Thanks (in no particular order) to Gord Sheehan, Fred Pyziak, Kathy McKelvey-Brown, Sarah Bell, Rob Stimpson, Amanda Virtanen, Debbie Bradley and Scott McDonald for volunteering.

Debbie Bradley in FRONT of a camera for a change! 

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Sidebar: We know that many people in camera clubs in the GTA cottage or visit the Haliburton Highlands regularly. Unlike most camera clubs, we do NOT shut down for the summer: in fact it's our high season! Cottagers are more than welcome to join! If you are reading this, please bring this to the attention of your members at your next club meeting. Forward the link to this blog and/or the Haliburton Highlands Camera Club website (www.highlandscameraclub.ca) to members of your club, or suggest they contact our membership chair via the website. We will have TONS of events and outings for members in 2015!

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Here come da Judge.

I tried to remember who made that line famous: it was Flip Wilson in the late '60s. But I learned that he didn't originate it, it was Dewey "Pigmeat" Markham (whom no one's ever heard of! Google is your friend).

I want to encourage all of my photographer friends to take a judging course. I took it five or six years ago and have since judged in dozens of competitions, ranging from local clubs to the TCC International Salon. I admit that I didn't intend to become that involved – I just wanted to learn what the judges were looking for so I would score higher in competition.  However it has done four things for me.

• It has helped me in my own photography. By judging competitions, I get to look critically at hundreds of images and it becomes obvious very quickly what works and what does not. So I take ideas and concepts and techniques from what I've seen. No artist is an island unto himself. While your brain is fertile ground, you have to plant seeds for anything to grow.


• It has helped me in my teaching. Of course, knowing what to teach... but also how. It is equally important, if the goal is to encourage rather than discourage, how you say things. The CAPA judging course stresses this but like anything else (especially for me) it takes time for these things to sink in. It's improved my communication skills.


• I've been exposed to genres in which I had zero expertise (and I'm still but a grasshopper) but I've learned more about them and I'm not afraid to try. Birding. Street Photography. Photojournalism. Sports Photography. There are some where I'll admit to no knowledge but an interest has been kindled: Printing. Portraiture. 


• I've met and dialogued with some very interesting people. Photography legends like Philip Sun, Lance Gitter, Harvey Rogers, Stu Freedman, Hilarie McNeil-Smith, Rob Stimpson and many others. Not all of them through judging, it's true: but I feel somewhat more elevated by the practice of adjudicating others' images.

I don't know about other jurisdictions but in Canada we have CAPA and more locally in Toronto, the GTCCC. I'm sure there are equivalents around the globe. Take the step. Contact your local club for information on judging courses.

Shooting the Ontario 55+ Senior Winter Games

An argument for staying in shape. These folks do stuff that I didn't do even 30  or 40 years ago. They should be very proud.

Shooting the games was quite challenging. For one thing, they had 10 different sports in about 17 different locations and we ended up with about 7 or 8 photographers. The toughest part were the medal ceremonies which all took place on Thursday afternoon, all over the map!

I got to shoot a variety of sports, filling in the gaps where others couldn't be there. Here's a look at some of the shots I did:

Alpine skiing at Sir Sam's. I shot at the bottom of the course, needing a long lens and very high shutter speed to freeze the action. Exposure was relatively easy because there was lots of light. 

Curling was tough to shoot. There was enough light but the ugly arc lights were a weird colour.  

The two iconic curling shots were people sweeping and someone throwing a rock. I tried a different treatment on this one to make it interesting. 

I tried an artistic rendering of the rocks and a broom. 

I've shot hockey before, in the same arena. So before I got there I knew where I wanted to shoot from: the penalty box. When I walked in, I discovered they had remodeled the place and EVERYTHING was glassed in, INCLUDING the penalty box. I only found a couple of spots where the glass was clean and undamaged enough to shoot through. So I have lots of shots of the same goalie and the same net (they didn't change ends between periods). 

Although it may look bright inside a hockey arena, you need really fast shutter speeds to freeze the action. I tried my telextender but because it uses up almost two stops of light, the best I could do was 1/500 sec at f/4.8, ISO 6400. And that was deliberately underexposing almost a stop. I switched to the 70-200 (which was enough from where I was shooting) and locked in the camera at 1/1000 sec at f/2.8, ISO 6400. 

Badminton was a huge challenge. It was like, "DARK" in there. And when they swing their racquets it's like squash or racquetball, the racquet is moving so fast you can't time the shots and it's just a big blur. I set up with the flash, but then got told it disturbed the players so I put it away. I got lots of shots of people standing there waiting for a shot. I did get other perspectives, but I thought this one told the story pretty well. 

Typical stance, waiting for a serve 

Table Tennis was another huge challenge. First of all, they were in a small venue (just room for two tables) and it was filled with people. Second, because any breeze disturbed the flight of the ball, they shut off the ventilation system and all the windows. Outside: -15°C. Inside: +30°C  and 100% humidity. Took over 30 minutes before I could shoot a picture through fogged-up lenses!

this gentleman is Andrew Kwan (Kwong Hon Kwan). He and his partner Sandy Chu were easily the best players there and took the doubles gold medal for the 65+ division. Look how the racquet and the ball are blurred, even at 1/500 second! I talked with him a bit: about 8 out of 10 serves are with heavy underspin so that the opponent has to loop the ball up to get it over the net, which gives the serving team a kill shot response. Every now and then they'd mix it up with a topspin ball, and if the opponent doesn't react to it, their shot will sail 'way long! Then there's side spin which leaves the opponent whiffing air instead of a ball! These guys were good!

I shot 3 or 4 award ceremonies. This was the bronze medal winning team in the 55+ division, one of my favourite shots. The coach on the left introduced himself as "Punch Imlach" and said his partner was "Toe Blake". I 'almost' believed them since their namesakes did dress like that for games! But they would have been 98 and 103 respectively and I knew they were gone... as an aside, I went to school with Toe's daughter, Mary Jane, when I was 12 or 13. 

The iconic handshake at the end of the Gold Medal game: the Ottawa Hawks were the winners. Hard fought physical games but lots of camaraderie.  

Gold medal winners got this handsome glass award. 

Local dignitaries making the medal presentations. All of the Games staff and volunteers wore these distinctive yellow scarves and matching laminated ID badges. 

Part of our mandate was to get pictures of the volunteers and staff enjoying their tasks.

Here's a bunch of them at the alpine skiing venue

 

The scarves were really distinctive. Games officials and volunteers really stood out in a crowd. 

You can't see the colour of the scarf in this black-and-white impression sketch. He was in charge of the hockey venue in Haliburton but I can't remember his name. 

This week's closing images

On Tuesday, I had to drive into Toronto (with a stop to see Dr. Ron in Aurora. If I had known when I was a kid how important brushing my teeth was...). Anyway I drove past the snowy owls venue and although I was looking for them, I didn't see any: until I was driving home the same way later in the afternoon. 

This guy was doing his thing, giving me the "evil eye" from atop a hydro pole. I used Topaz Adjust and Clarity to enhance the detail in this image. 

"Working the Scene" at the same spot, I saw this lonely tree and was captivated by the pastel beauty of the sky behind it and the snow in the foreground. I know snow is supposed to be white, but in this case it reflected the same colour tones as the sky.

I did quite a bit of work on this image, including adding textures to parts of it and cleaning up the foreground. Rendering the foreground was a bit problematic: but Hilarie McNeil-Smith (click the link to see her compelling images), whom I've known for a while since she taught a digital painting course I facilitated some years ago, suggested adding some blowing snow. Some of what she taught me stuck! I love the effect: I used an airbrush in Photoshop, lightly loaded with white and at low opacity to make it happen.

Click to blow it up to see it better. My friend Lori wants her entire wall painted like this. I know where to get 8 foot wide prints made! I think I'm going to get a fine art print made for myself (not 8'wide! I may go for 24x36", though). Want one?

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An Eclectic Week

I know the word "Eclectic" is an adjective (well it could also be a noun...) but but I wonder if you can use it to describe a week! Oh well, I just did. So there.

I spent a lot of time this week on business and administrative tasks (especially with the new Camera Club) and it was nice when some friends came up and dug me out of my computer chair to go out and shoot some pictures. A day or two in Toronto and Uxbridge with family and spending some time with a friend who's a bit under the weather (me too, for what it's worth), then back home and at the keyboard again!

Although it's a nice day out, I don't feel like going outside. I think the most commonly heard greeting here lately has been, "so had enough of winter yet"? I have. Been a Hell of a year.

At least I have a ton of pictures to write up here. But before we get started...

Nikon/iPad?

Do you have a Nikon and an iPad? there's a free app out there called "Nikon Manual Viewer 2" that lets you download any Nikon manual and view it, formatted perfectly for the iPad. Very slick. The more you read your manual, the better you know your camera. Not only DSLR's, but also mirrorless and even P&S cameras, plus all the Nikon Speedlights. Thanks to Moose Peterson for the find.

Topaz DeNoise promotion

Topaz is running a 50% promotion on Topaz DeNoise until the end of March, their image noise reduction plug-in is designed to fix heavy image noise and grain.

"Other NR software tend to strike a good balance between processing speed and quality. By contrast, DeNoise focuses entirely on the quality of the results you get. (The trade-off is that it takes longer to process an image in order to get better results.) For example, notice below that the books stay sharp and that there's no soft edges or smudged details: http://topazlabs.s3.amazonaws.com/mktg/books.jpg"

This technology makes DeNoise useful for "tough" cases of image noise. It can save photos that photographers might otherwise throw away.

Use this link to go to the DeNoise page where there are great examples and even a tutorial at the bottom: 

To get the 50% discount, enter the coupon code 'mardenoise' when ordering. You can also do a 30 day free trial.

Here's a shot where I used Topaz DeNoise. Indoor hockey arenas are notoriously difficult to shoot in. This shot was taken at 1/800 sec, f/2.8, ISO 6400.

In this shot I did NOT use DeNoise, I did the best I could with the Noise Reduction in Lightroom 5, which is generally very good, but not as good as DeNoise! By the way, the title of this picture is, "If Looks Could Kill". Coach not happy. 

So who takes photos of referees at hockey games? People whose grandsons ARE referees! He works really hard at it. And it's hard to be unbiased: he penalized the home team in this championship match with less than 3 minutes left in the game. Fans not happy!

By the way, Ryan PLAYS hockey too. He played in this game and 15 minutes later was refereeing in the other rink. 14 years old, almost 6' tall, work ethic... hmmm.

He promised me a goal. Didn't keep his word :( . Can't say he didn't give it a try, though!

Some wildlife

I actually shot this one last week.

I was asked whether I got these deer to pose for me. Of course I did. You don't think they'd line up perfectly like that without a little direction, do you? 

In almost the same spot, a week later. This wild turkey tom was a bit less cooperative, I couldn't get him to 'display'. In fairness, Maureen and Jon feed these critters in winter, so they do hang out around their house.

Myrtle and Joe came up for the day last week. We tried to get the deer but weren't successful, but we did get to shoot some other neat stuff. 

I've been away from skiing for many years so I shouldn't be shocked at innovation on the slopes. First of all, there are kids doing things on skis and snowboards (which didn't even exist when I skied) that aren't natural. These shots were all taken at Sir Sam's Ski and Bike (they do crazy stuff with bikes in the summer!) near Haliburton.

And I bet these kids never even HEARD of a rope tow! Now they have something called a "Magic Carpet" which they stand on like a moving sidewalk, sheltered from the weather, no less!

Everyone wears a helmet, some cooler than others!

I took my camera for a ride up the magic carpet, then Joe and Myrtle did too. 

In case you're wondering, I walked down that walkway on the right. I miss skiing, but my knees certainly do not! 

One more shot. This kid was too cute...

I have other 'keepers' but I don't want to bore you too much!

OK, that's enough for today! I have to save some stuff for next week, you know!

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It's Winter (sort of...)

I wish it would make up its mind. The temperature keeps varying between -10°C and +10°C which means we have snow, then we don't, then we do, then we don't... Rosa asked me, when I grew up in Montreal, what was the difference?. Well we had a lot more snow than in Toronto (or maybe it's because I was smaller so the snowbanks were higher!), it was colder and, after some prompting from her I realized we actually had 4 distinct seasons. When it was winter, it was WINTER. When it was spring... even here, up in the Highlands of Central Ontario, spring could be 4 whole days long, then we jump right into summer. Or maybe this global warming stuff really is happening. I'm not thinking year-to-year, I'm going back 50 or more years to when I was a kid. Technically, it's not winter yet, until tomorrow, though.

I saved the best picture for last in this post, so don't go away without scrolling down! Your comments are very welcome: click the word "comment" at the end of this post.

I have taken my camera out for a walk several times in the past week and especially, I took the new lens out for a trial or two. Since I bought it for shooting wildlife, I thought I'd give it a shot at some rare birds, seagulls at the dump! It turns out that although I was trying to be facetious, this bird is a Glaucous Gull (Larus hyperboreus) which in fact is theoretically a rare bird! I dunno, there are hundreds of them at the dump!

This guy is not in my bird book. Some immature gulls are mottled brown but the book says the babies of this species have dark eyes and black bills, and this one has a yellow bill. Maybe it's a new species, Larus springerensus!

It's hard to shoot birds in flight. I'm going back today to try again.

Both of these shots were taken with my new (new-to-me) Sigma 120-400mm F4.5-5.6 DG APO OS HSM lens. Both were cropped about half a frame, and both were shot at f/8, shutter speed 1/1000 or faster. ISO was 400. I didn't have as much success with this lens shooting in a hockey arena (my grandson Ryan plays for the Uxbridge Stars). In fact the only really good shot that day was with the Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8. The lighting was so bad that I had to shoot at much higher ISO — this excellent goal (the Stars are in white/green) was at 1/800 sec, f/2.8, ISO 2500.

He shoots, he scores! Young Mr. Anderson scored the other goal as well, less than a minute earlier. I did capture that one too, better isolation on the shooter and the goalie, but no puck in the shot. The Belleville goalie kept the Stars off the scoreboard otherwise and won the game 3-2.

In this really badly lit arena, the best I was able to do with the slower Sigma lens was at ISO 6400. Incredible that they came out, but nothing to write home about.

This month, one of the assigned topics in the NAPP challenge rally was "Knifes, Forks and Spoons". I wasn't being very creative, but had fun with this shot anyway:

"One of these things doesn't belong here. One of these things isn't the same!" which comes from a kid's song on Sesame Street, I think. I mixed in some line-art processing to add visual sharpness and merged them into drop-shadowed layers in Photoshop. These pictures were shot in my light tent using ambient light (no flash).

Here's an HDR I shot when out walking.

I like the vignette effect. This is the door latch on an ice fishing hut, waiting for hard water before going out on the lake. Processed with Photomatix Pro, toned with Topaz Adjust 5 and the vignette was done in Nik Color Efex Pro. I do like my plug-ins! I think this image looks best on a white background, but if you're reading my blog with a normal browser, it's black. Click the picture itself to open it in a separate (white) page.

I saved the best for last. The same day, I shot this:

Again, I created the HDR with Photomatix, toned with Topaz and vignetted with Nik Color Efex. I went a little further though, notice how the horizon on both sides is the same. I cleaned up some background and I stretched the image horizontally to give it a more pleasing proportion.

This is a killer shot. I will be printing this as a limited edition art print and if anyone is interested in purchasing a copy, email me. Generally many of my images are available in print, let me know.

Oh yeah: speaking of print! My "Michipicoten River Light" image from Gales of November 2010 was published in Photo News! It's available online as a .pdf, click the link here and scroll down to page 11 to see my picture!

That's it for now. I'll try to get one or two more posts in before the New Year — I actually made almost 50 posts to the blog this year!

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It's all about RESPECT

Today I want to talk about respect for those who do difficult shots. We all have our comfort zones, and sometimes we step outside them to shoot subjects and situations we're not used to. Every time I do that, I learn a bit more respect for people who shoot in different venues than I do.

I was going to talk about concert shoots first, but I got sidetracked by thinking about other challenging subjects. The first one that came to mind was sports. I've been following Scott Kelby's NFL and NBA images and I'm awed by the technical excellence in his images (how DOES he get them so sharp!!!) and by the challenge of capturing the moment. I did some hockey last winter, at the Ontario Senior Winter Games: that's a tough gig! Dodging pucks and sticks and trying to get the action at the right instant.

You've seen this before if you've been following my blog for a while.

... and this is called "making lemonade out of lemons".

Then there's portraits. I worked with Ron a couple of weeks ago (look back at my last blog post for an image of Kim and her family), and I've done some 'headshot' portraits, actually while playing around with some ID photos I used to shoot. Here's one

Shot with the Gary Fong diffuser on the SB-600 flash, off-camera.
And a lot of post-processing, mostly in Lightroom.

I don't see a ton of emotion in this shot. However last week, shooting at a concert, I took this image of my cousin Steve just as a test of the lighting levels.

Talk about making lemonade! Yes, there's some special post-processing (Nik Color Efex Pro 3 — Polaroid Transfer preset), but I really think this captures Steve. I admit this is luck, not planning!

Concerts. Well I've done a couple: In July I did one up here. I had a dispute with the band who said, "what do you mean you want us to pay you??", so I guess I own the pictures. This one was over the top but I thought it would make a good poster

Crazy lighting and some creative image toning using Topaz Adjust

OK, now check this out: this is Francis Martin of FOG in concert at Hugh's Room last week

Here's where you need to have the right equipment. This was shot at F=24mm, 1/60 second, f/4, ISO 3200. Yes, I said ISO 3200. Nikons are incredibly good at holding the noise down at high ISO but having a faster lens would have helped! Nik Color Efex Pro 3 vignette blur applied.

How DO they do it? Get quality concert shots in lousy or weird lighting? I have great respect for photographers who can do this. Other than "making lemonade" by doing weird post-processing, I don't know how to get good concert shots.

Anyway, I'll leave you with one more image, then I have to get going! Two more sleeps (one of them a short one because I have to leave at 5 am!) and I'm off for the Gales of November workshop with Rob Stimpson up on the shores of Lake Superior. Back after the weekend and I hope to have some good images to share with you.

FOG, onstage. With their signature hat!

Oh yeah! I forgot. I got a chance to shoot with a phenomenal lens this week and wrote about it on my technical blog. Check out the writeup and the pictures there! TTFN...

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Things behaving badly, or...

Camera-less in Minden


…and yes, I’m whining about it. It’s like stopping smoking. Or going on a diet. It’s painful to be without a camera.

“Why,” you may ask, “are you without a camera”?

Well it’s like this. As I write this, my D300 and 4 Nikon lenses are in a box safely (I hope!) enroute to Nikon Canada in Mississauga. The D300 needs repair. We were shooting the Winterfest games and at the end of the day on Wednesday, I uploaded my 500 images to Lightroom and gasped when I looked at them. Here’s an example:

Notice how the sign in the upper right corner, and the people in the back are in focus but the sweepers are not? Clearly there's something wrong...

I was tracking this guy for a while and released the shutter when he was in a good position. This one is not full frame: he filled about 1/3 of the frame and I cropped it to show the problem more clearly.

I was shooting in continuous focus mode. Canon calls it “servo” mode. What is supposed to happen is, you put the crosshairs on whatever it is you want in focus and hold the shutter release halfway down. When the subject moves, the autofocus is supposed to follow it and keep it in focus. As long as nothing moved, I was fine. But as soon as the subject started moving, the tracking motor kicked in, and then the camera blew it. It took the focus somewhere else: generally to the back of the image. So I essentially had 500 images with sharp advertising on the boards and fuzzy hockey players. Or curlers. Or skaters. And it did it on more than one lens, so it’s the body.

I talked to Nikon. They said, “send it in”. At least a week and a half, possibly more. As long as I was sending the camera in, I asked them to check out my lenses at the same time. So everything is in a heavily insured box, on its way to Nikon. Now I have to wait for “the call”. You know, the one that starts, “Mr. Springer? This is the technician at Nikon. Do you want the good news or the bad news?”. Would you like some cheese with that whine?…

Yesterday, I changed techniques. Do you have ANY IDEA how hard it is to shoot hockey without predictive autofocusing? Point at a hockey player. Press the shutter release to autofocus. Wait for it to lock in. Press it the rest of the way. If the player is still in the same place, maybe. But if there’s actually a game going on? Forget it. I took most of my shots by focusing on the goalie. Not what I wanted.

To top it all off, to stop the action in hockey, you have to shoot at a very high shutter speed. It begins at 1/500 second, but you really should shoot at 1/1000. How do you do that? You shoot wide open with your fastest lens (I have a 70-200 f/2.8 and a 50mm f/1.8). If the player moves one foot between the time you lock in the focus and fire the shutter, you’re SOL. AND in that lousy lighting, I had the ISO cranked. Minimum was 1600, I also tried 3200 and 6400 ISO. How did they do it in the old days? Shooting with a Speed-Graphic and at the most, TRI-X film which was rated at ASA 400 that you could MAYBE push to 640 or 800.

Shooting hockey is TOUGH. They move SO SO fast! I was camped out in the penalty box – the rest of the rink was covered with a mesh so that spectators wouldn’t get hit with a flying puck. A stick swung past me, just brushing my face when a player was bodychecked into the boards right in front of me. A high speed puck whizzed past me about a foot away, between me and Midori, the lady shooting video for the Games. Yesterday, I blocked another stick with my arm and ducked away when a couple of players hit the boards right in front of me. At least I didn’t break a monopod like Scott Kelby.

To say I was disappointed in my performance would be an understatement. I just hope the Winterfest people won’t be. I’ll start vetting pictures for them right after I finish writing this (OK, it's tomorrow and I already did that. I've got 305 images to send in. Another 300 or so that are garbage).

So on my way back from the post office where I dropped off the camera, I reveled in the wonderful sunshine and warm temperatures. The melting ice turned to vast puddles out on the lake where the ice fishermen were still plying their trade and there were even a couple of cars out there. The ice road to the huts was under water. You could see blue/green reflections in it and the effect was wonderful. Lighting was great. And I didn’t have a camera. {Sob}. I fully expected a deer to step out and pose by the roadside with a bald eagle sitting on a branch above him.

I still owe you some Muskoka Wildlife Centre shots. Next time. I had to get this off my chest. BTW another group is going there this weekend. I hope they’re as lucky as we were.

Selective shots from Winterfest 2011 will be up on my Smugmug gallery in a little while: I haven’t had a chance yet. You’ll probably find them in the February monthly gallery but it’s the 18th and I haven’t even created it yet! With no camera, I guess I’ll have time over the weekend. Here are a few to tide you over.

Speaking of things behaving badly, do you use Photoshop CS5? The content-aware fill tool is unbelievable, but sometimes it does odd things. I found a good trick to prevent that from happening and I wrote it up in my technical blog here: http://faczen.com/wordpress/?p=52. Drop in and have a look-see.

They said there's a gigantic solar flare out there, so we should be able to see the aurora borealis tonight. Better not. I DON'T HAVE A CAMERA! {whine}