SWAT Team in action.

[Hooligan Dan]

About a month ago our local police department hosted a SWAT competition. Each team had different tasks around town. The two I covered were in a high school. It was quite a bit of fun to cover.

All but #12 were taken in during the active shooter/hostage stage. Made it a little hard to get shots because they were firing plastic bullets. I couldn't stand in front of them. I think I still got some decent shots though.

Let me know what you think.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12. This one was crazy. Two local cops were playing a husband who was holding his wife hostage. The team had to clear each room as silently as possible. When they got into our room they initially turned towards the "husband" and "wife," and then turned at the reporter and I not knowing we weren't part of the drill. Started yelling at us to get our hands up. I wasn't sure what to do. Keep shooting and possibly get shot by a plastic bullet or put my hands up. Kept shooting. Luckily they didn't fire.

13.

Thanks for looking, folks!

 

[Marc-Etienne]

Very nice! I've used those plastic bullet gun before, they hurt!! Good thing you didn't get shoot! Pretty sure it is strong enough to mess up your gear. It was strong enough to chip pieces of plywood!
Definitively #4 and #9 are my favorite, nicely done!

 

[Hooligan Dan]

Thanks!

The VP of the school was playing the gunman in the exercise and on one run-through put on a smaller protective mask so one of the student gunman(who were not being shot at) could have the larger mask. Sure enough, on that run-through the VP got shot in the ear. He was bleeding pretty good.

 

[altitude604]

#12 is the winner for me.

Caught the action and the barrel pointed right at the camera makes it. lol

 

[molested_cow]

I think there should be plenty of opportunity for panning shots to really show the intensity of the situation which I would have taken advantage of.

Otherwise I think the depth of field of some of them can be shallower to have more focus on the people and not the background. I would also have done some post processing to make thing pop more. Depends on what you are using these for, if they are for local papers, then it's best to leave them alone. If you want them to be more interesting, I think lots can still be done.

 

[Hooligan Dan]

All shots, with the exception of 1, 2(both f/3.5), 12, and 13(both f/4), were taken a f/2.8, so not much can be done about the dof. These were for the paper so I can't do any reality-altering editing. I didn't really think about doing any panning. Would have been cool. I think the only place it really would have worked though is on #8. That was the only spot of running. Everything else was slow and methodical.

 

[Wozza]

Yeah a panning action shot would have been ace, but pretty hard to get in such an unpredicatble enviroment.

#12 though wow - good thing you didn't put your hands up, the risk was worth such a cracking shot. Interesting series, thanks for sharing.

 

[DetCord12B]

Has the author/photographer (Dan) given permission to these guys to utilize his photos as concept art? Though heavily edited, it is certainly photo #10. I don't even know how that qualifies as concept art from a development standpoint...

Serellan LLC

 

[Hooligan Dan]

Hey, Bryan, thanks for the heads up. I've posted on the forum. Hopefully we can get this resolved.

 

[Hooligan Dan]

Also, I may as well milk the oppertunity. All of you guest users should visit my blog, Ambient Focus and view my other threads here! Wlecome to the photo forum!

 

[DetCord12B]

Also, I may as well milk the oppertunity. All of you guest users should visit my blog, Ambient Focus and view my other threads here! Wlecome to the photo forum!

I think it needs updating, Dan.

 

[Hooligan Dan]

Yeah, I'm a little behind haha. I have some updates coming starting Saturday.

 

[OscarWilde]

These are great! Would have been an awesome event to capture some images of!

Number 7 could have used a deeper DoF actually; you just missed the tip of the barrel in your DoF...