Stotesbury Cup Regatta 2006 (5 photos)

midget patrol · May 21, 2006

This past friday and saturday marked the 80th annual Stotesbury Cup Regatta in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I was coxing the mens Senior Four+ from W.T. Woodson Highschool (from Fairfax, Virginia). We didn't make it out of time trials--missed semi-finals by 8 ranks out of 57 (we were 26th in time trials. 18 boats advance to semi-finals)--which gave me plenty of time to do some shooting.

Please let me know what you think. C&C is always appreciated.
Philadelphia Skyline I:

Philadelphia Skyline II:

Overseers: (Last year it was 50 degrees F and raining for both days of competition. There were countless rowers and coxswains sent to the hospital with hypothermia, one of them from Woodson. Our weather this year was marginally better; no hypothermia victims.)

The Crowd:

Prerace Warmup:

midget patrol · May 21, 2006

nobody? anything positive or negative? construction, criticism, commentary, suggestions? nothing?

PlasticSpanner · May 21, 2006

I like the atmosperic blues in the first 2 although #2 is slightly out of focus.

#3 needed slightly more exposure or, if you can get close enough, some fill flash.

Jeff Canes · May 21, 2006

#1 the subject seem be more the train that city. You might want to try rotating 1-2 deg to right, and re-cropping to but more emprises on the train.

#2 is too soft, look as if you use digital zooming or just pushed the limits of your camera

#3 is pretty good maybe adjusting the exposure or levels some in PS to help bring out the details in the statues, also crop some

#4 crowd shot seem to work better when you see more faces then backs

#5 crop it so the boat is not in the center of the frame

and keep on shooting it the only way to get better

Antarctican · May 21, 2006

Hey MP, nice series. It's hard to imagine that it wasn't all that long ago that the Penn (?) statue shown on the right in photo 2 was the tallest building in Philly. I like the crowd shot and the pre-race shot. Sorry to hear you didn't advance further.

Thanks for the interesting post.

midget patrol · May 21, 2006

Jeff Canes said:
#1 the subject seem be more the train that city. You might want to try rotating 1-2 deg to right, and re-cropping to but more emprises on the train.

#2 is too soft, look as if you use digital zooming or just pushed the limits of your camera

#3 is pretty good maybe adjusting the exposure or levels some in PS to help bring out the details in the statues, also crop some

#4 crowd shot seem to work better when you see more faces then backs

#5 crop it so the boat is not in the center of the frame

and keep on shooting it the only way to get better

Looking back, i see what you mean with number 2. Believe it or not, it had rained that morning and there was condensation on the inside of the lens. All is better now.

I had some trouble getting number 3 to expose properly. The clouds were very bright and the statues are a dark greenish color. Also, they sit about 25 feet in the air. Fill flash might be kinda difficult. Just play with levels in photoshop to fix that?

I agree that crowd shots work better when you're facing the crowd. However, there was a three foot drop into a river infront of the crowd. :mrgreen: Did what i could with that one

edit: I played with number three. I think i like it better in black and white even though there's still a lot of detail loss on the statues. Yes? No? You tell me:

Unimaxium · May 21, 2006

Cool. Corry (core_17), Joe (clarinetjwd), Scott (spiralout) and I went down and watched a little bit of the stotesbury yesterday. But we were tired from walking so we just sat by the launching dock and didn't manage to walk over to were any races were actually happening. Anyway, nice shots. I like the first one with the SEPTA train in the foreground.

Corry · May 22, 2006

Hey! We were there! We were there! I took pictures of geese.

Nice shots!

Sir Duke · May 22, 2006

I like #3. I actually think you should adjust the exposure to lessen the detail in the statues. They are almost like silhouettes. I think bringing out detail would subtract from this, especially since they are against dark clouds.

SantosD50 · May 22, 2006

I agree with Jeff Canes on #3 and #5. On the new image of #3, alot of detail was lost. But indeed a good shot!

Jeff Canes · May 22, 2006

The B&W version is a good save

midget patrol · May 22, 2006

Unimaxium said:
Cool. Corry (core_17), Joe (clarinetjwd), Scott (spiralout) and I went down and watched a little bit of the stotesbury yesterday. But we were tired from walking so we just sat by the launching dock and didn't manage to walk over to were any races were actually happening. Anyway, nice shots. I like the first one with the SEPTA train in the foreground.

You probably saw me then. Our trailer was about 30 feet from the launch dock. You can see those three statues from the launch dock. Our trailer was right next to them. If you saw a kid walking around with snowboard goggles (because he couldn't find his sunglasses) that was me. :mrgreen: