Photo:

More photos here on Flickr >>

Video (watch in HD!)

I was exchanging tweets with Steve Garfield (@stevegarfield), and he said he’d like to hear a few tips when it came to the Canon 7D. Seems like a fine excuse to update my blog, since I am so very bad at it. So – here’s a few things I’ve picked up since using this fine piece of equipment.

General:

• I prefer the manual focus over autofocus. A lot of times what I will do is set my shot up in photo mode, actually take a photo and review it to ensure everything is in focus and properly exposed. Once I am satisfied with the shot, I switch over to video mode and record away.
• It’s a bit difficult to shoot action while zooming in and out. Instead, I tend to let the action come to me and just use the parts that are in focus.
• However, I have found that if you zoom all the way out and set your focus, you can zoom back out and still have the majority of your shot remain in focus. Doesn’t work the other way though.
• Get a good sized CF card. I use a 16GB card and it still fills up fast at 1280×720 60fps.
• There is no headphone jack to hear your audio as you record. This can be a bit scary if you’re using an external mic (which I do a lot), and want to hear your levels before shooting. What I usually do is get the mic hooked up and record a short clip and play it back through the camera’s internal speaker to get a quick listen. This prevents you from accidentally forgetting to turn the mic on, etc.

Editing:

• Though I sometimes don’t have the time to do this, it’s best to convert your files before editing them. They are natively h.264 compressed and that doesn’t always work so well in Final Cut Pro. Converting the files to Apple ProRes 422 in Compressor or Final Cut makes for better editing. The files also come off the camera kind of high in contrast, and this conversion cuts it down a bit and gives a more natural look.
• If you do not have Final Cut Pro for converting, MPEG StreamClip works pretty well, and is free!
• Be patient. These are big files and take awhile to render/export. I edit on a MacBook Pro and a G5 Tower with 8GB of RAM, and both still take a good amount of time to process these big files.

That’s all I have for now, hope this was helpful!

I filmed, edited and produced this piece for revolutionsoccer.net – featuring Revolution team captain Steve Ralston’s daughter Anna -  one day after the Revs’ training session last week.

Definitely a slight departure from the norm, but a lot of fun and people are enjoying it.

Watch the video here.

As usual, we have a ton of web initiatives taking place over at Gillette Stadium for both teams!

Web design

Revolution Blog & Patriots Football Weekly Blog – I moved these blogs from their respective wordpress servers over to our own servers and designed them to match their respective websites (revolutionsoccer.net and pfwonline.com)

Revolutionsoccer.net – Besides the daily updates, gave this site some graphical improvements and new sections for 2009.

Defendthefort.net - The Revolution started a new ticket offering this season for ‘The Fort,’ which is the hardcore fan supporter section at Gillette Stadium. What started as a simple splash page has evolved into a social network through a partnership with ning.com. So far the site has been a success and is continuing to grow on a daily basis.

Video Editing

The defend the fort campaign started with this video I put together with a movie trailer theme to it:

This was my first foray into Adobe After Effects, and I have to say that I am pretty pleased with how it came out! I also shot some of the video used in this last summer (the non-game action clips).

Last week I also put together this 30-second stop-motion clip from a series of photos I took at Revs’ training one day:

Photography

I’ve shot a few training sessions and an awesome event we held for our season ticket holders at the stadium. Check out those photos here. Below is a photo of Robert and Jonathan Kraft:

Finally – back to the defend the fort campaign – a major part of this has been the addition of an all-female promotional team dubbed the “Rev Girls.” The Rev Girls basically go around to area bars and soccer themed events to help promote the team to the 21+ audience.

We held a photo shoot back in March, and these photos I took have been used in all of our advertising collateral (both print and web) across the defend the fort campaign. Below is a group photo from that shoot that I pieced together from several shots.

See more from the shoot here.

So, that’s what has been keeping me busy professionally as of late. I really need to update more often so I don’t have big long posts like this anymore!

The whole thing came about because of the MIAA High School Super Bowls that were being hosted at Gillette Stadium the weekend of Dec. 6th. Canon had invited Peter along with his assistant, Max, and a local high school photo contest winner (I apologize but I don’t have his name! He was a great photographer with an amazing future ahead of him) to speak to a group of high school photography students from Stoughton that were going to be shooting the MIAA events over the weekend through Canon.

I was asked to also speak at this from the perspective of a Patriots employee who had a photography background. I talked about my experience shooting the ‘Media Days’ at last year’s Super Bowls (photos here) and what it was like finagling my way around a crowded room full of football players and national media. I showed six of my own photos (see the Wes Welker photo to the right) to the crowd of about 20 kids.

I went on after Peter, so it was a little nerve racking going on after a 30+ year veteran at Sports Illustrated, but the kids seemed to like it, so it worked out well. Peter basically showed his favorite photos from over the last 30 years and gave some back story to some of them, which was pretty interesting.

Max went on after me and he also spoke about his experience at last year’s Super Bowl, which was actually a video he shot interviewing other photographers on what it’s like getting into the photography business these days.

Afterward, while the photo students were enamored by Gillette Stadium and shooting photos of everything in sight, I had the opportunity to pick Peter’s brain a bit from everything to equipment to shooting techniques, so for someone who was there to lend their experiences to others (me), I sure learned a lot in the mere two hours I took part in this event.

Check out another photo from the shoot after the jump (which is a better overall photo, just doesn’t show as much of Michael’s face as we wanted).

So, I entered this photo in this month’s Boston.com photo contest titled “My Neighborhood.” I was a little torn on entering this or a photo from my old neighborhood of 30 years (Hough’s Neck, aka The Promise Land) but decided it was best to go with my actual neighborhood. Wish me luck!

Metalliham rocking out at Newbury Comics

Gotta say, that’s the biggest Newbury Comics there is, and well worth the trip if you’re looking for that sort of thing to purchase.

Weird actually buying a CD as opposed to downloading it! Loving the album thus far, on my second time through already!