James Brosher Photography
Portfolio website for James Brosher, a Bloomington, Indiana based editorial and wedding photographer specializing in action, documentary, and portrait images.
This is a frame from today’s Illinois state boys golf championship over in Normal, Ill. I was assigned to photograph another golfer in this group, but I couldn’t resist getting a shot of this guy’s expression. With that look, one would think that he just hit it into a 10,000 foot crevasse. He missed the fairway right and had to hit between a couple trees, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it looked.
My second assignment of the evening was to photograph a local cross country runner for an upcoming feature. I’ve shot a few sportraits in my day, but never one of a runner. One of the main challenges was location. I met her and the reporter at the high school and while she was doing a short interview, I scouted a few shots within walking distance of the main entrance of the school. If this had been a track runner, I would have been automatically drawn to the school’s track, but cross country presents a bigger challenge for the background. The school is near a busy highway so I settled on a running shot next to the school’s brick exterior for the sake of a clean background. Ideally, I would have liked to have an open field or a forest to shoot in, but this was the best background I could find on the fly. I had her run towards a Nikon SB-800 (1/8 power, zoomed to 24 mm) while I added a bit of fill with a Nikon SB-600 at a 45 degree behind her (1/4 power, zoomed to 24 mm). I had a sort of sweet spot between the lights, and it took a few passes for me to catch her in the lights.
Beware of darkness. I’m sure George Harrison meant that in a different context other than photography, but it is good advice for photographers. Sometimes it’s just too dark to make an exposure. I was almost there photographing football at Richwoods High School in Peoria tonight. The stadium is extremely dark and, like most high schools, they waited until it was good and dark to start the game. I was shooting 1/400 second, f/4 at 3200 ISO for most of the game. This was my best shot from the game that consisted primarily of quarterback option and pitch-out plays:
