Picasa's Filtered Black & White Feature

This is a great example of the beauty of Picasa's Filtered Black & White feature. Below you see the original color image of Yong in plank position. His eyes are closed and his face has a wonderful expression of concentration. Unfortunately, his face is reflecting red from the red gym mats just outside of the shot (see Sno-Cones post).
  Original color

If I just use the basic black & white feature on Picasa, I lose the detail of his face in shadow, below. Unacceptable.
  Black & White

However, if I use the Filtered Black & White feature, I can select a color filter that lightens his face and helps to isolate his expression (in this case, a red filter). Much better.
 

Strength & Beauty

 
I love this shot. It was one of those chance photographs that just happened by accident. Treefrog had just finished a killer kettlebell workout and her daughter toddled over to meet her. The kettlebell was still next to her and there was nothing else in the field, making for the perfect un-cluttered shot. I thought about leaving it in color as the blue mat made for a uniform backdrop, but it was a little bright and washed out the skintones of the subjects. So I used Picasa's Filtered black & white and found a color that diminished the mat while highlighting her physique.

To me, this shot illustrates two things: the overt beauty found in a strong female physique, and the subtle strength and beauty found only in motherhood.

See more shots from today's workout at SuckageOnSaturday

Sno-cones and gym mats

 
This was a neat effect I discovered during our workout "Fran": the bright red mats on the floor reflected their colors on the white garage door, making a weird rainbow effect vaguely reminiscent of those technicolor Sno-Cones I used to enjoy every summer, first from the Snoopy Snow-Cone Machine I had as a kid, later from the ice-cream man outside the neighborhood pool as a teenager, and finally from the street vendors on the National Mall as a young intern in Washington, DC. Damn things had so much colored syrup, your tongue would be purple for days.... But I digress.

The point is, I took a lot of silhouette shots that were best viewed in black and white, but my favorite one was this one because of the surprising colors. I just wish the garage door had been slightly higher so that the shape of the barbell wouldn't have been lost. Ah well. To see the others, go to Fran

Master Splinter

 
We actually have a bona fide gym rat that hangs out above the speed bags. In a nod to the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle series, we call him Master Splinter. I thought he was interesting enough to take a few pictures, and was surprised that this one came out in such sharp focus. I gave it a touch more saturation to bring out the colors in his eye and gi against the flags in the background. I guess it just goes to show that you never know where your next interesting shot is going to come from; so shoot anything and everything.

To see pics from the Thrusters/Wallball workout we did, go to Thrusters

Fourth of July and a new 50mm lens

Well, Fourth of July found me in the gym- no surprise there! It was pretty disappointing for me, both physically and photographically. My energy level was low and I was sucking wind bigtime. On top of that, I was frustrated by my camera....

After months of being forced to compensate for low light conditions in the gym by shooting at 1600 and stretching the limits of artistic license by converting 90% of my shots to black & white, I finally forked over $200 for a new 50mm lens. I bought it because it has a nice wide aperture (so it collects a lot of light) and my logic was that it would be great for shooting our CrossFit workouts in the gym. It also gives everything in the distance that wonderfully blurry appearance, isolating your subject against a backdrop of gentle diffusion.

Unfortunately, that lovely effect is the result of a very shallow depth of field, meaning you don't have much wiggle room when you are focusing this lens. This makes for lovely portraits when your subject is sitting still in a chair, but lousy action shots when your subject is moving like a freight train- a common occurrence in a CrossFit workout.

End result? Lots of fuzzy pictures. But hey, at least I was able to shoot below 400 ISO for once.

Lesson learned: Use the full range of aperture. Just because I've got f/1.4 doesn't mean I have to use it. I could probably close it a few stops and still be ok at 400 ISO while enjoying a more forgiving focal range.