Portraits and Scooby Doo together on a sunny Sunday afternoon

   

Sarah Rahal working on posing with her friend Scoob 

I've been pretty lucky this semester.

     Sarah Rahal, the lead photographer and multimedia editor of Wayne State University’s The South End, invited me along when she took the photos of the newspaper’s editor for the print edition. I was excited especially seeing as this would be a great way to learn how to properly take portraits and see how The South End puts together its’ print editions.

     The theme was growing up and the editors chose a childhood photo to re-create. On Sunday, Sarah along with Tim Carroll and Alex Franzen walked to the McGregor Memorial Conference Center building and set up outside in the courtyard. We had fun, took a bunch of different photos with Alex looking like a serious farmer and Tim looking like a superhero with a juice box.

     Tuesday I met with Sarah in The South End’s office to recreate her photo again because she didn’t like the outfit she wore in the first photo. Again, we had fun trying to position her and the other staff present getting their photos done. Plenty of laughs and climbing on chairs and tables to get the best photo possible.

     Number one lesson learned is it takes a lot of adjusting and a lot of patience to get the final portrait you want. I took l plenty of each of the editor and all of them have their merits but only one of each would I consider a good image that could be printed.

A behind the scenes look as Sarah, Alex and Tim work on Tim's photo.

Alex Franzen in one of the few serious shots before laughing.

Sports, scoreboards I do not understand, continuous shutters...oh my!

The Wayne State University men's baseball team takes the field for a game against Grand Valley State University.

Kyle Zimmerman prepares to hit the ball.

Bradley Baldwin touches third base before continuing to home.

     I don't do the whole sports thing.
     I was raised in a hockey house, and that was it. Sports have never held an interest for me, so trust the quote, “This assignment is going to hurt” is true when I speak them.
     Wayne State men’s baseball started on April 3 with a double-header, and the next day was the same. I planned to attend one of the days, weather depending, and had to ask a 17-year-old coworker what a double-header was.

     Yeah, I’m that bad.

     Shooting the actual game wasn’t bad, though I applaud the people who do this for a living. I had my camera set to continuous because I knew I wouldn’t get any good shots if I relied on my finger to move quickly. I walked away with 749 photos, which was, in my opinion, too many. I’m a rookie and it shows.

     Getting the right position to shoot was one of the biggest obstacles I had to tackle. I moved around and finally found a solid position to the right of home plate. The only issue was I had to hold my camera very steady because I was shooting at the fence and had to keep that little fact low key. Some of the pictures were ruined, at least to me, because I shifted. You can see the edge of the fence in the corners.

     I wouldn’t say this was a bad experience but this was definitely difficult. Finding a sports game during this time frame was the hardest part. My hometown teams were in Benton Harbor, Mich. for state finals, the Wayne State basketball teams were in Florida, so I had to wait until April for the Wayne State baseball team to come to campus. By the time I was at the game and taking the photos, I think I was so relieved to finally be taking the photos that being at a sports game that I don’t understand didn’t even bother me.

      For the record, I had to text my dad to ask him how to read the scoreboard. I seriously don’t see the point of keeping the hits on the board if it doesn’t count toward the score. It’s distracting for weak sport minds like myself.