Rowing on Lake Lemon

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Rowing on Lake Lemon, originally uploaded by jghphoto21. All Rights Reserved.

The October Hall of Fame was won by Jeff Hammond, from Bloomington, Indiana - about an hour south of Indianapolis. The competition was powerful, as always, and many other photos had high scores. But Jeff's score blew the rest away early on, and he maintained the lead throughout the challenge.

This photo is stunning for its timing, color, and composition. We are proud to feature it for the month of October!

How long have you been into photography?

I have been serious about photography for around ten years now and suggest to anyone starting out that they get out into the world around them. I believe that an outstanding image is made up of 20% equipment, 20% skill and 60% "luck." Luck is really about putting yourself in the right place for something good to happen and that rarely happens when you are sitting on the living room sofa.

Get familiar with your equipment so that your concentration is on the image and not the controls, then go put yourself in situations where there is a possibility of a nice image.

What equipment do you use?

I shoot exclusively with Canon DSLR equipment (no offense to very good gear from Nikon and others!). Right now, I'm shooting with a 1D-MarkIII and a 1Ds-MarkIII and an assortment of lenses. Love the gear, but at the end of the day a camera is still pretty much a lightproof box with a shutter.

What is the story behind your Brackets entry?

This image was made while I was shooting a series for a rowing team. I met them well before daylight and they were in two boats (sorry I don't know the technical jargon of their great sport) while I was in a flat-bottomed chase boat with a small outboard motor. I had to keep a little distance between us so that my wake would not creep into the photo and basically run up ahead of them, kill the engine, stand up (probably not my smartest move!) and shoot 6-8 images as they tore past me. Then I would crank the engine and do it again. They are amazingly fast you know.

I saw the sun breaking and immediately went into silhouette mode (a MUCH faster shooting speed to expose for the deep orange color of the sunrise). I got literally four frames of nice composition and exposure as they left the scene...maybe 1-1.5 seconds total. I put myself in a place where something nice could happen and got VERY lucky that it did.


What style of photography do you enjoy -- what do you like to shoot?

Subject-wise, there tends to be a lot of variety in my shooting. I lean toward nature and wildlife on my free time, but more toward commercial/editorial images or portraits and events when it's a paying job.