a nocklebeast retrospective of 2011

Can a retrospective really cover only one year?  Shouldn't a retrospective cover a lifetime of photography, or at least a decade of photography?

Yeah,

well...

whatever!


In the last few years, in an exercise of ego and editing, I've selected my best photos of the year.

This year's best of 2011 set (as in past years) has been dominated by roller derby.  During the derby season, I'll maintain a photo set of my roller derby favorites, adding few photos from each bout to the set. This year's roller derby faves at one point numbered around 240+ photos; I pruned about 60 photos from the set to get it down to 175+ and then gave up.  I made a best of 2011 photo set from the best of the non-derby photos and the best of the favorite derby photos, here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nocklebeast/sets/72157628553001173/


The following is my attempt at being ruthless... picking out about 20 of the best of the best of 2011.

I believe it was Sean Reid of Reid Reviews that said that entire worlds exist in the out of focus regions of photographs.  I've been inspired by Carsten D's (among others) dreamy out of focus landscapes over the last few years.

All waves and ripples to hit the shore of California originate some where across the Pacific Ocean; it's just not that important where the ripples came from.  The only thing that is important is the current ripple, and after that ripple has exhausted itself, another ripple will be on it's way.


where the ripple comes from is unimportant

Here we have a bunch of rollergirls OCCUPYING THE PIVOT LINE at the start of the jam.   The out of focus background glows and Maiden Hades' dark lipstick looks particularly good in black and white.


poised on the pivot line

In roller derby, penalties happen,


queen and liv got penalties

At this year's Turkey Bowl (a SCDG fundraiser), I brought my fancy camera, and at one point proceeded to take photos of bowling balls. After the following photograph, where a bowler from the team in the next lane over grabbed at my bowling ball just as John throws his orange rock... I stopped taking photos of bowling balls... I knew I wasn't going to top this on that evening... in fact, this just might be the best photo of a bowling ball EVER!


mark it an eight (The best photo of a bowling ball EVER!)

SCDG's warehouse is is made of concrete... it's a Fight Club sort of venue. Here, Liv N. LetDie is giving Missus Unshine a hardtime.  I particularly like the out-of-focus glow from the door that is propped open behind the action.


liv gives unshine a hard time

It seems to be today's convention, that to demonstrate some sort of technical prowess, SOMETHING in the photograph must be in focus.  Which makes sports photography with a tilt lens totally ridiculous.  To top it off, my ridiculous lens is attached to my old film SLR loaded with film that is only available in Asia (not North America), which means I'll probably need to schedule another business trip to Hong Kong this year. The film is Fuji Natural 1600... daylight film shot in the tungsten light of the Santa Cruz Civic.  This produces delightfully orange Oompa-Loompa skin tones.


I sometimes wonder if this is what roller girls see during a jam

During tea-breaks and lunch time, I'll often take a film rangefinder or a little plastic film camera with me.  The following photograph is from one of the rare times I had a digital rangefinder during my lunch hour.  A woman in my peripheral vision shouts out and laughs at some one across the sidewalk in the courtyard outside Starbucks on Pacific Avenue.


nailed the dismount


Astronaughty always looks intense .  I sat at turn one during Bay Area's championship bout.  With the slow moving packs coming off the pivot line, the jammers seemed to hit the pack for the first time about 15 feet from me.



trying to find a way through the pack

This one's from Bay Area's season opener.  I love the back lighting on this one.


way to go Ho!

Glowing feathers from SCDG's fundraiser with Sin Sisters Burlesque.


peek-a-boo

At next year's Holiday Parade in Santa Cruz, I got to try to shoot more shots of the crowd and less of the parade.


it's Santa Claus!

Beaver Fever opens for Sin Sisters Burlesque/SCDG


beaver fever

Rizzo Rogue is sooo pretty.


Rizzo Rogue

Shooting around the neighborhood with a box camera with a reversed lens.


toot!

A roller derby portrait combining a demonstration of technical prowess (SOMETHING IS IN FOCUS) with entire worlds contained in the out of focus


poised to re-enter play from the penalty box

 A collision.


One of my most popular photos of the season.  I was shooting at the pivot line when I spotted the sign in the penalty box.  I instantly knew I needed to move to the the penalty box for photos.


framed

Bay Area holds one of their bouts at the Kezar Pavilion in San Francisco.  This venue allowed me to move around a bit more than their other pavilion venues which resulted in more photos of team huddles and what-not.  Alas, food and booze are not allowed in the venue, which probably explains why no bouts are scheduled there this next season.


grrr!

After a few bouts in Monterey, I ventured away from my usual sedementary style (of just sitting in one spot) and found that turn two seemed to have some nice light and the jammers often hit the pack there on their first pass.



Just about every online article about bicyclists or cycling will feature a dumb-ass motorist comment about spandex. Would you prefer cyclists wear tweed, sir?  I believe this is one of UCSC's physics professors speeding down Soquel in a tweed jacket.


I like your tweed sir (Feeling the need for tweed!)

If you can't get enough of the best of 2011, here's the full set (which includes about 60 more photos)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nocklebeast/sets/72157628553001173/

SCDG Grom Skatemare before Xmas

Junior derbiers from Santa Cruz and Silicon Valley got together to scrimmage some derby in black and white uniforms.

In little ol' Santa Cruz, junior derbiers are called groms.



In Santa Cruz we even have grom referees! (Does your town have grom referees?)








And our grom referees even play roller ball! (yeah, hard core!)



The grom scrimmage takes place at a west-side Santa Cruz warehouse. The warehouse is made of concrete.  And your Mom doesn't work here (unless you're a grom)



And no roller derby photo set is really complete without an obscure Repo Man reference (every skate bag has one).



Oh, and it's early in the morning, so some extreme closeup soft focus photos are in order







After some warm ups, it's finally time for the big bout... but first groms gotta line up for an equipment check



and time for a grom census



From the center of the track I'll shoot with my 60mm without flash, clinging to the pillar at the apex of turn 1 and 2 since the light is a little brighter there







Once I scan past the pillar, I often get "bombed" by one of the jam refs and I'm shooting directly into the sunlight from the door to the outside, which can make for some interesting photographs (albeit some what challenging).









On the outside of the track, I'll shoot with the 90mm with flash in TTL mode.  In TTL (thru-the-lens) mode the flash fires off a little pre-flash before the camera's shutter opens.  The light from the pre-flash and the surroundings reflect off the shutter curtain in the camera into a little diode or something and the fancy camera's little brain communicates with on-camera fancy flash attachment's little brain and the flash decides at what power to fire at and bam! The camera's shutter fires, the flash fires!

At one point during the scrimmage, I became fascinated with shooting directly into the sunlight at the apex of turn 3 and 4. And I eventually figured out that the little brains of the camera and flash talking to each other just wasn't working.  They were getting confused by the very bright back-lighting from the sunny doorway.  So I switched the flash from TTL to manual mode and after some shots settled on a little less than half power and 60 degree and then 45 degree tilt. Now the camera's brain and the flash's brain don't have to think anymore.  Don't think, just do!  Camera: ISO=1250, shutter speed=1/250th, shutter fires, bam!  Flash: power=a little less than 1/2, reflector set at 105mm field of view, flash fires, bam!



With no time for thinking, the camera seems a bit more responsive and even the flash seems to refresh itself much more quickly.




















A sunny winter afternoon's derby comes to and end





the full set on flickr is here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nocklebeast/sets/72157628463971287

Some photo highlights from the Santa Cruz holiday parade (3 December 2011).

Next year I think I should try to get a little more crowd shots and a little less car shots (there were a lot of cars this year).








The parade goes down Pacific Avenue heading north, starting at 10am.  The sun is fairly low in the sky and for the most part I'm shooting into it.  So the light is contrasty.  I'm shooting with a 28mm Leica Elmarit, which is a pretty contrasty lens (and then I think I may have added a touch of contrast in much of the processing).  Very contrasty photos.