By Seth A. McConnell

Every once in a while you come across a venue that is perplexing and frustrating.

NAU’s Equine Center, The Pennington County Events Center and NAU’s Gymnasium are three that come to mind immediately. Mainly because they are dark and difficult to shoot in even with a strobe. I had the distinct pleasure of shooting in the Equine Center today… the VERY orange equine center.

I’m not exactly sure what kind of lights they have there but two things are very clear, they are orange and they are dim.

The Mark III’s white balance cannot figure it out, neither could the 20D and the D200 struggled with it as well. (Well Nikon struggles with white balance on just about any indoor situation so thats not saying much)

Examples: (Note: these images are just grab frames as I was trying to figure out the white balance, so nothing spectalular)

This is the AWB… An orange funk so nasty that it truly has no name.

I used the tungsten balance to see how much it would take out… not a lot but its a lot less orange.

I finally pulled out my white note book an manually white balanced. Its not perfect but its so much better than it was. Notice anywhere the outside light peaked in… thats some crazy blue!

I would rather have a few wild blue highlights than some crazy orange images.

Ultimately I did switch the images to black and white for the slide show I put together.

This is hands down my favorite image from the take. A quiet moment of solitude before climbing on the back of raging 2,000lb beast. I also think it captures the feel of the event for a lot of the NAU Rodeo faithful. This is the last ride for a storied successful program.

If you have a moment check the slideshow on the front page, its called NAU’s Last Ride.

On a sidenote: In college I was supposed to ride a bull, it never happened… Its still on my list of things to do before I turn 30, which is a mere 3 1/2 years away. So if anyone knows someone who has a young bucking bull (I’m not looking to mount up on a beast like Justin Boots, Strawberry Wine or anything like that) preferably 2 maybe 3 years old that is willing to let a couple of crazy photographers cowboy up you should let me know.

-Seth

By Seth A. McConnell

Well its that time of year again. Stock Show time that is.
This year is a little different than years past.
1. All new photo staff, different perspectives and fresh eyes. (nothing wrong with the old eyes but every photographer will tell you after a while of covering the same event everything starts looking the same.)
2. Slide shows.
We finally moved to Sound Slides. So please take a moment and head over to the slide show section and take a peek at those.

-Seth