By Seth A. McConnell

The semifinals wrapped up a few hours ago and again it was a fairly productive morning. I’m trying to upload a slideshow of the action but its not going as fast I would like. The wifi here at the Watertown Civic Arena is through the high school so there are a ton of filters to get through and quite a few blocked websites, so its slowing the process way down. I should hopefully have that up a bit later. I did manage to get a video up. http://videos.rapidcityjournal.com/p/video?id=3285886

More after the finals which start in two hours. West River is dominating the tournament. Sturgis has 7 in the finals, Stevens 3 and Central 2. The only weight class that these three schools don’t have wrestlers in are 189 and 285. West River should be bringing home a lot of hardware tonight.

By Seth A. McConnell

Covering the state wrestling tournament this weekend. Its been pretty grueling so far. It started at 10 this morning (9 mountain) and is still going on. Working tournaments is a pretty intense assignment but the images that come out of it usually make it worth while… oh and the tournament food. I should have two slideshows up a little later on tonight along with a video recaping the day.

I feel pretty good about the images I made today. I’m looking forward to the emotion of tomorrow. There were already a few tears shed today from losses in the quarter finals. Tomorrow should provide a lot more from both winning and losing.

***EDIT***

Here are the links to the two slideshows (I was going to embed them but thats been screwing up the blog as of late. Apparently we have figured out the coding but I’m not privy to that information yet as I’m obviously on the other side of the state)

Enjoy!

http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/pages/slideshows/145/index.html

http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/pages/slideshows/146/index.html

I would link you to the video but its still chugging away on the upload. You will be able to find that on the home page.

-S

I was feeling a little nostalgic tonight. The hockey season is winding down. And I’m a little bummed out. It’s been so much fun having hockey in town. And coming from a city where I went to a lot of pro sporting events, CHL games have been a welcomed change to the sports schedule. I had two assignments for tonights game: shoot action of the game, and features of the officials. This meant that I spent a lot more time in the tunnel then I normally do. And that meant a lot more features of the Rush players between periods as they wait to go back out on the ice. I didn’t include any shots of the officials (those aren’t set to run for a few more days), but here is a lose edit from my night at the game.

by Kristina Barker

By Seth A. McConnell

So my intentions were to go back to the state tournament today and hopefully have a little time to experiment… it wasn’t in the cards for me today. Although I gave the uneven bars another shot. I learned that 1/10th of a second was a little to slow, that or my timing was off. Could have been either.

I lucked out when she threw her feet up there. With the motion blur, long lens and small aperture it looks like she is pushing off with her feet while trying desperately to cling on with her hands. It came out pretty nicely.

A little bit of an experimentation with a slow shutter speed. Brittany Heller kept swinging her arms back and forth while she was waiting for her turn on the bars. So I took aim and fired off a couple of frames. Its also an interesting effect with the long glass and small aperture.

Watch for Heidi’s story later this week about the barbers at Parkway Barber Shop that are retiring after over 50 years in the business.

Warren Stone sits in the waiting area after giving his last haircut of the day on Thursday afternoon, Feb. 19, 2009. Stone will be retiring along with two other barbers on Saturday Feb. 28 when the shop closes its doors. “I’m going to miss it,” Stone said. “I really am.”

by Kristina Barker

By Seth A. McConnell/Journal staff

The state gymnastics meet is in town this weekend and I got the fortune (or misfortune depending on how optimistic you are) of covering both days. Gymnastics is not my strong suit so I spent a bit of time researching last night and finding what makes a good gymnastics photo. I found a lot of photos but nothing that was incredibly creative. I knew what to look for to make an acceptable photo and how to push it to make a great photo but nothing to make an extraordinary photo. I was looking for experimental shots with slow shutter speeds and pans but didn’t find a lot. So I decided to experiment on my own today. Which is kinda hard to do when your making images for multiple papers. Late in the afternoon I did get an opportunity after I knew I had a sufficient number of images.

I had tried multiple times during the day to shoot something on the bars using a slow shutter speed but nothing was really working. Mainly due to ugly backgrounds (Carold Heir Gymnasium is not very easy on the eyes, I think its the green ceiling, blue screens and an over abundance of ads on the walls…) so I decided to pull out the 300mm to see if could clean up the background by compressing the foreground and background together and shooting from straight on instead of above. I wanted to see if I could get just the hands and bar in focus but get the body to blur from the motion… I shot this at 1/15th of a second at f/4 iso 200. I don’t know if I fully succeeded but I’m pretty pleased with the outcome. Kristina says it looks like a demon. It might be the red in the Yankton uniform. I’m going to give this a shot again tomorrow, maybe slap the 1.4x converter on to shoot even tighter and get the background to compress even more and maybe slow the shutter down to an 1/8th or a 1/10th of a second. If there were decent clean backgrounds in the gym I would love to experiment with a few more slow shutter shots but I don’t for see it happening. Who knows though, the best part of this job is the ability to take a risk and see what works. If it fails you file that info away and nobody has to see the images. If you succeed you look like a genius… or that you at least know what your doing.

Tyler Yule loves to play the drums. When I was talking with him, his passion for them made me wish I was more musical. It made me wish I had taken band more seriously in high school.

- Ryan

Kristina photographed a couple that got married at the Sturgis Regional Hospital’s Massa Unit. Would you have tied the knot there? It looked like a great time and a lovely ceremony.

- Ryan

As a shooter, the high school basketball season can seem like its dragging on and on. So, you try to make different photos. You shoot some long glass, some short glass, and you see what happens. And other times, pictures happen for you. Maybe you won’t think this is funny, but it made me laugh.

- Ryan

St. Thomas More’s Zach Cimburek appears to have grown an extra set of arms as he’s guarded by Hot Springs’ Ross Norton during the first period of a basketball game at STM on Thursday night. Photo by Ryan Soderlin/Journal staff

Today I interviewed Barb Elliott. She sells event tickets at the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center.

- Ryan