Maxwell Kruger Photography

I am putting some cameras up on top of the Bryce Jordan Center for this weekend’s Blue White game. I was up there yesterday scouting locations – pretty cool!

Thanks to Scott for getting me access.

Update: For those who don’t know what the Bryce Jordan Center is, here is a shot from when I flew over the Penn State campus on a photo assignment last year. The building is circled and I am standing between the air handlers where the X is. The above photo was taken facing the stadium, and you can catch the corner of it beside the right air handler.

Jeffrey Field is one of the ugliest places on campus to shoot sports. The backgrounds are horrible; I think it’s on purpose. There is always something extremely ugly and distracting in the back of all shots. The entire field is surrounded pretty closely with something, making it hard to eliminate it with a shallow depth of field. Long lenses definitely help, but it’s also hard to afford a 600…I’m shooting with a 300. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get a 400 2.8 this summer which will be versatile and can be used as a 560 f/4 with a 1.4x teleconverter.

(Canon 1D Mark II, 300mm, 1/2500, f/4, ISO 400)

(Canon 1D Mark II, 300mm, 1/2500, f/4, ISO 400)

(Canon 1D Mark II, 300mm, 1/4000, f/4, ISO 400)

(Canon 1D Mark II, 300mm, 1/5000, f/4, ISO 400)

These dogs seemed to be having so much fun at the park the other day.

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 300mm, 1/1600, f/4, ISO 400)

I shot PSU baseball today against Ohio State. I’ve always thought it would be cool to get the ball in focus and the pitcher out of focus. I’ve tried to achieve this the last couple of games to no avail. It takes a lot of tweaking on the focus and where you sit to line it up perfectly. A longer lens definitely helps to give you more play in the focus.

(Canon 1D Mark II, 420mm, 1/1000, f/5.6, ISO 1000)

As promised, I finished the videos for THON 09. Above is the one combining two different angles. One angle is from the catwalks and one is from my a camera attached to the bottom of the BJC scoreboard.

For the wide angle of the video, I used an old Canon S500 point and shoot camera connected to a laptop on the catwalks of the BJC. The camera was controlled by a piece of software called GBTimelapse which told the camera to take a picture every 30 seconds and download it onto the computer’s harddrive.

Since I didn’t have the luxury of space to fit a laptop on the scoreboard, I connected my Canon 1D Mark II camera to the bottom of the scoreboard with a Magic Arm and controlled it with an intervalometer to take a picture each minute (because I was worried that I’d fill up the memory card). You can see the scoreboard going down and up in the video – this is when I set up the camera.

Here are links to the individual cameras videos.
Wide Camera
Overhead Camera

Hit the jump to see photos of the setup.

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This year, I covered THON in a unique way: from the catwalks. I worked with some folks at the BJC to get some cameras up into the catwalks above. I’ve been placing remote cameras up there for basketball games, so this was not much different, other than the amount of cameras I used.

In total, I covered THON with a total of 6 cameras, all doing totally different things. I had two cameras hooked up in the catwalks as straight remotes; one with a fisheye to cover the entire arena, and one with a 70-200 pointed directly down to get a tight overhead shot. I also had two handheld cameras that I used when I walked around the floor. The next two cameras are the cool ones.

On the Thursday before THON, I set up a camera connected to a borrowed friend’s laptop to record a timelapse of the entire thing, starting at the end of the basketball game that Thursday night to load out on Sunday evening.  The computer was scheduled to take a photo  every 30 seconds for the entire period to be later strung into a movie.  The next day after the basketball game, on Friday before THON started, we were able to lower the scoreboard and attach a camera to the bottom with my 17mm lens.  Since the scoreboard is directly centered in the arena, I figured it would get really cool shots from above with a wide angle lens.  I couldn’t attach a laptop to the camera, so I used an intervalometer (TC-80N3) to record a photo every minute. 

The final sit down at the end of the 46 hours

Here are the two individual camera angles separated.

Just got back from a couple of days in Islamorada. Had a great time, the water was so green and the temperature so warm.

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 17mm, 1/500, f/8, ISO 100)

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 300mm, 1/2000, f/8, ISO 100)

The house we were staying at had some kayaks which we used every day. One day, Chris and I took one about 4 miles out to a ghost island, Indian Key. It was an old island once inhabited by Spanish Treasure hunters and Indians but now deserted.

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 300mm, 1/5000, f/4, ISO 100)

Had a fun photo shoot on the beach with Chris’ girlfriend, Tessa.

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 50mm, 1/200, f/11, ISO 100)

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 29mm, 1/200, f/9, ISO 100)

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 17mm, 1/200, f/11, ISO 100)

Woke up for the sunrise:

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 17mm, f/4, ISO 100)

We drove to Key West and rented a boat for half of the day. It was really nice; the weather was warm and it was fun to swim in the ocean along the boat.

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 300mm, 1/640, f/5.6, ISO 100)

More images after the jump.

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I had the opportunity to photograph Amanda and Jordan two days ago. I took them to a cool railroad bridge that I had spotted a few days earlier. We started really late so it was pitch black under the bridge. Had to light the scene with my car’s parking lights so we could see what we were doing. Used mainly 580ex II into a Lastolite Ezy-box softbox with sometimes a gelled 430ex behind. Had some difficulty firing the flashes with my ST-E2 – it was really unreliable. I regretted not bringing my pocketwizards with me. I don’t know how Joe McNally does it.

Stay tuned for more images to come as I edit them.

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 50mm, 1/30, f/3.2, ISO 400)

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 50mm, 1/50, f/4.5, ISO 400)

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 50mm, 1/30, f/5.6, ISO 400)