What an enjoyable day yesterday was. Some of my friends from work were going to go Skydiving at Vinton, Iowa and they asked me if I’d like to take some images of them. So Jeanne and I left home around 8:20 am, I had forgotten how far Vinton was from Dubuque, so we arrived a little later than I had wanted to.
The good news is that we were there well before the group jumped. It was so much fun being there and watching them as they each prepared themselves mentally for the experience they were about to have.
Photography Info:
I’ll get this out-of-the-way so the story of the day doesn’t get lost in the Photography part and if you’re not really into photography you can skip this section. 🙂
I took both the D3S and the D800 yesterday. I had the 28 – 300 mm lens on the D3S and my old 70 – 300 mm lens on the D800. This is the second time I have shot the D800 with the 70 -300 mm lens and again I was disappointed with the results. The D800 is such a high-resolution camera and the 70 -300 just doesn’t produce Tack Sharp images.
Now I can just hear my friend Burt saying, “It’s not the equipment Dummy.” But in this case I think it is. If I shoot the 24 – 70 f2.8 or the 70 – 200 f2.8 with the D800 I get Tack Sharp images.
So I shot 600 images and first round cut of 431 images survived. Normally there wouldn’t have been that many make the cut but I want to make a photo collage for my friends of their landings.
End of Photography Info:
All but one of the group had these neat tee shirts on. They had to sign 400 pages of forms 🙂 before they could jump. Watch a video and then take a brief ground school tutorial, mostly about what not to do while plunging toward the ground at 125 mph.
There was a pretty decent breeze and a lot of cloud cover. The temperature was in the mid 70s when we arrived and by the time the jump was over it was mid 80s so it wasn’t too hot. I have a friend who likes to say that, “Summer heat is God’s punishment on fat people.” 🙂
Yes that’s right the back of their shirts say “SPLAT!” Pretty cool I think. I have a lot of story to tell and lots of images to show over the coming days. I won’t spend days on the event because eventually you would get tired of it but it is a fun story to tell.
After we left the airport Jeanne and I went by this amazing barn. I said, “Well if I needed a picture I’d certainly take that shot.” But we were anxious to get home because Angie, Ben, and Josh were coming over for dinner and I was tired. Additionally, to get a decent shot of the barn I would have to pull onto the Farmer’s property. So I decided not to stop. One mile later I did a “U-turn” and went back 🙂 Hey I just can’t pass up a great barn. More on that for a later post.
Thanks for stopping by. Enjoy your Sunday and be careful.
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