ActionshotsNH - Photography Collage

I enjoy taking pictures of activities my family and I are involved with.  Several years back I decided to make a collage.  Would it be a theme, a recap, or what?  I would use one of my photos for a background and add my subject photos to show something.  I really like the individual photos but there is something about a collage which makes a good summary of an event.  They would make nice posters. 

My first collage of skydiving parachutes.  I had a couple good sky photos and some colorful parachute canopy pictures.  I tried to create some kind of flow showing the parachute canopy colors so I took the skydivers out.  I get a lot of views on my blog for this so people must like it.

Kevin and I enjoy the 2012 AMA Pro Hillclimb event in NH.  I put this up on facebook and many of the riders tagged themselves to the photo.

After an excellent year of trail camera pictures I saw a fresh boot track on a trail I cut with a fresher deer track in it so I used that as the background adding the trail cam pictures from my hunting buddies.  The trail camera pictures were from Ryan, Derek, Stephen, and Ray. 

The NH ice fishing derby on Lake Winniepesaukee has been tradition for several years.  We have had large groups and small groups.  Great time, cold, fishing, food, and some nice ice shanty's.

We have been going to the Vermonster 4x4 mud races.  I decided to make this Vermonster collage. 

Vermonster also had a hill climb event at Whaleback Mountain.  No mud ... but snow ... had fun taking pictures and put this together.

Kate likes the Ford Mustang so this collage is for her.

This Crash & Burn Collage has some of my crash pictures with a parachute cut-away picture I took.  Which is worse?  A parachute malfunction with a cut away, cracking up a motorcycle, or rolling/crashing a car/truck/monster truck/snowmobile ... All have the potential to be painful.

This is from the 2013 AMA Hillclimb.  I took several pictures of Anthony DeHart so I thought I would do one of him.

I could go back over my adventures and do quite a few of these. If we continue going to some of the same events I may make another collage for a specific truck/car/rider/etc.

Over the years Pam's grandma made afghans for all her grandchildren and great grandchildren.  I took one of my sky pictures and made this for her.  I also did a Vermonster Monster Truck collage with the BIGFOOT truck in the middle.  

Had a great time at the 2014 AMA Hillclimb during Bike Week in NH.  

While exploring on vacation I spotted a garden by the ocean with lots of bird houses.  It was oceanfront property with no house.  On the fence was this sign.  The gate had a private keep out sign so I took some pictures from the street.

For years Mike and Lauren have been gracious hosts to us during hunting season.  I made Mike a hunting collage with some of our people pics.  Great memories.  Some big bucks from the group over the years and I thought "Buckwacka" was appropriate. 

I recently went to a car show and saw some very nice cars.  When I saw a lobster boat with the name "three E's" it reminded me of my 3 daughters.

I shoot pistols at my Fish & Game club a bit.  These black and white targets are 5.25" in diameter and the black and green targets are 4" in diameter.  At a distance of 12' to 25' who says I can't hit the "Broad Side of a Barn?"

When you go to the top of my blog to "Search this Blog" you can use key words to find the event I blogged about; skydiving, AMA hillclimb, hunting adventures, Vermonster, ice fishing, Monson Village, Whaleback ...

This is a work in progress ...

45th Annual Show & Shine - Merrimack, NH

I went to the 45th Annual Show & Shine car show this weekend.  I had missed the last couple years but did go in 2015.  I didn’t do a blog post in 2015 but made the collage above from some of the pictures I took. 
 

I thought I would take pictures at this event.  Since there would be many taking pictures I started thinking about how to take my pictures from a different perspective.   

The night before I decided to use my tripod and take pictures from high-up.  The thought of taking pictures from an elevated height isn't new but I thought it would be fun to experiment.  Unless there were others thinking the same thing my pictures would be different.  

My idea was to put my camera on the tripod, pivot the screen viewer down so I could see what I was taking a picture of, set the timer for 10 seconds, raise the camera above my head, and take a picture.

My weather ideal was cool temperatures with blue sky and some clouds but the morning was sunny, hot, and humid.  As it got later the humidity seemed to drop but the temperature was going up.  Not my ideal for taking pictures.

I ended up focusing my camera and pressed the button at ground level.  While the timer counted down I raised the tripod and camera up over my head and aimed using the screen viewer until the picture was taken.  Being 6 feet tall, arms extended, with a 5 ½ foot tripod I was taking pictures 12 to 13 feet up.

I must have looked as unusual as some of the cars at the show.  Based on the reaction of people all around I heard comments like great idea, interesting, resourceful, good idea for short people, etc.  Many came up and asked to see the pictures I had taken. 

I must admit I couldn’t resist taking pictures of a few of the cars at normal height but this blog post is about my pictures being different.

I also reversed my approach from high-up-looking-down to low-down-looking-up with the same set up.  I held my tripod and camera upside down to take pictures from an inch or 2 above the grass.  I was more interested in high-up so only took a few of these.

The height gave me a good picture of the car I focused on as well as other cars and people in the area.  I didn’t see anyone else using a ladder or a tripod so my quest to take pictures from a different perspective was successful.

I saw some great cars and had fun.  Now I have to think about what I might try next year ...