valentino unlimited - VU Photography

Northeast Louisville YMCA Soccer - Game 1

Well, our team had it's first game of the season. We lost a tough one to the Southwest YMCA Dragons on their home turf, 2-1, while playing a man down the entire game.

Check out the album...

Photography Equipment Quandry

OK, so here's the deal...

I started out with a relatively inexpensive (for DSLR's) Olympus E-500 camera as my first for a variety of reasons including: good reviews, great features for the money, fully integrated AF lenses, and a magnificent feel. It just feels good in my hand and all of the controls are comfortable to me. Now that I have been doing this for a while, I see that Canon and Nikon get almost all of the big press from the professional venues even though this camera is quite capable of taking equivalent quality shots on a regular basis. I have never had a single misfire in 25,000+ photographs. No corrupt files, no lost images, no mirror-related imperfections...nothing...and I have shot in some undesirable environments.

Now that I am about ready to add a second, or more likely a new first, I have to decide where my investment in equipment is going to be focused. Canon makes a wider selection of camera bodies, lenses, and accessories than pretty much anyone out there, and has some very high-end equipment to rival the best of Nikon. Nikon, on the other hand, is, well....Nikon. Known for quality professional equipment. The problem is that it's not really a good practice to use a mixed bag of equipment and if I choose one of these two brand lines, I will be best off ditching my Olympus that I am very happy with, and have already built a small collection of lenses and other accessories for.

What I am now thinking, is that I should stick with Olympus, who is being very innovative in the digital photography world right now, and just move up to the E-510, which is still considered on the high end of entry level DSLR's. The camera has gotten great reviews and is considered a great camera for the money. The only drawback to this that I can see, is that there is no next level in the Olympus line after that. So do I take the chance that they will continue to innovate and develop that "next level" of DSLR, or go with an entirely different line and start from scratch.

Feedback is more than welcome and would be greatly appreciated!

In the meanwhile, I am going to just keep shooting...

NBL Grand Nationals and UCI Worlds in Louisville, KY

Is it still Wednesday?

Whew! This process has taken longer than I thought even though I did get it done quicker than the math would indicate I should. Anyway...I have selected 169 of the more interesting shots from the BMX races at Tom Sawyer Park this past weekend. I have well over a thousand more. If you want to see if I have any of you, just let me know.

I am new to covering this incredible sport, so my rider identification skills are extremely limited at this point. If you can help me to identify anyone in the posted shots, I would greatly appreciate your feedback either through the blog or email me directly at: tim@valentinounlimited.com.

Also, since these are lower resolution and smaller sized photos than the originals, if you want a copy of any of these shots for printing purposes, just shoot me a message.

This is an amazing sport to watch, and I am so excited, as I am sure all of those associated with BMX Racing are, that it is our latest Olympic sport debuting in Beijing in 2008.

From a visual artist's standpoint the colors are stunning, and I love color and contrast. As if you couldn't see that in the photos...lol. I sincerely hope to be able to continue to cover these events for a long time into the future...

NBL Grand Nationals!

Well, I'm embarrassed to say that I have lived in Louisville for 9-1/2 years within 5 miles of where the BMX National Bicycle League has held it's season-ending Grand Nationals every Labor Day Weekend, and I was completely unaware until a chance meeting outside a grocery store on Friday morning.

This post is to let those people that I spoke with at the event this weekend know that I am still processing the photos that I took. I had originally told people that pics would likely be posted by this evening, but as it turns out, between the Grand Nationals, the UCI Worlds, and the Louisville WorldFest, I shot somewhere around 3,000 photographs this weekend.

Anyone with average third grade math skills can figure out that to spend a minute on each shot for basic editing, cropping and naming (not to mention downloading and moving to proper folders) means about 50 hours of laptop time prior to even uploading them...so...please be patient...I'll start posting tomorrow afternoon, and should have all of the best ones up by Wednesday evening.

In the meanwhile, I'll throw a couple of early contenders up on the photo blog with no comments at this point, just so you know I really had cards in the camera...lol.