Friday Night Lights Again

When Kiran was in the Montgomery Township High School Marching Band, we attended every home game played by the high school football team.

Neither Bhavna nor I am into American sports. When Shaan and Kiran were in lower middle school, we tried attending baseball games, but neither child seemed interested, and Bhavna and I were bored. I grew up playing cricket and what the rest of the world calls football, but most US Americans call soccer.

When Kiran was in the Montgomery Township High School Marching Band, regardless of the weather, we attended every home game played by the high school football team. It was a show of support; the band was quite good, and listening to them play was enjoyable. Much more satisfying than watching the football team lose.

Montgomery Township High School Football
Friday 23 September 2022 · FujiFilm X-T3 · XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR

But the games were also an opportunity to practice sports photography. Carrying a long lens and learning to track fast-moving subjects at high ISO and fast shutter speeds proved to help me develop the skills that would become useful when making wild bird photographs in lower morning light in the woods.

Montgomery Township High School Football
Friday 23 September 2022 · FujiFilm X-T3 · XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR

My youngest, Kiran, is a graduating senior at Oberlin College, so our high school football games were behind us. But now that our nephew is in high school, he has joined the marching band. We want to support our nephew and will most likely attend as many of the home games as possible before the weather gets miserable.

Montgomery Township High School Cheerleaders
Friday 23 September 2022 · FujiFilm X-T3 · XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR
Montgomery Township High School Marching Band
Friday 23 September 2022 · FujiFilm X-T3 · XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR

Friday Night

The Montgomery Township high school "Cougars" football team performed well last night against the Scotch Plains-Fanwood Raiders.

Montgomery scored 41 to Scotch Plains-Fanwood's 21.

No. I'm not into football. My daughter is captain of the high school marching band. We go to the home games to support her.

I used a modified version of an ACROS film simulation recipe by Ritchie Roesch. No post-processing noise reduction was used.

I like how Richie's recipe accentuates the light and dark areas of each image.

FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 55 mm | 1160 sec at f/5.6 | ISO 8000
FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 55 mm | 1160 sec at f/5.6 | ISO 8000
football, montgomery township high school
FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 55 mm | 1500 sec at f/5.6 | ISO 12800
football, montgomery township high school
FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 55 mm | 1500 sec at f/5.6 | ISO 12800
FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 55 mm | 1500 sec at f/5.6 | ISO 12800
FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 55 mm | 1500 sec at f/4.0 | ISO 12800
FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 55 mm | 1500 sec at f/4.0 | ISO 10000
FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 55 mm | 1500 sec at f/4.0 | ISO 10000
FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 34.2 mm | 175 sec at f/5.6 | ISO 12800
FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 55 mm | 1500 sec at f/5.6 | ISO 12800
FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 55 mm | 1500 sec t f/4.5 | ISO 12800
FujiFilm X-T2 | Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR @ 55 mm | 1500 sec at f/4.5 | ISO 6400

Tuesday Photo Challenge - Forward

The Tuesday Photo Challenge is a weekly theme-based challenge for photographers of all kinds to share both new and old photography. This week's theme is forward.

I struggled with the challenge this week. When I could visualize the word "forward" I could not capture a photo. Some of the participants posted images of things in motion or the tracks left by moving things. I looked for ways to do that this week. The roads near my home are narrow one-lane-ditch-on-side country roads. There is no stopping to take a photo.

I had nothing in my catalogue similar to any of these. I shoot mostly architecture, landscape, and macros. I have some images I shot during a high school football game but I don't find them interesting. We only go to see our daughter perform in the marching band.

So what to do?

Post a randomly chosen image from the set of images of the marching band. I removed one of the field lights form the upper right-hand corner, applied a Fuji ACROS B&W filter, and used Nik's Dfine 2 to remove some high ISO noise.

Both of these images were shot on a Fuji X-T2 with the Fujinon 16-55mm f/2.8 XF R LM WR.

Fuji X-T2 + Fujinon XF16-55mm R LM WR @ 51.6mm , ISO 12800 , 1/400s , ƒ/5

UPDATE: After I posted this, I felt that an image of the marching band was more appropriate, so I added the band image as the feature image. I like the marching band photo better.