My friend Ian was sitting at the finish line of the Portland Marathon Sunday morning, dutifully watching the LCD screen of the camera making sure every finisher was documented for the world to see, when he spotted this guy. Ian's eyes instantly locked on the guy's chafetastic nips, probably forcing his camera to stray from the finish line as he whispered to us in amazement “That guy’s nipples are so bloody!” So if anyone that finished the Portland Marathon on Sunday didn’t get their finish uploaded to the Internets, you can blame this guy and his nips.

But what a trooper, right? Staring at the nipple-level bloodstains we couldn’t help but cringe as we tried to imagine how many miles he had run with that kind of chafing. 10 miles? 15 miles? That’s endurance right there. I give that guy the gutsy award for the day. No, the week. My only question is, what is left where his nipples were? Just some smooth circle patches?

In case you haven't heard, Haile Gebrselassie rocked the running world this week by breaking 2:04 in the marathon. I say that he specifically rocked the running world rather than the entire world because when I found out that he had broken the record, I went the New York Times sports page to see what the would have to say about such a historic event. Not much apparently, as Gebrselassie's epic feat was featured at the bottom of the page with a stamp-sized thumbnail image, while the rest of the page was dominated by group of pudgy semi-athletes playing baseball for the last time at their stadium.

In any case, here’s shot of Gebrselassie just before his historic run. Now, this isn’t the most exciting picture from the race, but I’m using it because it does a good job of illustrating the photo concept I want to go over today: depth of field. Depth of field (DOF) referrers to how much of the scene is in focus in a picture. If the DOF is large, then almost everything in the picture will appear in focus, while if the DOF is small, then only a small amount of the scene will be sharp.

This picture of Gebrselassie, like most sports photos, uses a small DOF. The DOF is mainly dependant on the magnification of the subject (how big of a zoom lens you’re using) and the lens’ aperture (f-stop). The aperture of the lens refers to how big the hole letting light into the camera is. A large aperture (small f-stop number) lets in a lot of light and creates a small DOF, while a small aperture (large f-stop number) lets in a small amount of light and creates a large DOF.

So in the photo at the top of the page, Gebrselassie is in focus but the tower is very blurry because the photographer is using a large zoom lens (magnification of the subject) and a large aperture (a small f-stop number, like f2.8). Sports photography usually uses a small DOF because it makes the subject pop out from the blurry background, focusing the viewer’s attention on the action.

So there you have it, Haile is awesome, baseball sucks, and sports photography uses a small DOF!

I went to Seaside’s Three Course Challenge cross country meet this weekend expecting some good clean fun. I was sorely mistaken. Things got real dirty real quick, and the result wasn’t pretty. I think the source of the problem was the huge 25-meter-long mud pit planted at the base of a long hill in the middle of the course. While most of the race leaders dodged the shoe-sucking mud by running around the outskirts, the middle of the pack was herded straight through the center, resulting in face plants, voluntary cannonballs, mid-race mud warfare, and dozens of lost shoes.  

At the end of the last race, me and the other mud pit spectators took a moment to survey the damage, flicking off the globs of mud stuck to our pants and camera lenses. I thought things were wrapping up so I started gathering my things to head back up the hill. But the carnage had only just begun. A girl already half covered in mud and surrounded by three other teammates stepped up to the mud pit and gathered up a hefty mud ball in her hands. Then she looked across the mud pit into the eyes of the other half of her team, who had also acquired mud balls, and said “Ready?”

The menacing tone that she used for the word “ready” made the rest of us semi-clean folk fairly nervous. Ready for what exactly? Whatever it was they were ready for, I was fairly certain that I was not. Noticing that faces of the two-dozen other kids standing around the pit had taken on a steely pre-combat look, I decided it would be a good time to head for higher ground. I got about half a step back from the pit when the muddy girl suddenly yelled “NOW!” and before her mud ball had reached the face of her teammate, the air was filled with a crossfire of mud balls and screaming.

By the end of it all I was fortunate to walk away with only minor splattering, but others weren’t so lucky. It’s been almost a week now since the fight, and my clothes are now clean and mostly spotless. I’ve picked most of the mud out of my hair and gathered up my life where I left off. But the shell shock still lingers. Every now and then I’ll be walking through a crowd and hear someone behind me say “Ready?” in that low, menacing tone; and a chill will run down my back as the taste of mud fills my mouth.

Not only does this look cool, but you can do it yourself. It’s easier to do with a little more sophisticated gear than your average point and shoot, but some cameras may have presets for the effect. I’ll explain how to do it if you have a camera with manual settings and an external flash. You’ll also need a bright light source (like a sunset), which will create the halo.

Here’s how it goes: Have your subject stand in front of the sun/bright light so that it looks like the light source is emanating from behind the subject’s head. Set your camera (on it’s manual setting) to expose for the background (the sunset behind the person). This is where the external flash comes in. Without a flash, the person’s face would be completely dark because the camera is set to expose for the very bright background. To balance the background and foreground, point your external flash directly at the subject’s face. Using ½ power as a starting point, experiment with changing the flash’s power until the both the background and the subject’s face are each exposed correctly.

And that’s how you make Alberto look epic. Nice find Greenville Runners Club!