Caden Kramer, winning a face-off against WestHill in the New Hartford JV game.  WestHill won the game 12-10, but Caden won the Face off!

In this picture you can capture the intensity of lacrosse.  Caden is doing everything he can to protect the ball as he spilts two defenders.  The Face off is one of the most critical events in a lacrosse game as the winner fo the face-off receives and extra possession every time they win a face-off.

A face-off midfielder is a special breed in lacrosse.  They have to have extremely quick hands and lightning fast reflexes.  Those two attributes along with an intense desire to possess the ball and out hustle your opponent are the ingredients to a great face-off person. 

Cradeling with your eyes up!

 

 

 

Here is Caden playing lacrosse for the New Hartford Spartans. As a young lacrosse it takes time and confidence to be able to cradle the ball with your head up.  You can see in this picture that Caden's eyes are up and not looking at his stick.   I like the movement in the wrinkles in his shorts in this picture.

 

He also has a nice amount of tilt in his helmet in this picture which is a lacrosse term.  You can tell that he has a strong cradle and that his confidence is growing. You can see that his calf muscles are starting to get definition in them as well.

 

Caden is an excellent player and we are looking for great things from him this year and lots of good pictures. 

Contrasting Speed



I love the center of focus in this picture.  With the Focus on the on the back of the goalie in the center of the picture, you get a clear sense of what a goalie is made of.  It is a name and a number that brings a sense of pride into the goalie position.  Playing goalie can be compared to being out on your island.  Here you get a sense of how hard Sawyer has to focus on the puck.

I also like the symbolism with the skaters being blurred.  Hockey is a fast paced, action pact game.  It is elegant and violent at the same time.  I like to refer to it as controlled chaos.  There is so much going on in between the boards, and a goalie has to focus on it all.  When the puck is on his side of the ice, there are no breaks, no places to hide and with everyone's attention on you have to be ready for a shot at all times.

Sawyer nicknamed "The Sauce"  Does a great job in this picture standing tall in his crease with all this controlled chaos around him.  This is one of my favorite pictures of him.  I love watching him playing and taking pictures of him as he grows up.  I look for great things from him in the future.

 

This is one of my favorite photo's.  I caught the puck right on Sawyer's blocker!  The photo is a little blurrier that i would like, but I think it is amazing shot with the puck on the blocker!

I really like this picture of Sawyer working throughout the screen.  You can see a couple things in this picture, 1) that his head doesn't even reach the crossbar, and two I like the look of his eyes.  How he is concentrating, on the puck while trying to work through the distractions.  Good job Sawyer!

I like this picture because it shows the toughness of hockey.  Here Caden has an opponent pinned to the boards.  Doing the hard work in the corner to take possession of the puck.  Hockey players are grinders, and here is Caden grinding at his best!

 One of the best parts of playing travel hockey is see different rinks.  This is the rink on the campus of Syracuse university.  Tennintiy Ice Arena is great rink on a great campus.  Here is Caden at mid ice on the Orange S.  

Caden 2004 Syracuse nationals 2014 Breast Cancer Awareness tape on his stick

Here is Caden in 2014 October Breast Cancer awareness stick.

2004 Nationals, Spring tournament Merrimac College

Nice Celly

Ariel view

 

Double team

Sawyer Kramer, Mountain Hockey Goalie 2005






My son Sawyer Playing goalie for Mountain Hockey

Sawyer new hartford 21013

Caden new hartford 2012

Sawyer new Hartford 2012

Caden valley elite 2003

Shooting Hockey indoors is always a challenge, there is never enough light. As a photographer you just have to except that. So what I do is a shoot with a shutter speed of 200 to 300, and just accept that the picture is going to come out dark. My focus is to find a great image, and fix whatever needs to be fixed on the picture on the computer later. So it is the angle and the image that I am most concerned about.

In this case this is the NYS Hockey Semi-Finals, play at the AUD in Utica NY. In this picture, the New Hartford skater is clearly drawing a lot of attention from the Pembroke defense. In this image there is at least three defenders focusing their energy on this one offensive player. In fact one of the defenders has his stick on on the offensive player in a hooking motion.

The ice spraying in the air is the focal point of this picture, and the colors of the New Hartford Uniform. The red in the blue are vibrant colors, the mesh well with the fully visible decal.

I was very fortunate to catch the puck in the picture as well, that is what my the image exceptional, however it is impossible to keep the puck and the player in focus being that they are two separate parts of the image. The Puck however being out of focus, shows motion, and the player being in focus show motion captured.

It is in the eyes....

Again it is in the eyes, but that is not the first thing that catches my eye in this picture. The first thing that catches my eye is the foot in the background. Even though it is a bit out of focus, what is it doing there. Doesn't it look like the foot was photoshoped in there or did this running back give that kid such a move that his foot ended up above his head or is that his own foot? What do you think?

The unique aspect of this picture is the eyes again. Look at the focus and the intensity of the eyes, they say it all. This is the first time that I caught the image with the correct shutter speed to read the writing on the football. The running back is in a perfect pose there and the focal point of this picture I feel is the ball. It is safe and securely tucked under the running backs arm, even though he is carrying the ball in the wrong hand.

The faded background give the running back the appearance of speed, and as you know speed kills. Is he ready to dash down the sideline or cut the run back. But in the end it is the foot I can't explain where it came from and who it belongs too.

The Rededication of David kramer

After some deliberation, I have rededicated myself to these blogs. A picture a day for the rest of this year.

Have your ever seen a movie twice, or read a book again in your life. Did you ever notice something different the second time, that you didn't pick up the first time. I find that I do that this this picture. Every time a I look at this picture I find something else that I love about it.

The first time that I saw this picture I instantly fell in love with it. And what I remember from the day, was it was a cold wet day in Frankfort, NY. I was shooting from the Frankfort Sideline, which I snuck onto without permission. It was a day that I wasn't sure I should be there. It was night game they are always tough to shoot, it was raining, and you always have to wonder if you passion for photography is getting in the way of you being a good father or husband. You want to be there for everything in your family and not miss a second, but you also have a desire to pursue your dreams.

This picture however made the day worth it. I only took three pictures and left at the end of the first quarter. One because the game was a blowout, and second because I was soaking wet at the time and then I began to worry about the camera, and hoping that the driving rain would not break it.

In this picture you see the Frankfort Quarterback, rolling out to his right. In this photo you get a sense that the quarterback is being extremely careful with the ball, but what caught my eye about this picture today was the player driving through the rain. He clearly was not letting the effects of the weather limit himself. The quarterback is driving through each rain drop, which seem to bend around his body. The curvature of the rain drops closer to his body are clearly different the the rain drops away from his body.

The second thing to notice about this picture is the background of the picture is clearly out of focus, creating a focal point of the Quarterback in the image. This makes the quarterback and his movement stand out, from the background. This works perfectly to make the quarterback the most important part of the image.

The last aspect of this picture is the quarterbacks eyes. If you attempt to read his eyes, you can see, that the quarterback eyes are look down field trying to move the ball to a receiver.

Going Out of Bounds

Here is another picture from the same game. This image I was finally in the right spot for. I was standing just a hare over midfield as the Herkimer midfielder attempted to clear the ball. He was pushed out of bound by the Onondaga attack man. I originally thought this was going to be a great capture because the action was happening so close to me. Rarely do I get this action so close since I only have a 75-330 mm sigma lens.

I concluded that while the action is in my vicinity I might as well take as many shots as a could. I wasn't sure how they going to come out since I didn't have to adjust my shutter speed and iso, but I think I captured the essence of this picture.

As you can see the Herkimer midfield is doing everything he could to keep the ball in play. The Onondaga attack has spent his energy attempting to push him out of bounds and is lying on the field turf.

What I didn't know till I got home was that I caught the ball in the picture too. If you look a the apple bee's sign the lacrosse ball is in the white lettering. I wish the ball was in the green part of the sign so it would have stood out more.

Behind the Back Pass

This is another one of my favorite pictures. Here is an example of perfect timing. I had just moved from the sideline, to behind the goal. I wanted to get some pictures of midfielders dodging to the goal with there faces in the picture rather than their backs and the goalies face in the picture.

This picture I thought would be an interesting picture because it is a picture of a behind the back pass. This image was never photo shop, it is the actual image. As you can see the most unique aspect of this picture is the fact that the ball is directly behind the player's head. I am not sure actually how this happened, but the picture doesn't lie. I am still trying to figure out how the ball got there, but I was great capture. Both players are sharp and the ball is crisp and clear in the picture. It is the type of picture that makes you look twice at it. Herkimer would go on to lose this game but you can see the difference in your photography from moving around the field. I think it is important for a photographer to understand that the best images are not always shot in the same spot.

This picture is easily my favorite sports picture that I have take so far. Here you have a young athletic midfielder, DJ O'Connell, being guarded by two Herkimer defenders. When I captured this image, I immediately knew that I had something good here, but I wasn't sure about the exposure being the I was standing right at midfield and not at the top of the box, where this action took place.

What catches my eye about this exposure is the depth of field. The clarity of all the players involved in the picture is outstanding, ranging from the goalie to the attacker from Onondaga. I love the focus of the goalie, you can clearly see that he is preparing for a shot. The other outstanding part of this image is the fact O'Connell is actually preparing to move to his right.

You can clearly see that the two Herkimer defenders motion is committed to moving the left, they are completely faked out. The last aspect of this image that make is stand out is the position of O'Connell's stick. With the stick in his left hand and complete extended from his body you can see the amount of body and stick control it takes to successfully complete a split dodge.

With O'Connell's knee barely touching the field turf surface, his motion is instantly capture by the camera, using a shutter speed of 1/820 there was no blurry in this picture.

O"Connell creates a great opportunity not only for himself to score but for a photographer to capture an unique image. I would have to say in my opinion that this photo sets a pretty high bar that I attempt to achieve every time I shoot.

Herkimer Community college is a pretty decent play to shoot sports photography. The fence that surrounds the field isn't that far away and isn't to high as well. So you can get pretty close to the action without having a press pass.

This picture was taken at the 2009 Section 3 Tournament held in Herkimer NY.

Introduction

I would like to take this moment to introduce myself. I am David Kramer, I the business Manager for a car dealership in upstate New York. I Have been married to my beautiful wife Erika for six years, we are the proud parents of three Children. Caden who is 5, Sawyer who is 3, and my Princess Amelia who is just over a year old.

I worked hard in school, and even the good grades although did not come easy to me. I gained an acceptance to the University of Massachusetts. There I studied History for four years, and got a bachelor's degree in 1999. I spent the next five years of my life teaching social studies to middle school and high school students in Maryland.

In Maryland I met my wife Erika who was also a teacher. We quickly fell in love and got married in New Jersey, where Erika grew up. We started a family soon afterwards. As our family grew, we quickly found out that the condo we lived in was going to fit us for much longer, so we traded in our suburban life, and moved to the country in Upstate New York. Now we live in Mohawk, with the three best children a parent could ask for.

As a child I found that I always had the need to express myself. What I lacked was the talent and the patience. One Christmas my wife and I inherited a Cannon rebel XT. I quickly found that through photography you can express your artistic opinions in a whole lot less time than drawing or painting. One of my biggest interest in sports, so the majority of my work will be based in the field, however I one of my goals in to capture beauty as much as possible. I have always felt that every person and picture tells a story, well here is mine.....