Irish Eyes Are Glaring

Photo of the Day

Sometimes when you are out making pictures a situation jumps out at you. This was one of those times. Before the Purdue game at Notre Dame we went to watch the Notre Dame band play in front of Bond Hall. I used a picture from that performance as my picture of the day back then. You can see that one here. As we were walking away the crowd stopped to watch some weird behavior by the Irish Guard. They were clearing a circle that we were trying to walk through. Luckily I was in the second row of where the people stopped so I quickly moved up a row, and threw on the 10-24mm lens. I quickly found out that this would not work. I got a nice establishing shot with it, but not what I wanted. I then decided to put on the new 70-200 f/2.8 lens that I had. This gave me the results that I wanted. The guard then went through a very interesting inspection ritual that I had never seen before as one member inspected the rest of the group. He would check out the uniform and adjust if necessary. When he was done he gave the member a look that could kill. I waited until he got to an angle that was good for me, and I made the picture above. This is just another example that sometimes you can luck into a good picture.

I came  across this shot while going through some of my favorite shots from the past year. I have been trying to get that list down to twelve which has been hard. I think that I go more for the sentimental pictures rather than the technically great pictures. I will have more on that list in the next couple of days.

Technical Data

Originally I had gone through this shot to see what I could do to make it better in Lightroom. I tweaked the settings, but something was missing. Of course right now what would I use? I applied the light sports preset that I have been using to the image, and I loved how it made the guards pop. I really did nothing to the image after applying that filter. It did all the work in post for me. That is how it should always be.