Unmanned Surface Vehicles

I shot this photo of a group of young scientists testing their unmanned surface vehicles made from balloons and foam during the Robots in the Roses Research Fair at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey on Thursday May 10, 2012. The assignment created a challenging situation because of the distance between the robots and the students was in most cases quite large. I was hoping to capture the interaction between the young scientists and the things they were building and spent some time looking for these elements.

I was happy when I found this group of the kids testing their unmanned surface vehicles before racing them in The Plunge. To clean up the busy background and create a more interesting frame I jumped up on a chair and held my camera over the kids. I am glad the chair did not break! (Photo David Royal/ Monterey County Herald)

Annular solar eclipse

How do you photograph a rare annular solar eclipse?   It was tougher than I thought.  The sun at the time of the eclipse was too high in the sky to put anything of interest in the foreground.  I ended up going for the straight on approach.  Here's my attempt yesterday using a 200mm lens with a setting of 1/8000 sec at f32 with a iso rating of 100.  This image was captured at 6:34 p.m. on the beach in Rio Del Mar.  (Vern Fisher/Monterey County Herald)

Laguna Seca Raceway

I was assigned to cover a practice session at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca on Friday May 9, 2012.  In an attempt to come up with something different I forced myself to find a different angle and location on the track trying to get a compelling photo.  Looking down on turn-four from atop the corkscrew hill I used a 300mm lens with a 1.4x converter (420mm) and followed Amadeo Quiros, driver in the IMSA GT3 Cup Challenge with a shutter speed of 1/20 of a second.  (Vern Fisher/Monterey County Herald)