WELCOME TO TRIMM PHOTO

Thanks for stopping by! Trimm Photo covers high school sports and communities across Southeast Nebraska through photography, video and local stories. For nearly a decade, we've been standing on sidelines, sitting beside volleyball courts and traveling the back roads of Nebraska documenting the athletes, teams, schools and communities that make high school sports special. Our coverage is about more than the final score. It's about the players, coaches, families in the stands, bands, cheerleaders and all the people who make Friday nights and game days what they are.

Sometimes it's also about the kid nobody else noticed. We believe every game has stories worth telling, whether it's a record-breaking performance, a lineman doing the work that never appears in the statistics, or simply a moment caught through the camera that deserves to be remembered. Our photography and coverage are here for everyone to enjoy and share. Below you'll find some of our videos and a little taste of what Trimm Photo is all about.

Thanks for visiting.

— Keith & Cheryl

Trimm Photo

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Trimm Photo hits over 750,000 views in 1 month on the official Trimm Photo Facebook Page

Trimm Photo Facebook page 

https://www.facebook.com/trimmphoto/ 

is the official page of Trimm Photo 

 

Fairbury-I (Keith) have wondered why the local or regional media haven’t picked us up as a story. This isn’t me being vain, it’s that my last check we had 765,780 page views in the previous month, which means our work isn’t just local, our content on Facebook is national.

We run into media outlets all the time at the games we cover and see the same faces wearing the same NSAA media passes we do, but nothing comes of it?

Do they consider us competition? Realistically, Trimm Photo is a mom-and-pop hobby that exploded over the last 10 years with a lot of time, travel, and hard work.

The paid media may think we can write our own story and promote ourselves, and we do, but we are the elephant in the room with 12,000 followers that no one in the media wants to talk about.

Once again, thanks for supporting us. Maybe we can hit a million views soon. Our record was 1.5 million a few years back, and we seem to be heading that way again.

 Long time Fairbury resident, former mayor of Fairbury, Lawyer and author Ron Schwab sits down with Keith Trimm of Trimm Photo to talk about his writing in this first of two videos where we discuss Fairbury history.  If you enjoy this video please share as Trimm Photo brings local history to life through the words of those who lived it. 

Ron Schwab is the author of the popular Western series, The Law Wranglers, The Coyote Saga, and The Lockes, as well as several standalone novels, including Grit, a winner of the Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award for Best Western Novel, and Cut Nose, a finalist for the Western Writers of America Best Western Historical Novel. He is a member of the Western Writers of America, Western Fictioneers, and Mystery Writers of America.

Ron and his wife, Bev, divide their time between their home in Fairbury, Nebraska and their cabin in the Kansas Flint Hills.

Darin Garfield elected to the NSWCA Hall of Fame

 An honor such as a son's election to the NSWCA Hall of Fame is surreal. It's hard to wrap my mind around. My mind goes back to when Darin and Derek began to wrestle. Little sister Danae would get upset when she saw other wrestlers trying to hurt her brothers. A time of innocence for all of us, really.

Jane and I didn't know much about wrestling , and

were brought into it by the boys. There was a lot of sacrifice for trying to find a spot in the Aurora, Nebraska line-up. Cutting twenty pounds, when really there wasn't anything to lose. That's how important wrestling was to them. As young children, Darin and Derek had stuffed animals they pretended to coach. I bring Derek into the mix because that's the way it was. Always together.

After high school, college and then the first coaching job. Wrestling was/is a perfect fit. Darin was blessed along the way and he took advantage of the opportunities. I reflect on many people who made the journey with us. The wrestling community! To imagine it would all end up at the Hall of Fame? It's not thought of along the way.

Way too busy. Not very many sports go all day Saturdays and Sundays with the youth. Weight room supervision too. Late nights and early mornings.

Seeing it payoff off, is the payoff. It's been said people want to be a coach but they don't want to do what a coach has to do. Very proud of Darin and very thankful for all who were on the journey with him!

Wrestling, Pro vs Con

 You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it come to your wrestling tournament, or duel, or Triangular, or Quad. What am I getting at? When I was on the high school paper back in 84 I never went to a wrestling meet, I went to every other sport at FHS and actually got out of school to go to Lincoln to take photos of our volleyball team who made the playoffs. 

I didn’t really get into wrestling until around 2017 when Trimm Photo started and I didn’t know squat about the rules or how a duel or tournament worked. I recalled that wrestlers had to make weight and they were big boys but that was about it. So I asked a lot of questions and got up to speed with most of how it works and am a huge fan. But not everyone is a fan and I can understand why. 

Prior to high school wrestling Cheryl and I did attend a WWE event at Pershing and I think Rick Flair and Kevin Nash were there. Fun times but not at all what I’m used to now. 

I don’t know of any other sport that has a thing called, “blood time.” Blood time is when a wrestler gets a bloody nose or a cut somewhere on the body and the match stops while somebody uses a disinfectant and wipes blood off the mat. Seems a bit Spartan (300) if you are not used to it. Then there was this one time when I was taking photos by the edge of the mat and heard a wrestler’s leg crack. They took him off the mat with two others holding him up. 

Don’t get me wrong, I remember a Fairbury football player tearing his ACL during a playoff game and another during the regular season. I even recall being at a Wilber Clatonia game where 4 players were on crutches on the sidelines. I took a photo of them posing. 

I even recall a girl at a basketball game at Lincoln Christian falling on her nose and the game stopped while they cleaned the puddle of blood off the nice shiny wood floor. All sports can have injuries, that’s why they park the ambulance next to the football field. (Never seen an ambulance parked outside a wrestling meet though.)

So I am going to make a top 3 pro and con list for what I think wresting is. 

Pro

1. Wrestling is about culture and community. I’ve been on a few wrestling decks over the years and that’s where you see the team spirit. Since on the competition level it’s a 1 on 1 verses the other school you don’t see the others who are backing that kid. Sometimes surrounding the score table, you will see the other team mates but you have to be there during practice to see what is really going on. 

2. Wrestling meets are like going to a Metallica concert that lasts eight hours. The place is packed, the announcers are telling everyone to get down so people can see, it’s loud, action packed and a fun environment. Before the tournament begins the wrestlers are warming up and the mats are filled with kids from end to end rolling each other, banging into each other and getting ready. 

3. It’s art, if you have ever gone to a meet where they use the spotlight from above and shine it down on the action it’s like going to a movie. It’s very Greek art style and shows off another reason why wrestling is not like anything other sport you will see. 

Con

1. I’ve heard people say it’s distasteful to watch two kids try to beat the crap out of each other. I don’t think these people have ever been to a meet, although I did see two young men try to get into a very real pushing match that had to be stopped by a ref. 

2. The meets can take way too long. 10 or more teams with around15 wresters and consolations can take a while. Good to have a well-stocked concession stand. 

3. Getting off the mat after sitting taking photos and video can be difficult when you are my age. I need a full body lift and if you ever see me try to get up come over and give me a hand. I take pain meds before I go and my hips still kill me. 

Derek Garfield 

Wrestling is the greatest sport in the planet. I think the thing that sets it aside from any other sport is the courage it takes to step inside the circle and put your toe on the line and being willing to engage in 1 on 1 combat against an opponent. While teammates can help you in the practice room in wrestling winning and losing is 100 percent on you! You will get out of the sport what you put into it.

 The other great thing about wrestling is the fact that a person can weigh 106 pounds or 285 pounds and still find success if you’re willing to work. Wrestling is the purest form of of sport and there is nothing else that compares to it!

 

Exeter Nebraska-Exeter Milligan Friend football coach Cory Kahlandt. “We lost to Sandy Creek 62 to 64 in triple overtime week three. I think we will have a good game and will probably be a short game as both of us run the ball and establish the line of scrimmage. If we play our style of football both physical and aggressive on both sides of the ball we should be ok.

As long as we play on our toes on defense like we have been we shouldn’t need to stress or anything or try to hard as it is another football game for our guys and don’t make it bigger than it is. We are playing Stanton and they are undefeated.

Playing at Memorial Stadiums is a great opportunity and we need to enjoy it and I still say it’s just a football game but we do need to enjoy the experience out there, it’s a big stage with an awesome atmosphere and I’m excited for our guys making it this far and they deserve it, they worked hard during the off season all back with weights.

We started this back in August 7^th which doesn’t seem like all that long ago along with co head coach Jim Pfeiffer."

 “Dear Big Ten Conference,

I’ve waited a day & I still feel that you REALLY need to address the level of your officiating. To be clear, Nebraska played like *** yesterday, but college athletes & their fans clearly deserve better.

Thanks,

A Concerned Football Fan” (Adam Carriker)

I read a lot of the responses to Adam’s post and most of them were what I expected, blame the refs because they are blind and all that sorts of rhetoric. But I think a lot of people miss the point. 

If you are an arm chair quarterback with a high-definition big screen with a view from above you will see more than a ref twenty feet away. People perceive life, and motion differently from where they are and what they are doing. 

My response posted in response to Adam’s Facebook post was, “Not all officiating can be that bad, there must be another underlying problem that we don't understand and needs to be studied. I can't and won't believe we hire an entire class of buffoons who wear black and white uniforms who can't do their jobs. There must be another answer,” and I stand behind that. 

I don’t claim to know anything about sports, I’m a journalist and a sports photographer and a science nut and I know there is more to this that most people get. Blaming the refs is not the answer. 

If you hold the teams to the same standard of perfection that you hold the refs the score would never reach over 0/0 because a perfect defense would never allow a single point to be scored. 

If you want perfect officiating you will need to install AI computers with cameras located all over the field so you get the perfect call every time. With the use of replay cameras, you have already slowed the game down to the point it is not fun to watch anymore and have taken the human element out and watching a ref stare at a television screen during a review does not make for compelling football. 

Players and coaches make mistakes all the time but to hold refs to the inhuman standard of a robot is not fair. Let the refs make mistakes, that is what makes a game a game. If you were to rank the calls of most refs on a bell curve you would probably find that most calls fall within normal limits with a few on the edges but it is those calls that everyone gets mad about. 

You can’t have it both ways and blaming the refs is wrong. You either need to respect them or get rid of them and let football become a computer sport. What's more likely? A group of incompetent referees or an angry fan who's team lost looking for an excuse?

Price of water

 

Weve been to a lot of high school football games over the last seven years, and a lot of volleyball and softball etc. and the one thing we have noticed is that the price of a bottle of water

is not the same at the concession stands of most high schools. And that goes for the price of candy as well. I know for a fact that we have paid $1, $2 and $2.50 depending on where we are. Now why would a bottle of water cost a different price at different schools?

Maybe it’s to pay for the new LED lights on the field or the gym, we love the new lights and noticed that Geneva had some great lights on the football field, reminded us of Aurora where they can change color and blink. It will be great when all the high schools get new LED lights in their gyms as well. They are much brighter and the color balance is better for photography.

So what is this post really about? It’s about going to a lot of different schools and seeing a lot of different ways of doing things. Now some schools have the introductions where the players come out of a tunnel of other players and some schools skip that part altogether. I noticed that I think it was Beatrice where I noticed the players ran out onto the field but they didn’t run out individually as they called their names. Fairbury does that, and other schools do as well.

Beatrice is the only school I recall that has a half time marching band although Schuyler had a dance performance at half time. Didn’t the Black Diamond Dancers used to do a dance at half time? I don’t recall that this year. A lot of schools keep their bands in the stands and some have flag corps. I do want to make note that Beatrice marching band uniforms look very sharp. Good job guys.

To wrap this up we’d like to see the price of water be a bit more consistant, I think more than $2 is a bit much and $1.25 for a Snickers just makes me have change in my pocket that I don’t want to keep track of. And I want to finish with the cheeseburgers at the Fillmore Central football game, my only regret was not getting a second. Very nice.

Jeff Kezeor

 Beatrice-There are two things I need to say about Orangemen head football coach Jeff Kezeor and the first is he is a nervous bird and a bit jittery because it took me a long time to get this shot, and I planned this shot out in advance so it would look cool with the lights behind him.

The second thing is that he is the kind of coach you want coaching your kids. I watched him on the sidelines talking to the players, giving them encouragement, and telling them to have a good time. I was impressed as well with his assistant coaches, all professional, all there to do the best with a game that was not going their way.

Anessa Baines

Fairbury-Anessa Baines is a fourteen-year-old freshman from Thayer Central high school who plays the middle on her volleyball team. “My team is full of a bunch of great girls who are all supportive who know how to cheer you up when you’re down. They are all helpful on and off the court. Besides volleyball I wrestle, play basketball and throw shot and run hurdles in track. “

New trimmphoto.com page

Photo by Keith Trimm 

 Welcome to the new http://trimmphoto.com/ website. This site was created as the anchor for our news, events and sports media coverage to go along with our Facebook page. Both sites will carry photos, stories and interviews but this will be available if Facebook has issues which it has had many times in the past. 

Make sure to bookmark this page in case our Facebook page goes down (and it has several times in the past.) 

Cropping and Composition

  This article is for anyone who uses any kind of camera including cell phone cameras. I often see moms up close to the fence taking pictures of their kids at softball/baseball games with their phone in the portrait position. Long side up and down instead of landscape side to side and I want to say something but I keep my mouth shut. I get what they are doing, they want a picture of their kid and the background isn’t important. But it is. 

Portrait photography is great for senior pictures and weddings but sports in played out on a field that runs from side to side and leaving that out creates a photo out the context of what you are shooting. If you are only interested in close up photos of your child then read no further. 

One of the most important parts of photography is composition and cropping. Your cell phone camera has a cropping function, at least mine does and you should use it if you want your photos to look professional. If you are happy with the way your photos look then again, read no further. 

Composition has to do with the weight on the images in the photo. The rule of thirds says to make a tic tac toe board in your mind and place the subject in one of the intersections, preferably at the top right or left. When shooting a moving player always and I mean always place additional room in front of the athlete to give them a visual place to move. If you show an athlete looking to one side or the other give them room to look. 

Rule of Thirds

If they are swinging a bat give the bat some room to hit the ball. This can all be done when you shoot the photo or when you crop. Also when possible, crop so there is more image at the bottom than the top, it is best to anchor your image down than up. And always crop for head room. That means leave no more room above the subjects head than necessary. And this is something people don't think about. Watch your background. If possible, and I know it's not always possible, keep telephone poles, trees and other objects from sticking out of your subject's head. I learned this stuff back when I was in college and I don't know if they teach it anymore. 

In this example above Jamie is pitching and the photo is cropped on the left in portrait and on the right in landscape with plenty of room in front of her for the ball to go. Even though the ball isn't actually going anywhere in this still shot it gives the impression that there is someone in front of her that is going to swing. 

The same for this example where Bennet is cropped so he has room to run. 

Here is a great example of using portrait photos for a true portrait of Jordan and a good example of using F3.5 with a telephoto lens to blur out the background. There are cell phones that use a computer to duplicate this effect, yours might do that. 

Here is another example of composition giving Ellie's bat a place to go. This is shot landscape to give the action a place to live. 

Cell phone cameras do allow you to zoom in on the action but they aren't the best at getting clean images at a distance. The best bet, if possible and that can be a stretch at a game, is to get as close as you can. The fence is about as close as most can get and I understand that. 

The last thing I want to harp on and I harp on this a lot is end of game group shots. Here is a great example of what I am talking about below. 

I chose this photo off of Google so I wouldn't offend anyone but I put up arrows to indicate where some of the players are looking and they are not looking at the main camera. From this photo I guess there were probably at least 2 other photographers, probably with cell phone cameras shooting from the side distracting the players. And what do you get?  A really crappy group shot. 

Don't be the person who shoots from the side and distracts the players. Let one person shoot and have them share with the rest of you so all the players are looking in one direction. 

Trimm Photo Backstory

 As Trimm Photo hits out four-year mark and is coming up on our four thousandth follower we wanted to talk about what got us here and how the page has evolved. If you have some spare time you might find this interesting so here, we go. 

Before Trimm Photo was a page, Cheryl Trimm took photos at football games and posted them on her personal Facebook page and tagged her friends just like most parents did. She always had a good response and kept shooting game after game. Then one day, and I remember it well, at a Fairbury football game her husband Keith (who is writing this) decided to crawl out of the stands and try it as well. Keith had a long history in photography, shooting for the school paper, the college paper, FJN, shooting portraits and had a dark room in his house. The kind of dark room where you had to process negatives and print photos with chemicals with red lights. 

Keith’s father Don Trimm had a portrait studio back in the 1960’s and Keith used a lot of his old equipment in his new dark room. Move ahead a few years into the digital age (and after laying off photography for a long while) Keith decided to give it a crack again this time concentrating on sports and special events like he did in college. Side note here, the name ‘Trimm Photo’ is an homage to Keith’s father Don who used to stamp the back of his proofs with ‘Trimm Photo,’ instead of ‘Trimm Photography.’ That may have been the case because the word ‘photography’ wouldn’t fit on the stamp he purchased; we will never know for sure. But when Trimm Photo was created we decided to go with that name in honor of my father who passed away. Trimm Photo does sound like we are a photography studio but we consider ourselves a media site as we do stories, interviews and a lot of video work. 

So September of 2016 Trimm Photo was created and for the first year it was slow going. I can still remember when we had 200 followers and that seemed to take forever. I can also remember when after shooting racing in Beatrice one summer we gained that many followers in one day. 

In the beginning we only covered the local team, which of course was Fairbury since we live in Fairbury and our children go to school here. Both of our children were active in sports and that’s the reason we started. Maybe the reason why we grew so slow in the first place was because we only took photos of the Fairbury teams and only shot the opposition by accident. Then one day it hit me that maybe we should cover both teams and bam, things took off. 

 

This was before the NSAA granted us a media pass which I will say ranks up there with me (Keith) passing RN boards. I jumped through the roof when we got our passes. That in itself is a story that I will get to. So we travel everywhere the Fairbury football team played and covered every game since 2016. Somewhere along the line we decided, or should I say Keith decided that we should cover other schools that weren’t playing against Fairbury. Cheryl thought I was nuts but I could see the advantage of growing the page by covering other schools and I will say that was one of the things that makes me most proud about the page. 

I have met so many teachers, students and coaches from other schools and expanded my horizons covering the student athletes. I can say that has been the high light of Trimm Photo and one of the main reasons we continue to this day.

I can remember how much head wrestling coach Derek Garfield from Fairbury helped grow our page in the beginning. When we started, I didn’t know squat about wrestling but I knew we had a good wrestling crew. I think I met Derek during football but I must have just shown up on the wrestling deck (like I do all the time now) with my camera and video recorder and started to cover the team. 

Derek would always share whatever I did and the page grew and grew. He is a great interview as well. Whenever I need an interview with him, I’d get the camera ready, tell him how many seconds of interview I need and say go. He then proceeds to give me exactly what I want in the time I need. I then shoot B roll for the overlays and wham; I go home and process the video. I have probably interviewed him a dozen or more times. 

Then I decided I wanted to expand into Beatrice because of the size of the school. I didn’t know anybody over there but I knew I wanted to make Beatrice a regular part of Trimm Photo so I contacted Jordon Johnson who is the head wrestling coach for Beatrice and talked to him about covering his squad as well. Next day I was on the wrestling deck shooting photos and video and then expanded into volleyball, basketball, soccer and whatever else I could get. I have been in BHS more times than I can count and have always been made to feel welcome there. 

So that leads us to the other schools we cover. I am going to make an exception here and elaborate about one school in particular that has gone out of it’s way to make Trimm Photo feel welcome and that is Southern in Wymore. I can’t tell you enough how they go out of their way. If you are familiar with how we do things, we often put games up for a vote. Southern always wins by a landslide, and I’m talking fifty to five sometimes. The first time that happened was at a basketball game that was not a home game so I couldn’t make it, but it has been the same for basketball and volleyball. 

We consider our territory to be about forty miles in diameter from Fairbury which includes Wilber. We have tried to include Crete, and we have shot a lot of games there but it is on the fringes of what we can call our area. Anything outside that and people haven’t heard of us. Although I have been surprised before when we cover a visiting team from outside our area and people like and comment from those towns. This is one reason why when we cover softball tournaments, we usually concentrate on the home teams, because folks from Lincoln, Kearney and Grand Island don’t usually respond. 

Another thing we concentrate on is covering sports that the main stream media ignore. I can’t tell you how many little league baseball and T ball games we’ve covered. Never saw anyone from the local paper there squatting by the fence with a telephoto lens. Just moms with their cell phone cameras. 

The last thing I want to talk about is how we got our NSAA media pass. The first two years we covered sports we had no sponsors. We always gave our photos away for free and then one day decided to ask for sponsorships like they do in racing. (We cover a lot of racing.) and for those years had to rely on passes that booster clubs would give us to get into the games. We always saw those NSAA passes the other media had and wanted one for ourselves so we looked into it. 

The first year we applied we were turned down. They said we could have one if we found a newspaper that would sponsor us. We told them we didn’t want to work for a paper and felt our work was good enough on it’s own. We showed them that we covered many schools but, in the end, we lost out. We also realized that as a husband and wife team that our chances were low to begin with so last year when we applied again, we were shocked to find the passes in our mailbox. Like I said before, I jumped through the roof so to say. I guess we proved our worth. Again, this year they granted us the media pass and we are running with it to cover as much as possible. Sometimes I think we cover too many events and overwhelm our followers. We post almost daily. 

With the new era of the COVID 19 we didn't know what would happen with sports and special events (Special events is included in our 'about' statement on the Facebook page) so we wanted to cover as many games as we could before there were no games to cover. At the time of this post we have covered at least one game from every school that we consider to be in our territory. Those schools include Fairbury, Beatrice, Thayer Central, Meridian, Southern, Diller/Odell, Tri County and Wilber.

 

The special events we have covered in the past include such things as the Diller Picnic, Fairbury Flea market, Fourth of July events, racing (including Eve of Destruction) car shows, 4H events, Miss Jefferson county, two graduation ceremonies including Beatrice and Fairbury, Jefferson county fair including rodeo events, promotional photography for Fairbury high school play production, Trunk or Treat and swim meets. 

Probably one of the most popular things we do are Athlete spotlights. We chose to go that route instead of Athlete of the week because it didn't limit us just to those who stood out because of a good week in their particular sport. Maybe that is our version of the participation trophy but we felt there were many athletes that deserved to have their stories told. The other media can continue to do what they want. We also specialize in video production and have created many interview and event videos. 

So that is the short story of Trimm Photo. We hope you enjoyed our journey and look forward to covering more events in the future. 

Softball Tournaments

Trimm Photo has been around almost 4 years now, and we've covered at least 2 softball tournaments in Beatrice and a few in Fairbury. When we first started we tried to cover as many teams as possible and ended up with hundreds of usable shots. Problem is that no team outside the Fairbury/Beatrice area knew who we were and those shots ended up going nowhere because very few people shared the photo sets.

So as time went on we only covered the local teams and that worked out better but the other issue is the gate fee. We do not have a daughter that plays softball and we are there as a media site only. I assume that the other media gets in free but we're not sure but spending 10 minutes with the gate personnel explaining who we are and what we do is frustrating.

We have a great following and we try our best to cover local sports, especially the kinds of age groups the other media won't touch. I've never seen any local paper out covering 9U Bullets baseball but I'm sure we have a half dozen times.

This is sounding like a vent and we suppose it is but we need you to share our work to get it out there. When we first started covering softball tournaments we asked those in charge if there was some sort of master list we could access to share our photos and the answer was always no. So the teams from Lincoln, Grand Island, Kearney and anywhere outside our local coverage area rarely saw our work, and what a waste that was. So now we only cover teams as far away as Crete, Hebron and Wymore.

So there you go, this is why we find softball tournaments a bit frustrating. If we had the support of those who put on the tournaments it would be great but we have no idea who they are. After 4 years of coverage I would think they would know who we are but that doesn't seem to be the case either.

Southern Fried Funeral

Tonight Trimm Photo attended the Fairbury High School theater performance of the play Southern Fried Funeral. We stopped afterwards to get some interviews. (read below) but first we have a review of Saturday's performance submitted (by request) by Beulah Trimm. 

From the opening scene where Martha Ann Fox (junior Addi Parrack), Fairy June Cooper (junior Sarah Engleman), and Benny Charles Greenwood (sophomore Caleb Trimm) discuss the details surrounding the death of Frye patriarch and civic-minded, good man, Dewey, at the Rotarian buffet Fairbury Jr./Sr. High’s performance of Southern Fried Funeral is literally laugh-out-loud funny. Then, hearing Dorothy Frye (junior Hailie Nicholson) sincerely thank Benny for letting her husband of over 40 year’s die with dignity was all the more funny considering there was talk of wiping mashed potatoes from his face, removing beans from his nostrils, and talk of Benny’s toupee. 

While there is lots of laughter, there is also the expected family drama that comes at such a hard time. Dorothy’s brother-in-law, Uncle Dub (senior Taylor Runge) is the antagonist who is scheming to take her home mere hours after he learns of his brother’s passing. Dorothy’s daughters, Sammy Jo (senior Natalie Rogge) and Harlene (junior Kacy Strarck) verbal spars are fun because they sound like actual southern disagreements – “Shug” and “Lamb” and “Good gravy, you are ugly when you got your hatin’ hat on” all the way to their food fight where poor Ozella Meeks (senior Lauren Patton), chairwoman of the SonShine Committee ends up with pie on her face.

There are touching parts too. Every interaction between Dewey Jr, aka Dewdrop, (8th grader Toby Julin-McCleary and his brother-in-law Beecham (sophomore Alex Buxton) remind you that this is a family story. Dorothy setting a place for her husband at the breakfast table and talking to him about missing her best friend reminds the audience of the loss, making the character even more relatable. Harlene and Atticus (sophomore Zane Grizzle) share a “tender moment” that once again has us laughing. 

The directing team of Mr. Fitzgerald and Natalie Julin-McCleary, along with acting coach, Linda Bauer, are indeed worthy of the praise and admiration that the cast and crew heap on them at the end of Saturday evening’s performance. Their guidance has made this one of the most entertaining productions this reviewer has seen to date. 

The kids do a great job with their Southern accents, their delivery of a hilarious script, and their acting in general. There is still time to come out and enjoy the show on Sunday, November 17, 2019 at 2 p.m. 

How many Rotarians does it takes to have a pancake breakfast? I guess we’ll never know now…

Director Joseph Fitzgerald ---"It was a real honor to work with this cast, the students put in hours and hours of hard work and effort. They were very receptive and coachable. Over the summer I had some ideas but couldn't pin point out something yet so I read probably twelve or thirteen scripts, August came around and kind of narrowed it down. Me, Natalie Julin-McCleary sat down for about three hours one day and started listing out pro's and con's and thought we could pull it off."

Natalie Rogge (Sammy Jo Frye-Lefette)---"I think the play went really good, the energy was up and I think it was one of the best shows we've done so far. The food fight took a long time and we only actually started using food a week ago. Fitz and Natalie just told us to throw and say a line and then keep throwing and be as defensive as possible. I've been doing theater for a long time, I did Missoula Children's Theater ever since I was in Kindergarten and worked my way up from there.

Zane Grizzle (Atticus "Attie" Van Leer)---"The play was awesome, practices were always fun, the performances are the best part. Everyone's coming together, the energy has been the best it's ever been so it's really been fun. Other than playing Rockin Robin in sixth grade I've had no theater experience How did you prepare to play a lawyer?, "Law and Order."

Sports mode can ruin your shots

If you use the sports mode on your camera normally you get decent shots but as it gets darker out you may notice your shots getting blurry. Why would this happen? You're using the correct settings right? It's in "sports mode."

The answer is that when you give up control to the camera to make adjustments to your settings there is a trade off when it gets dark out and you're shooting under the lights. The camera wants to have enough light to make the image and the result is that the shutter speed suffers to the point that action shots become blurry.

So what do you do to fix this?

When the stadium lights come on, and in poorly lit gym's (which is most of them) you have to go manual. That can be scary for a lot of people but if you want crisp action shots you will have to figure it out. You will need to set you shutter speed at at least 400/sec (that is still low in my opinion) and set your F stop to around 4 or 5.6. I set my ISO to 6400 as soon as the sun starts to set or in any gym.

By doing this you have control over how fast your shutter works and you have a better chance of capturing the image without blur. I would not suggest using a flash at all ever.

If you find that your shots are now clear but a bit dark, try setting your F stop to 3.5 or 2.8 to allow more light in. Your depth of field will narrow and may cause some focus issues but at least your shots will be brighter.

Go out some evening with your camera and try to shoot photos of traffic under the street lights and play with the settings.

KT

Best photo advice

If you want to up your game with your photography this is probably the best free advice I can give you. Pay attention to what is going on. Yep, it is that easy. I'm not going to tell you what to do, but I will tell you what I do and if you like my photos this is how I do it.

I've often been at games where I've seen the pro's punching buttons on their phones, probably updating scores to Twitter while great shots go unnoticed. I shake my head and go on wondering who these people are that need up to date Twitter scores but maybe this is a new thing.

Whatever game I am covering I have the camera up to my eye ready for a shot at every play. That is a lot of plays during a football game but nothing is getting past me. I anticipate the play based on the formation and follow the ball. I don't miss much doing that and that's why my shots look like they do. It's the same with volleyball, softball, basketball, etc...

If you are a casual photographer that just wants a few snapshots of your child then this advice probably isn't for you. But you should still pay attention to what's going on. I choose my lens, my angles and where I stand on the field/court based on what I plan to shoot. I have special angles for certain sports, head shots and wide angles also based on the outcome I desire.

Being a good sports photographer means being part of the game and choosing the right shutter speeds and F stops. And by that I mean not using the sports mode that came with the camera. I will get into that in a later article.

This may have seemed like the most obvious bit of advice I could have written but it is by far the most important thing you can do to improve your photography. You have to pay attention to what is going on and be prepared.

KT

Cropping

Next up on photography tips is cropping. I think all camera phones these days allow you to crop, I know mine does so why should you use it? If you take your photography seriously it makes a huge difference in how you photo looks. If you want your images to look professional you should crop all your shots because there is usually a lot of extra "stuff" that needs to go. Let me explain why I do what I do.

If you ever wondered why I put the batter at the back of the photo when I post softball pictures there is a good reason. You have to give you subject a place to move in the picture. The picture is a still image but by giving more room in the direction of where the subject is looking, or moving, you create a visual dynamic that the still shot has room to breathe and that the subject, if it were a live shot could move into this space.

Here is a side by side of the raw shot of Taylor moving towards the team. In the original shot she was centered and that created the illusion that she was stuck in this space. By cropping out the area behind her now she has a space to move into. This may seem like a trivial thing but I crop all my shots this way. I think this simple change takes a photo from amateur to professional in one step.  I feel you have to give your subject a place to go or you end up stagnating them in that space.

Here is another example and probably the most dynamic. Here Devin just threw the ball and if I didn't give him the space to throw the ball he would look flat and by flat I mean still. I want my still image to look like it has a place to go and by leaving him plenty of room to move into I have created that illusion.

If you want your photos to get to the next level spend some time with your crop function and give your subject a place to go. Don't force them into a still space and stagnate them. Let them breathe...

KT

Lens choice

Back when we first started Trimm Photo I used to give a lot of photography advice. I didn't think anyone was reading it so I quit, but let's give it another try.

I want to talk about lens selection when it comes to taking photographs. Obviously this pertains to using a DSLR and not your camera phone although most camera phones come with software that mimic the look of a digital single lens reflex camera.

Most people who shoot DSLR use the 70-200mm lens that comes with the package. That is a good choice for most sports photography since most parents are restricted to the bleachers and that is the only way they can get half decent close ups. The problem with those kinds of lenses is that the pictures you get often look flat. That is because you are condensing all the foreground and all the background into one shot and that's a lot to pack in. Here is an example.

In this picture all the cheerleaders are on an even plane even though in real life they are staggered from front to back. (or side to side) The long lens condenses them into a flat plane that makes the picture look flat as well.

If you were to use a 24mm wide angle lens and get as close as you can the picture (although a 2D image is still flat) will look less flat and give the illusion of the dimension of distance. Here is an example of a 24mm lens close up.

I was probably 2 feet from Domenic's face when I shot this picture, surprised he didn't punch me, but as you can see there looks to be some distance between him and #4 Seth who is standing behind him to our left. It is an illusion but you can tell there is a space between them.

In the next example the football players also look compressed like there is no space between them. This was shot with the telephoto lens F4 (which accounts for the short depth of field)

In this last example again I used the 24mm wide angle as close as I dare get to get the shot of the coach's huddle.

You can see the coaches and players have some distance between them and don't look smooshed flat like you would get with a telephoto lens.

So lens choice is important if you want to convey a certain kind of look. I prefer the wide angle lens for many shots and if you see me out covering games you will notice I alter between two camera bodies, one with a 70-200mm telephoto and the other with a 24mm wide angle. I do this most at volleyball and basketball games where I need a variety of shots.

If this article goes over well I will consider starting up writing more photography articles in the future. Let me know what you think.

Keith