*Sappy Personal Story Below. Be Forewarned*

On Wednesday/Thursday, March 24/25 of this year, my world kind of turned on its head. Details are not important, but two of the things I knew best and loved dearly and had counted on were suddenly no longer a part of my day to day existence. It is a range of emotions I wish for no one to feel, but most of us will experience at some point in our lives.

As painful as that day was, it was also quite liberating. For many years I joked that I would like to go ride in England but never seriously considered the idea. As I attempted to understand my new world, I approached good friend, mentor and former champion steeplechase jockey Arch Kingsley, with an idea that had sprung to my mind of moving to England and riding for several months. The idea was not to run away from the pain but rather find the “new” me, become a better rider, get an experience some people only dream of and do something so completely different from what most of my other classmates would be doing after graduation.

So here I am! In 4 hours, I will be getting on a plane and flying to London Gatwick where I will board another plane for Yorkshire, where a good family friend has offered to put me up for the time being in their home near Richmond. Through the generous and unending support of the steeplechasing community, a wealth of contacts and an expansive network in horse racing, I have opportunities to ride thoroughbred race horses across ‘the pond.’ The hope and goal will be to maybe get a few race rides during my stay there. Maybe over the hurdles, maybe just on the flat. But ultimately, I just want to come home a better, more confident steeplechase jockey.

Naturally, I could just have stayed in the United States and ridden and become a better rider, but the opportunity to do so in a part of the world that actually understands, values and loves steeplechasing was too great to pass up.

I am so fortunate to have the love and support of my family, friends, and other loved ones in my change of address. No one has thought this a bad idea, and the overwhelming majority have been astounded at how exciting and challenging this adventure would be for me.

I have a great deal of exciting travel plans to look forward to including spending time with a really good friend and teammate also studying abroad in the UK, the Italian Formula One Grand Prix and the British World Rally Championship. Who knows what else I’ll do and see.

It would be foolish for a professional sports photographer not to have his camera, so of course I will be shooting my entire experience for your enjoyment and that of myself many years down the road. Who knows what will come of this but I know it is what I need to do for me. As our “great” President preached during his campaigning months, this is the “Change we need.” Well this is the change I need.

I will be photo blogging my adventures on this, my website. You can also follow me on twitter at JockeyJamey and JameyPricePhoto and of course Facebook.

Thanks for all the support, help and love I have received in the build up to this. I’d be lying if I wasn’t nervous, but I’m also excited beyond words.

Cheers!

Jamey

Strobing a motocross rider with 8 Nikon speedlights. Shot on a D3s and a 14-24mm lens.

I spent a fantastic week at Rich Clarkson’s sports photography workshop in Colorado Springs. The people who put on this workshop are truly exceptional in every way. I wont name drop, but if you’ve ever seen a sports photo, you would know the instructor’s names. I cannot begin to express my gratitude to the shooters and staff for their patience, humility, sense of humor and genuine love for helping others.

Our mornings were spent listening to the instructors giving slideshows of their work or helpful industry tips to be successful. That was then followed by an hour or so of anonymous image critiques from the day before.

Following critiques, the afternoon was ours to shoot wherever we could find a sporting event or practice. Colorado Springs is known for hosting the Olympic training Center so we had access to quite a few Olympic teams in training along with a variety of other local sports.

Evenings were often highlighted by two of the instructors would do a slideshow of some of their favorite images they’ve made throughout their careers. The subjects ranged from personal pets, to harrowing Vietnam battles, the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the presidential campaign of Bobby Kennedy. Truly awe inspiring work.

Special thanks to Nikon Professional Services for letting us beat up their loaner equipment all week.

Photographer’s Note: Most photos were shot deliberately in cloudy white balance to warm the tone of the images. African landscapes are full of golds, oranges, reds, and browns. Those colors naturally lend themselves to a warm color balance. Other than minor cropping and tone adjustments, most photos are as they came out of the camera.

(Left) Republic of South Africa’s national flag.

(Right) Posing with my sister on Safari near Kruger National Park, South Africa.

1. DSLR Recommended: Before you go, make sure you have a decent camera. Your prime times to take photos will be the early morning and late afternoon. This means difficult lighting conditions for you and camera. A DSLR is HIGHLY recommended.

2. Bring the Big Guns: If you do bring a DSLR, make sure your lens focal length is adequate. Though you will be quite close much of the wildlife, some of your best shots will have to be taken from far away, especially with bird species. In my experience, a 200mm lens is a minimum. Preferably, a 300mm or higher is optimal. In this same light, a low aperture lens is very helpful. F2.8 lenses are expensive but are worth every penny.

3. Love the Morning: Learn to become a morning person. Wildlife is most active in the early morning hours and late afternoon and evening. Waking up at 5:30 and 6:00am is something I am quite used to having been a swimmer for most of my adult life, but for most people, getting up early is a struggle. Learn to love it.

4. Dont Forget: Bring your battery charger. Yeah I, forgot mine. So I had to borrow a fellow Nikon shooter’s battery charger one afternoon. Similarly, If you aren’t bringing your laptop to offload the images from the memory card, make sure you have enough memory cards to shoot all day everyday. Personally, I took almost 4,000 images that totaled 20.9 gigabytes.

5. Be Original: Because everyone that goes on safari carries a camera, you need to try and make your photos unique. Everyone will have photos of that elephant but its how you compose your shot and play with the exposure that will make it stand out.

This coming weekend F1 returns to the streets of the gorgeous principality, and to celebrate, I thought I would share some of my favorite photos. I took these approximately one week after I was given my first DSLR. So this was before I even knew I wanted to take photos for a living, much less knew what I was doing with the camera. All the photos were taken with a Nikon D80 with a 55-200mm f5.6 lens. If only I had the gear I have now, and knew what I was doing with it.

If your camera has the option, turn it to manual. You may ask yourself, why would I want to do this if the camera is perfectly capable of doing all the complicated work for me?  The reason is that you now have total mastery over the camera and the situation in front of you. The exposure, the color and every other facet of the photo is now in your hands. But more importantly, you also learn about how your camera works and sees the world.

Shutter speed, Aperture, ISO, exposure compensation and white balance are important terms to know to become a better photographer. If you dont know these terms, I have provided a very simple dictionary list below. But the best way to understand them is to use them. And the only way to use them, is to shoot in manual. So pick up your camera, turn it to manual and start learning.

If you’re just not comfortable in manual, try aperture priority (you pick the aperture, the camera picks a shutter speed) or shutter priority (you pick a shutter speed, the camera picks the aperture).

Terms to Know

Shutter Speed: a common term used to discuss exposure time, the effective length of time the shutter is open. The total exposure is proportional to this exposure time, or duration of light reaching the film or image sensor.

Aperture: adjusted to control the amount of light reaching the film or image sensor. Effects depth of field as well.

ISO: how sensitive the image sensor is to the amount of light present. The higher the ISO, the more sensitive the image sensor and therefore the possibility to take pictures in low-light situations.

White Balance: is the process of removing (or adding) color casts to an image, so that objects which appear white in person are rendered white in your photo.  Proper camera white balance has to take into account the “color temperature” of a light source, which refers to the relative warmth or coolness of white light.

Exposure Compensation: technique for adjusting the exposure indicated by a photographic exposure meter, in consideration of factors that may cause the indicated exposure to result in a less-than-optimal image.

Enjoy the photos!

Instead, I got this assignment for friday afternoon. Cute kids. Lots of fun and smiles.