Why I do this

I've lived on Vashon Island for over 36 years. I raised my kid here; she went through the Vashon School District K-12 and graduated from Vashon High School in 2003. She graduated from WWU in 2007; she's now 31, married, and living up in Bellingham.

When my daughter was young she got hooked into sports at an early age. Granted, she did some dance, and she did some drama, but it was sports that really captured her.

She (and I) did Vashon Island Junior Basketball, Vashon Island Youth Softball, basketball and fastpitch in McMurray, volleyball and tennis in High School.

(Little-known Mr Sage fact: I actually assistant-coached volleyball at the High School for one season, the fall of 2003, after my daughter graduated. Hard to believe, I know, but there you are).

Face it: there's not a lot for kids to do on Vashon, particularly when they get into McMurray and start to get out on their own more and more.

Speaking very broadly, by middle school parents can hope their kids have gotten hooked into sports, or be left to hope they'll make "good choices" on their own and don't get themselves into trouble. Uptown rats, and all that...

OK: not every kid is a sporty kid, but when you come down to getting your child engaged in something that's fun, healthy, gets them involved with their peers, and is just generally good for them, youth sports on Vashon Island is a really good way to go.

As I got farther and farther into digital photograpy in the late '90's I began to focus (ha! ha! photography joke!) more on photographing youth sports. I've had a web site since the mid-90's; I've got VHS basketball photos around here somewhere from 1998.

Now that my time is pretty much my own, I find myself spending about 99% of my shooting time trying to photograph all the McMurray sports, Vashon High School sports, or the various Vashon Island youth sports programs I can get to.

If I can make what Island kids are doing in sports just a little bit more special to them, or a little bit more important to them by photographing their games and putting their photos up on my web site for family and friends to look at, then I feel I'm still doing my part to help raise healthy and happy kids here.

Am I going to get rich off your kid?

In a word, no.

At least not without your knowing about it right from the start if you want to hire me (not to make your kid a star, but to take some photos).

I do not sell stock photograpy to any business or political organization.

Now, having said that, I have let Island organisations (the School District, Parks, the Beachcomber, a couple bands) use my photos, but I think that's a different issue.

So no, I'm not going to get rich off your kid.

:-(

Now if your kid's Aunt Betty or Grandma Sally want to buy some reprints, that's a different matter.

:-)

Why does it take so long for you to put photos up?

mmm... Good question.


Very short answer:

I take too many photos. And if I'm not a complete perfectionist at least I'm very highly demanding of myself.


Somewhat longer answer:

1) I try to shoot everyone: not just one or two "star" players at a game, not just one or two "important" people at an event, but everyone. No one gets left out! The significance of that last point is that you don't want to make faces at me when I've got my camera.

So the number of photos I shoot at one event tends to go up pretty fast.

2) Every photo of mine that anyone ever sees has been post-processed, sometimes quite a bit. Nothing anyone ever gets to see is just the way it was right out of the camera.

I'm not putting snapshots on Flickr: every photo that anyone gets to see is about the best I can make it, given my knowledge and skill at that point in time.


Considerably longer answer:

For decades I shot slides (Ektachrome, in fact) and when you're shooting slides you learn to crop in-camera. You compose the photo as best you can, hit the shutter, and take the roll in to be processed. With slides there's no opportunity after the shot to re-compose the photo.

In black-and-white chemical photography (which I did last in high school, which was a *very* long time ago) you do have the opportunity to re-compose the photo in the darkroom by cropping and rotating the image, along with other interesting things (length of exposure under the enlarger, dodging, burning, development time).


One of the most interesting things about digital photography (other than its wonderful immediacy: none of that "Should I wait and try to shoot a full 24 exposures tomorrow, or just take the roll in and get 18 developed today?" stuff) is that suddenly I get to do all sorts of interesting things after I get the photos off the memory card and onto a computer, stuff which I haven't been able to do since I was in high school.

Now, I'm not into really avant garde stuff. I'm pretty much into realism, I guess you could say. Documentary realism, maybe.

But with almost no exceptions, every photo I shoot that you're ever going to see is going to have at the very least:

• some exposure compensation
• probably some rotation (I'm maybe a little obsessive about what I consider "horizontal" and "vertical" for some bizarre reason)
• and absolutely have some cropping (my approach is: if it's in the image, it's in the image for a reason)

And that's at the very least. Ask me about the halide lights in the Vashon High School gym, color shifts, and white balance compensation sometime if you want to get really bored...


So it takes me a while to wade through all the photos I shoot, pick out the best, make them better, and get them put up.

(Things are starting to get a little faster since I bit the bullet in the late fall of 2010, bought all new computer hardware, and put on Adobe Lightroom 3 and Adobe Photoshop CS5. There's been a bit of a learning curve, but things *are* getting better).

I hope the quality of my photography will make the wait worth your while...

What you MAY do with the photos on my web site

All of my photograpy is copyright © John Sage/FinchHaven Digital Photography;
as of September 6, 2011, FinchHaven™ is a registered Trade Mark

If you are an individual person:

You may look at my photos. No! Really! Shocking, I know, but there you are..

You may send links to my photos to family and friends.

You can buy reprints from me. Again, it's shocking I know, but in fact that's about my only source of income from all this.

I am not paid to shoot any of the events you see here, except in very rare circumstances. A weird business model, but that's me for you...

I would appreciate it greatly if you DIDN'T download images and have them printed somewhere else.

In fact, what you can download from here is pretty much designed to produce crappy reprints, so don't complain if you do and the quality sucks.

If you go to school on the Island:

If you go to school on the Island (the Harbor School, McMurray, or the High School) or you live on the Island and go to school off-Island, or you live off-Island and are a commuter kid, *and* you're on Facebook or something similar, you MAY post a few photos of yourself to your wall.

(Chautauqua kids are too busy playing Farmville for this to be an issue with them).

You MAY NOT post a lot, or all, of my photos from an event to Facebook.

What's "a few" and what's "a lot"? Use your judgement. I trust you.

If you're an adult:

If you're on Facebook or something similar you MAY post a few photos of yourself or your kid to your wall.

You MAY NOT post a lot, or all, of my photos from an event to Facebook.

Again, what's "a few" and what's "a lot"? Use your judgement. "All" should require no explanation. Hint: no, I don't literally mean every single photo I took of an event.

Adults posting a lot of my photos to Facebook MAY receive a Digital Millenium Copyright Act takedown notice from Facebook. I will have requested that Facebook send this to you; this could result in your being kicked off Facebook.

If you are an Island business or organization:

You must CONTACT ME BY EMAIL PRIOR to using my photography in any way, and I MUST HAVE AGREED TO what you are proposing, by reply email.

I don't do stock photography; I won't resell any of the photos (particularly of kids) to anyone for any sort of commercial or non-commercial use, particularly to anyone from off the Island.

For single use situations (publications, event advertising) we can talk. Probably we can work something out. Details depend on who you are and what you're doing.

Full written credit in the publication or on the advertising at the location of the photo must be given: "Photography: John Sage/FinchHaven" is my standard by-line.

If you are with one of the Island schools, or are an Island organisation (not a business) of some sort, you may use ONE SINGLE PHOTO online (non-Facebook) to publicize your event. Again, you must CONTACT ME BY EMAIL PRIOR to using my photography. Maybe two photos. Maybe more. Let's talk.

Again, full written credit at the location of the photo must be given: "Photography: John Sage/FinchHaven" is my standard by-line.

(ALSO SEE: What you MAY NOT do with the photos on my web site).

If you are an off-Island business or organization:

You must CONTACT ME BY EMAIL PRIOR to using any of my photography in any way, and I MUST HAVE AGREED TO what you are proposing, by reply email.

(ALSO SEE: Stock photography, above).

What you MAY NOT do with the photos on my web site

All of my photograpy is copyright © John Sage/FinchHaven Digital Photography;
as of September 6, 2011, FinchHaven™ is a registered Trade Mark

If you are an Island business or organization, again, you must CONTACT ME BY EMAIL PRIOR to using my photography in any way, and I MUST HAVE AGREED TO what you are proposing, by reply email.

If you are a business or organization you MAY NOT post any, some, a lot, or all, of the photos from an event I've photographed to Facebook. This should not require any explanation.

I will not agree to this. Don't bother to ask.

(If you hire me to shoot some photos with the specific understanding that you want to put them on Facebook, that may be another matter. But so far that hasn't ever happened...)

If relevant I can explain how you can link out of Facebook back to photos on my site in a manner that will benefit both you and me.

Businesses or organisations posting my photos to Facebook WILL receive a Digital Millenium Copyright Act takedown notice from Facebook. I will have requested that Facebook send this to you; this could result in your being kicked off Facebook.

Again, I can explain how you can link BACK to my photos from Facebook.

I do monitor my web server logs pretty closely, so I can see more of what's going on than you might think...

The bottom line here, folks, is that I try to take as many photos of as much stuff as possible here on the Island without charging money to do it.

And as a practical matter, I don't get paid anything for 99% of the photography I shoot.

It's up to you to help me continue to do this.