Healdsburg’s student-athletes and their parents for the past several years probably know Michael Lucid, or certainly know of him. Or should. He’s been at most home games, absorbed in taking photos of the players—volleyball, basketball, on the track or the field—photos that capture the athletes in action, a snapshot in time.
Though he publishes dozens, sometimes hundreds, of photos from events on his public photo stream at flickr.com/photos/mclucid/albums, and they are all available for download and home printing, he does not charge anyone for the photos.
He lets the coaches know whenever a new album is posted, emailing them the link from Flickr (a photo sharing and storage site) and asking them to share it with the athletes and families. He also posts on Facebook and passes out business cards when asked, and occasionally gets a paying assignment (such as the recent Turkey Trot sponsored by the Rotary Club).
“I have never relied on photography to make a living. It has always been a hobby or passion,” Lucid told The Tribune recently. “I enjoy everything about photography—taking photos at events; reviewing and culling the photos; editing the keepers and posting/sharing them.”
His hobby isn’t an idle one, but comes from his own passion for sports. “My son was an accomplished track and field athlete,” he said, referring to Phil Lucid (HHS class of 2008). “We were shooting with little point-and-shoot cameras, and what we got was OK. But one of the other parents on the track team had a DSLR, so I started envying him.”
Digital single-lens-reflex cameras, introduced about 30 years ago, allow capture of an image though an SLR to a digital card. SLR cameras allow for lens swapping, and have been the camera of choice for sports and news photographers for decades.
“We didn’t have a lot of disposable income at the time, so I used the money that I made from refereeing soccer and told all the families, ‘If you’re going buy me a present, just give me some money,’” Lucid said. “It took me two years, but I ended up saving enough money to buy my first digital camera right before his senior track season.”
Camera Kit
He’s upgraded his kit since then, and now uses a Nikon Z9 mirrorless digital camera and three lenses, one of which (the big one) is a 120-300mm zoom lens with an aperture of F 0.28. “Which is why the lens is so big—to get that wide aperture to let in a lot of light,” he said.
Such equipment is expensive: The Nikon Z9 now lists for over $4,000, and the zoom lens goes for up to $7,000. “I look for sales and get refurbished equipment,” Lucid said. “They work fine, but you can save some money.”
Still, over $10,000 worth of equipment is necessary for a photographer trying to catch sharp images of action sports, as Lucid does almost every day. “The auto-focus systems in the mirrorless cameras are just insane. They’re just so accurate. They actually find the face of your subject and lock in on the eye,” he said.
Matched with the through-the-lens view finder of the mirrorless digital camera, the results are often little short of amazing. “They’re wonderful, wonderful pieces of equipment,” he added.
Workflow
Lucid goes to Healdsburg home games in all action sports—girls and boys basketball, football and volleyball, tennis and track, and soccer, for which he retains a referee’s interest. “I took about 2,000 images, and that was for half the game. I didn’t shoot the second half,” he said, describing how he is able to manage his workload.
“I selected about 116, 120 images to edit, then I edited I think 21 and posted those. I’ll go back to do the others later,” Lucid added. Editing involves finding the sharpest, clearest and best exposed images. “There’s no ‘right’ exposure. There’s a range of what works but it needs to have a nice exposure, given what you’re trying to do.”
Photographing high school kids in sports, or athletes of any age, poses an implicit challenge. “What you’re looking for are kind of peak moments,” Lucid said. “The good news is I’ve shot a lot of different sports now, so I’ve gotten a feel for I think each one. But again, each one creates challenges.”
That’s a lot of work and commitment for what Lucid still regards as something of an expensive hobby. “Being a parent, I know how much photos of my children doing anything mean to me, how much they affect me,” he said. “And so I’m giving these parents that gift—a photo of their child.”
Unless of course that parent wants to support Lucid’s time-consuming and expensive hobby. Each page of images on his Flickr site includes a request for a “donation for the free photos.”
“Asking folks who enjoy my photos and offering them a chance to ‘donate’ to support my work seems like a good compromise … I can give my photos to people and in return, they can give me a gift,” Lucid said.
The Healdsburg Tribune relies on Lucid Motion Images for coverage of many high school games and meets.
