michael.shroyer

Heyy its me, I take photos..mostly of sports.

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Despite the lack of personal excitement I have in the subject matter, I had a lot of fun shooting high-school graduations this year! Working for The Roanoke Times, I chose to photograph three (of the area’s 9?) based on the proximity to my apartment (Blacksburg, Christiansburg, Radford) and the 4th, Pulaski County, based on it being held outside. Sometimes normal day to day newspaper assignments don’t allow for much creativity when it comes to the photos, however graduations enable maximum creativity and free rein! I’ll leave the formal captions out of these and try to walk you through my thoughts and why I chose these 10.

1. There are lots of students introduced to speak during graduations and they can be pretty excited about it!

2. I’m constantly on the lookout for interesting details whether it be a decorated mortar board, a year specific tassel, colorful socks, or in this case a republican neck tie worn by the Christiansburg High School class president. 

3. By far the most interesting “speaker” photo I took all year, complete with moving tassel.

4. Graduation FISH-EYES. New to my lens arsenal this year was the fish-eye so I had to contain myself at each graduation and really only use it to capture an overall view of the crowded stadiums, gyms and auditoriums.

5. I’ve tried variations of this photo before and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I think it did here?

6. A few minutes before this I remembered I should be sure to shoot some diversity and suddenly it was this student’s turn to walk across the stage and get his diploma. I zoomed in all the way to highlight his afro and honestly got really lucky the way the stadium lights caught his eye and backlit his hair.

7. Another thing I’m always looking to incorporate into the photos is a school name or logo. Here I had been seated taking a break during the 300+ names being announced and noticed the track’s giant Cougar paw to focus on, thus leaving the graduates blurry but noticeable in the background. 

8. Nothing says a graduation photo like a strong celebration image at the end of the ceremony! Knowing what angle I wanted, I hopped up onto the front of the stage, kneeled and waited until just the right moment to stand and snap off many frames of the jubilation. 

9. With the Pulaski County High School graduation being outdoors, they ALWAYS have good silly string celebration photos, but this year was a total bust. Students started standing and shooting them off early before the principal could even finish conferring the degrees. I mostly ended up with a bunch of faceless silly string aftermath, but also this action shot of a popper thingy.

10. All of the photos I filed for each graduation went into online galleries and even including this post, I believe in a pretty “conclusion” photo to wrap things up.

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At last, here are some more photos from the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge that Chrissy and I visited during my trip to Oklahoma! My favorite part by far was seeing the prairie dogs. I was worried they would be hard to find but they were kind of all over the place. They are highly social animals that  apparantly live in large colonies. We saw two of these in the park and at each there were hundreds of them running around and in and out of their burrows.  Despite the extreme heat, we saw plenty of other wildlife (buffalo, longhorn cattle, a roadrunner, deer, an eastern collard lizard) and birds (a Black-capped Vireo, a female Painted Bunting, a Scarlet Tanger and more!). The night sky and milky way were also incredible.. I’d definitely go back!

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I took this image two weekends ago while camping in the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in southwest Oklahoma. It was probably the second darkest sky I’ve ever seen and certainly the darkest I’ve attempted to photograph. In this photo I broke the astrophotography “rule” to include a foreground element, but I still like it because I captured a meteor. While this isn’t necessarily difficult to do, I didn’t spend that long attempting these photos and was pleased with my results. I’ll post again soon and include another night sky photo as well as some other photos from the park.  Photo settings F 2.8, ISO: 2000, 20 second exposure.

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Last weekend I photographed both semi-final matches of the ACC Lacrosse Championships for Inside Lacrosse. Links to those photo galleries can be found here and here. In the second semi, No. 4 Syracuse defeated No. 6 Notre Dame 9-5 and gave me this National Championship ’esque celebration. All of these were taken with a 16mm lens on my full frame Nikon D750. My friend Mark and I refer to this combination as “stupid wide”. Even though it creates a little distortion on the edges, using such a wide angle really allows you to get in there and create some unique images. I really love #5′s ponytail flying across several of these frames, but I still am not sure I would be able to choose one favorite. The last frame is a screenshot of all of the images from the celebration. In total I took 116 photos from the final seconds of regulation until the team’s shook hands. I have been involved in many of these post-game celebration events where I have barely walked away with a photo that I liked, so I consider myself very fortunate here to have walked away with these nine and a few others. Here is a fun video from the TV Broadcast showing me creating these images!

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Sunday was at last race day for the STP 500! Kyle Busch, who had won the previous day’s truck race, completed his sweep by easily winning after leading 352 of the 500 laps. Does that sound exciting? I’m no NASCAR aficionado, but I didn’t think it was at all? Martinsville’s unique “paperclip” shape track never leads to many big wrecks but I’m not even sure there were any two-car collisions to produce a decent photo.  1. Victory Lane was kind of a mad house of photographers all pushing and arguing their way to try and get a better position. That said, I’m happy to play this game and I believe I came away with as good of a photo here as anyone -- with both trophies visible and the streaming confetti “framing” his face (which was obviously 100% luck). 2. An overall view of Martinsville Speedway. It was a beautiful sunny day, but no beautiful puffy clouds. :( 3. I think every photographer that has shot at Martinsville has taken this intentionally motion blurred photo and this is my favorite attempt at it this year. Shot at 1/50th of a second. 4. I had to get creative with this edit and the harsh light on pit road early in the race. 5. Several times at my various shooting positions I found myself bored and attempting “panning” photos at different shutter speeds (which I was doing here at 1/80th).  6. I tried to submit this one and they rejected it.. I guess tilting my camera sideways and making the cars look like they are traveling on a high banked straightaway was just a little too creative?! 7. I took many pit stop photos from above and this one is my favorite despite there being nothing special about it. 8. Really nice light on Kyle Busch here as he celebrates after exiting his car grabbing the checkered flag! 9. This is the “safe” wide angle victory lane photo and the one that most photographers probably took... but did they stop there? 10. A split second later, with confetti still falling and using the same camera and lens, I zoomed in to isolate Busch and the grandfather clock trophy. A second confetti burst went off later where I was able to use a different camera/lens/zoom length to get the best celebration photo shown earlier here.

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Last weekend I traveled to Martinsville, Va. to cover all three days of their spring race weekend. It was only the second time I’ve ever photographed a NASCAR race and the first time doing so by myself. Despite wearing two layers of ear protection (foam plugs & big ear muffs), it was very LOUD and the cars, as you might expect, went round and round and round.  This set of images is a combination the four events leading up to the main race on Sunday. On Friday there was a practice for the Sprint Cup cars as well as race qualifying. On Saturday there was more practice (yes, I’m talking about practice man!) as well as the Camping World Truck Series race. I tried to provide a variety here from the 101 images I originally submitted. 1. Kyle Busch burns out following his victory in the truck race. For safety reasons, photographers are required to stay back off of the track and pit road until the cars come to a complete stop, so I couldn’t really avoid having the wall in my photo unless I was a lot taller. 

2. Jimmie Johnson puts his ear plugs in prior to Friday’s practice session. 3. I took several of similar photos to these and I think this one is my favorite, but see them all for yourself here.  4. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. exits the garage area during practice. There are a lot of “panning” photos attempted at NASCAR (for obvious reasons). Here my settings were 1/60th at f/22. 5. I’m really liking this completely unique one of Kasey Kahne. He stood outside of his garage stall for a very long time while his crew worked on his car, whereas most other drivers stayed in their cars and analyzed their practice session data. 6. Joey Logano had the fastest qualifying lap and won the Coors Light Pole Award to start first in Sunday’s race. 7. I don’t absolutely love this photo (because of the harsh light/shadows), but it was something I had never seen crew members do before and the execution is almost there. 8. This one might be my favorite, because I’ve never seen anyone shoot this photo. I found it extremely difficult all weekend to make a unique photo; both after having done this and being amongst many other photographers (several with better access than me). 9. The truck race wasn’t exciting, but I like how the bright red McDonalds car is framed here. 10. Another victory photo of Kyle Busch made increasingly interesting by the great light on the finish line!

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I decided to go back into my archive today and find the photos I took at one of Barack Obama’s last campaign stops in 2008, six days before the presidential election! I even wrote a short blurb about the event for the Collegiate Times that you can still read here. My current friends at the CT did some excellent work at the Trump rally yesterday so they certainly provided the motivation for this little trip down memory lane. I wasn’t even sure I’d find any photos good enough to post, but I think I did?! It ended up being pretty exciting to give these all of my photos a second look and certainly a second edit as my post-processing skills have dramatically improved since then. I want to mention how torn I am at the last image I included here.. It just ISN’T tack sharp.. and I think if it were it might be one of my favorite images ever, but its not and I’ll never be able to fix that. AHHH. There was also some super weird orange lighting that I’ve always been not completely satisfied with my edits of. I used to have a version in black and white that I enjoyed.. maybe I’ll take another shot at that edit..

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A few weeks ago (probably while taking essentially the same old basketball photos game after VT men’s game) I had the idea to photograph an entire game where I would focus entirely on photographing only the ball. I was able to make this happen last week during the Virginia Tech women’s game against Duke. In truth, I don’t really know how to judge how successful I was? It was really really difficult to follow a ball that is moving constantly! And because I was focusing on only the ball I primarily used my 300mm lens to isolate it as much as possible. In a normal game when focusing on the player, the ball is often going to just slightly be out of focus, so here there were plenty of these photos where I would focus on the player accidentally and the ball just wouldn’t be sharp enough to consider using here. The rest of this “idea” had to be achieved creatively in Photoshop, both with the Black and White conversion as well as determining how to crop each image to hopefully make the BASKETBALL the number one focus.

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Even though I haven’t left the property where I live the past two days, I still made it outside a couple of different times to take some photos. Everyone meet Desi (Chestnut) and Nada (Grey)! These two horses live on a piece of land that my friend and landlord leases out behind the house. Despite not knowing them very well, they were really agreeable towards me.....and not as often towards each other! I’m sure they found a few of my photo angles kind of strange too.. so it goes..

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ACC Basketball season is upon us in Blacksburg and Virginia Tech started out a hot and unpredicted 2-0! While it isn’t always my favorite sport to photograph, it is certainly my favorite Virginia Tech sport to get passionate about and be a fan of. These photos are from the first home ACC game and victory against NC State. This post was a little tough to put together because I primarily shoot vertically and horizontal photos work so much better here. I have combined a few as you’ll see to somewhat solve this issue. 

01 - A couple of BUZZ frames to lead it off. Buzz wears his heart on his sleeve and genuinely cares about his team as people first. I unapologetically love everything he has to say after wins or losses.

02 - NC State Wolfpack guard Anthony “Cat” Barber (12) shoots over Shane Henry in the first half.

03 - This photo of North Carolina State Wolfpack forward BeeJay Anya (21) dunking was taken with a remote camera placed low on the center post right underneath the basket. Pretty decent results overall from this remote camera set up -- my first of the season.

04 - I thought these were fun photos of really tight defense being played by both teams.

05 - Another frame from my remote camera of a Seth Allen layup. I think this was probably the best of the 805 images I took with the remote camera on the night.

06 - I like this one especially because it was taken at the exact same moment as the previous image. I also like how it is horizontal.. shooting vertical would not have had the same impact here.

07 - Zach Leday driving to the basket. Love his expression!

08 - I don’t really like any of these dunk photos by themselves... but combined like this into a triptych I think it totally works!

09 - Shane Henry (0) and Zach Leday block the game winning shot attempt of Anthony “Cat” Barber (12) at the end of regulation.

10 - Decent celebration photo at the end of the overtime victory!

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Aurora Borealis from Reykjavík harbor. ISO 6400, F 3.5, 1/2 second.

This post has been a long time in it’s creation..mostly because I’m just not at all satisfied with this sole Northern Lights takeaway image from my recent 4 day stopover in Iceland. First of all, I knew the Aurora forecast would be the highest for this one particular night, but just totally failed to book one of the bus “tours” that takes you outside the city to view them more remotely. Chrissy and I waited until the day of to book and by that time it was too late. As we walked through the city buildings that night, a little depressed about the whole thing, I noticed an odd coloration in the sky. I took a few slow shutter frames handheld to confirm before we walked the 2-3 blocks down to the water where I took this photo. In a rush I quickly balanced my camera on some rocks (despite having an actual tripod in my backpack - Fail) and was only able to take 7 photos before the clouds completely covered the lights. Technically speaking, I should have shot in RAW to reduce the image noise, (I certainly didn’t need to be in RAW before this!) but I forgot. Using a longer shutter speed at 2.8 with a lower ISO could have reduced noise, but the whole thing was rushed and again just poor planning that I didn’t prioritize a better Aurora experience into the original trip plans (which admittedly lacked overall).

That said, the fact that we saw the Aurora Borealis at all is still pretty incredible! The weather was extremely inconsistent every day and night, so for us to see them briefly from the city, feels lucky! After it clouded over down by the water, it started to drizzle rain. Tired from being out all day, Chrissy and I continued to walk around debating our next move. During a break in the rain, Chrissy happened to look up and the Aurora briefly appeared again! This time dancing and moving before our eyes in this small clearing right above us. For those 15-20 seconds it felt like our own private show! It was here that the Northern Lights were truly experienced...and was something even the most technically perfect of images could not have captured.

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I finally photographed a POLO match today! This is something I’ve wanted to do for several years now. It started in 2007 (I think?) when I learned of the matches that are held in Crozet, Virginia each summer weekend. The one time I planned to go and watch, it rained and was cancelled. Fast forward to Spring 2014 when my girlfriend was leasing a horse at Farmingdale Stables here in Blacksburg and mentioned the Virginia Tech club polo team practicing there. I reached out to the president of the club and despite having all of this school year to try and at least photograph a practice, I didn’t. Today however, Virginia Tech hosted the inaugural Mercedes Cup, named in honor of a beloved departed polo pony, and I was there. I will try and post a full set of photos in the next few days.

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Mwen Sonje. I remember. I've been thinking about Haiti and the time i've spent there a lot more than normally recently as I have been finishing reading Amy Wilentz's book, Farewell Fred Voodoo. Today especially though, on the 5th anniversary of the 2010 earthquake that claimed countless (estimates vary severely) lives in and around the capital Port-Au-Prince, I can't get it out of my mind. As many of you know I was in Haiti on that day but had left Port-Au-Prince for Cange (45 miles away) the morning of the 12th. Five people died at the guesthouse where we stayed the night before. Through my four subsequent visits and four months living there in 2012, I have made many incredible friendships. I have also been fortunate to travel in country and see much of Haiti's beauty that is rarely portrayed.  These five photos were taken between Jan 10 - 12th, 2010. The first three were taken on the 10th during our mission team's day off and tour of the city. In the aerial photo taken from the overlook, the National Palace and the National Cathedral (both of which crumbled two days later) stand tall and beautiful. The fourth photo was taken during the afternoon of the 11th during a joyous match of soccer in Cité Soleil under a gorgeous blue sky. The final photo was taken exactly four minutes before the earthquake as our group was walking through the central plateau town of Cange. Almost everyone in our group felt the earthquake for a few seconds but being so far away simply described it as a brief dizzying feeling. I immediately heard children from a nearby school running and shouting but to me it merely sounded like they were playfully enjoying recess After some brief discussion soon after we concluded it was likely a small earthquake. We had no idea but would soon learn of its magnitude. 

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Note: I converted these all to black and white mostly because there was a funky reddish color cast on the wrestlers skin caused by the overhead lights reflecting off of the maroon mat. B&W seems to also add to the intensity. These photos are from the #10 Virginia Tech wrestling match against #4 Ohio State last weekend. I actually haven't shot that many wrestling matches in the past but had this matchup circled on my calendar because I knew the action and atmosphere between two highly ranked teams would be high. It ended up being even more exciting than imagined and probably more so than any wrestling match I will ever attend/photograph in the future! The Hokies tied the team score by winning the final match and ended up winning overall 19-18 on the third tie-breaking criteria. More beneficial to me personally though was that (through the help of others) I was able to learn more about the actual sport (the way points are awarded, etc) for the first time.

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Anyone that has ever photographed much football at any level will tell you that all kickoff return photos start to look the same very quickly. It is super easy to get a clean standard photo of the runner and more often than not the same player returns every kick. To break up the monotony of this, I have sometimes (albeit infrequently) used a technique called "panning". The idea here is to use a really slow shutter speed to blur the background, but to still hopefully get the subject in focus.

I think this photo is probably the coolest result of any of these I have ever attempted! I love how the helmet is the only "sharp" element and everything else seems to radiate around it. While I'll mostly attribute this and any panning photo to luck, I certainly will be trying more and more of this in other sports as well. I shot this on shutter speed priority mode at 1/40th of a second. The camera chose an aperture of f/22, which unfortunately showed how dirty my camera's sensor is! I have removed the 100-200 dust spots so you don't see them, but it took at least 15 minutes to do so.

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If you couldn't tell, this is a photo of tonight's partial solar eclipse. My friend Mark and I knew about it and each had the idea to try and photograph it from on top of the press box at Lane Stadium since we would already be there for the football game at 8. This photo was taken a few minutes before the "peak" moon coverage and was also just before the sun dropped below the line of clouds at the horizon. I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out. I almost had to maximize my camera's settings (ISO 100, f/22, 1/5000) to even capture it. Mark had the genius idea of using the "live view" feature on our camera's so we wouldn't be staring directly into it at any point. I would have loved to include an additional foreground element or something else to make it a little more interesting, but I think the clouds at least accomplish that somewhat.

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After three straight noon games in Lane (two of those losses) I was really ready for a change of scenery. A few photographer friends and I made the 3 hour trip to Chapel Hill to shoot this game versus North Carolina. Essentially all of the away games this year are easy trips, and as it stands now I plan to photograph them all! The Hokies jumped all over the Tar Heels early and were in control enough to seemingly take their foot of the gas early in the second quarter. So much so that the second and third quarters seemed like the teams were just punting back and forth. Not very exciting, but the weather was perfect to soak in while Blacksburg was experiencing its first real cold front!  Several of these images were shot with my 300 and a 1.7x tele convertor (500mm) that I had lying around from a long time ago. I have always heard negative things about the convertor (poor sharpness) and really haven't used it much until the last two weeks. I have found however that in broad daylight, it is really sharp...maybe not every single time..but certainly is sharp enough! I think my favorite image is #5, unique to me, because I never shoot football this tight. This is essentially the full frame. As the game went on I got tired of taking the convertor on and off and just decided to go with it. The rest of my images from the game can be found on The Key Play who has hired me for a bargain rate to photograph the VT away games this year.