Photos

This photo is taken for the Scavenger Hunt.

The plaza in Mill Valley, a lovely town nestled against the slopes of Mount Tamalpais, is a favorite meeting place for folks who love to play chess competitively. In fact, the town leaders installed a half dozen tables with chess squares built in to the tops. Most of the players, however, bring rolled up sheets of plastic that serves as their chess board. On Saturday I stopped by to try out the teleconverter for the Nikon 5700 I'm borrowing from a friend. At his urging I stopped and bought a tripod before heading over to Mill Valley to check out the scene. When I arrived there were no chess players, but as the sun rose in the sky and the temperature warmed, men began arriving and before long there were three games going on. In fact, all three games can be seen in this image.

Speed chess, as the name suggests demands of the players that they not only beat their opponent, they must beat the clock as well. The time limit for the game is mutually agreed upon. Most of these players limited their games to five minutes. The man in the foreground is reaching toward the clock, which really consists of two stop watches, one for each player. When he has finishes his move he will activate his opponents clock while automatically turning his own off. I saw players obviously prepared to win their matches lose when they ran out of time. It is quite a frantic and exciting game that typically attracts a crowd of onlookers.

I was very pleased with the teleconverter which extended the 280 mm lens to 420 mm. I'm not certain exactly how far out I was with this image. I'm told the vignette around the corners is not unusual, though I've not noticed that on long photos posted at this site. If this is a horrible faux pas, I'm certain someone will let me know. I'm quite pleased with the look.

Processing was minimal with adjusted levels, shadows and highlights and saturation, as well as applied USM.