Every year, the US Navy Blue Angels perform at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. It also happens to be the home office of Blue Pixel and my home for over 20 years. But this year, two very different shoots were on my calendar for the same day. The Blue Angels during the day, outside along the Severn River, and an indoor big band concert at the local high school, featuring my son and a bunch of his friends.

I often just throw convention out the window and challenge myself to pick a camera and lens and just shoot an assignment. I have done that since the early days of my newspaper career. It certainly makes you think.

So here is what I did. I took the Nikon D3 and a 500 f4.0 lens to shoot both. The Blue Angels were outside going really fast. With the D3 on continuous focus and high speed shooting, I shot tight and fast at ISO 200. The long lens really compresses the planes on top of each other. They are close, but NOT that close!

Then I went to the jazz concert, in a typically badly lit high school auditorium. No special lighting on stage, just what they had. The obvious dilemma is that it's dark and I have a long long heavy lens with no tripod. No problem as far as I could see. I set the ISO of the D3 to 6400. That gave me plenty of shutter speed to hand-hold the 500 mm lens, and enough depth of field to make cool pictures.

And I sat 20 rows back. But the looks I got from the other parents!

The camera and lens combination are quite extreme, but when you push the envelope and try to imagine what you can make, you almost always get a pleasant surprise. Mix that with the incredible (and I mean unbelievable) ISO range of the D3. WOW!