Photo Availability

Photos of the forty-first annual Illinois Masonic Academic Bowl are available for viewing and downloading at the following link:

Academic Bowl

Then click on 2025 State Tournament

The photos are arranged in seven folders:

• Awards Formal photos of winning teams in all three classes posed with their awards, coaches, Tournament Director, and Most Worshipful Grand Master of Masons.
• Bloomington HS Exterior A few shots I grabbed at lunch of the Bloomington High School exterior. It was a beautiful, sunny dat.
• Class 1A ID photos of the Class 1A teams, shots of those teams during competition and the Award Photos (same photos as mentioned above).
• Class 2A The same photos as mentioned for 1A, except these are the 2A teams.
• Class 3A Finally, the 3A teams with the same kinds of photos.
• Miscellaneous Shots of stuff around the high school of things I found interesting and may give you some idea about life at Bloomington High. Also included are photos of the Grand Lodge officers in attendance and some shots of lunch (pizza, what else?)
• Team IDs This is a series of photos taken of teams wearing their "livery" along with a small placard giving the name of the school. It is useful for identifying the teams in other photos where the name of the school may not be visible. (But see tips and tricks below for more information.)

Inside of each of these seven folders you'll find three more folders marked, Small, Medium and Large. This refers to the size of the image it contains. However, all of these sub-folders contain the same images, with only the size differing. Choose the size that suits your purpose. (But see tips and tricks below for more information.)

General Comments

This was a very satisfying photo shoot for me and I learned a great deal because of some of the requirements.

• We had to work very fast to try to get as many shots as possible during the actual competition.
• We were asked to not use flash (because of the distraction to teams) so every photo you see was shot using ambient light. My Nikon Z-7II did a phenomenal job of getting the job done, but it was something of a challenge in certain situations, especially where room setups were somewhat chaotic, thus limiting my ability to use optimal camera angles. Lighting was also very problematic in cases where there was artificial light in the darker parts of a room and bright sunlight streaming through windows. There's only so much I can do in post-processing with that kind of lighting.
• Post processing in general was very time-consuming, largely because of lighting variations in different rooms.
• Some shots were impossible to take because of room size limitations and time constraints. It was not possible to switch out lenses to provide wide angles at one moment, and close-ups the next.

Overall, I'm still very happy with the results and certainly learned a great deal about this kind of photo shoot. My [limited] interactions with students was also pleasant and enjoyable. I really believe that youth is one of the most important things we as Masons can cultivate and mentor; these were some of the brightest we have in Illinois and one of our great treasures. It was a privilege to record the event on digital media.

Tips and Tricks

Three items might be helpful for many receiving this:

1. If you are an editor of a print publication, a website, or email list, you probably know that most photos are not optimized for use in your particular medium. If you see a photo that you would like to publish, please don't hesitate to ask me to provide an optimized version for you that will satisfy your particular requirements. Just drop me an email and be sure to tell me the filename of the photo[s] in question, and your intended use. I save all photos I take as RAW images, which means I can always go back to the original source and provide you with the best possible image I can for your intended purpose.

2. If you are viewing images in the Dropbox display from the link provided above, I recommend using the Large Grid layout, that you can select from the icon at the top right of the file list display. You can then view the images as thumbnails to select the ones you want to view in a larger format by downloading them.

3. At the top right of each image displayed in the Grid layout, there is a more options button (three vertical dots). Click the more options button and from the list you can select File Info, that will display a sidebar of additional information for the photo. It often contains Keywords that you may find useful for identifying the photo as well as technical information about the image.

Thanks

Thanks for reading this. Hope you enjoy the photos as much as I enjoyed taking them.

As always, photos are free to share with family and friends and for Masonic purposes.

Don't hesitate to contact me if you need assistance or encounter difficulties.