One Game at a Time

Field Hockey: Maryland vs Virginia

2009-10-02T23:09:00.003-04:00

Friday afternoon at 4pm was the perfect time for a Number 1 vs Number 3 game for the field hockey squad. The only thing that could've made it better was more sun!

Clouds were out in force this afternoon for the game and that prevented any nice halo shots or other brightly-lit photos. However, with clouds you can more easily balance the exposure of the player's uniform and their face. When it's full sun and the player's face is under goggles, helmet, or other protective gear it can be difficult to expose their face without over-exposing the rest of the frame. When the light is diffused by the clouds it's easier.

The game itself was interesting because once again the Terps played a top-5 school. As a result there was a lot of action and a lot of excitement when a goal was scored. It was a lot of fun shooting the match this afternoon.

Football: Maryland Terrapins vs Rutgers

2009-10-02T22:58:00.003-04:00

About 1 1/2 weeks ago I decided to plunk down the change for an Aqua Tech 600 in order to protect my 400mm lens against the rain elements. It was about $220 but with over $13k of glass and body that it protects I figured it was a wise choice. I can't easily hand off my football assignments to another photographer (and I don't want to either!) and it seems like every year you get at least 1 soaker at home.

Watching the forecast Friday evening I noticed the frontal boundary moving north and the predictions that it would stall over the DC area up towards New York. Those systems are classic DC drenchers were moisture moves up from the Tennessee Valley and into the metro area, soaking DC, Baltimore, Philladelphia, and New York City. Game time prediction was 80% rain probability with 1-2 inches possible by midnight.

Sure enough it came true and I was tremendously happy I had my Aqua Tech to help me out.

During our tailgate the rain picked up in earnest and I put on my REI rain gear, Rip Curl "Gilligan" hat, and my Aqua Tech. I considered dropping my second body and lenses and leaving them in the car but I opted against it in the end. I wanted to get some flag shots with heavy rain. In the end I was happy I kept my second body so I could get my flag and player shots before the game. However, it was a lot of work to carry it all around. I need to buy a second Aqua Tech for my 70-200mm lens!

Field Hockey: Maryland Terrapins vs Wake Forest

2009-10-02T22:46:00.002-04:00

On Saturday morning I checked my Explorer into the Regents Drive Garage and hoofed down to the Field Hockey and Lacrosse Complex for an 11am contest between the Terps and the Demon Deacons of Wake Forest. Wake and the Terps met last year in the post season and both teams are evenly suited this year.

The match between Maryland and Wake Forest is one of the best field hockey games I've shot. Both teams balanced each other very well and as a result the competition was tight. That always plays out nicely on the shutter. When it's a 15-0 win you don't get much excitement or action in your shots. But when it's a 0-0 game with 5 minutes remaining you get some great shots.

I shot the game using only my 400mm lens and I opted to use some older SanDisk Extreme II cards. I knew I needed 4GB or more but I wanted to do my best to keep it to a single card. I knew I had football in the afternoon and I didn't want to have a bunch of cards to offload when I got home. During halftime and the second half I deleted bad shots during downtimes or when the play was on the opposite side of the field. That allowed me to keep my field hockey shots to 4GB and reduced my post processing time when I got home.

Men's Soccer: Maryland Terrapins vs North Carolina

2009-10-02T22:41:00.002-04:00

Friday evening I headed over to Ludwig Field for a top-5 showdown between the Terps and the Tar Heels of North Carolina. Ludwig was packed to it's near-7000 seat capacity and Fox Sports Net was on hand to witness the contest.

The lighting at Ludwig sucks. It's ISO5000 at 1/500th f/2.8 and you're still dark. And you can only shoot from the sideline. Shooting from the baseline produces horrible shadows as their is no lighting in the endzone areas of the stadium. None-the-less that's what you're handed to deal with.

I only took my 400mm lens with me and opted to avoid lugging around a second body with a shorter lens. I like the second body with a wide lens for pre-game and post-game shots but doing that at Ludwig at night doesn't make a lot of sense.

My shots came out pretty well because there was great competition. The quality of the exposure is awful but there isn't much you can do about that...

Field Hockey: Maryland Terrapins vs California Bears

2009-10-02T22:37:00.003-04:00

Monday afternoon the Terps faced the California Bears at the Field Hockey and Lacrosse Complex. Game time was set for 3pm and I was crossing my fingers for some good light.

Rather than full sun we got puffy high clouds. This presented some challenges for exposure but it's nothing too unusual. There was a good 2 stops of difference in the light when the sun was behind a cloud vs out shining brightly.

I shot the first half with the Terps backlit with the sun. I really like the halo effect in field hockey due to the water spray off the field. During the second half I changed my position and followed Maryland's shooting to the opposite side of the field. It was a lot easier to focus with the sun over my shoulders. It was also a lot easier to properly expose the shot.

Cheerleader: Maryland Terrapins

2009-09-19T23:43:00.003-04:00

Golden light is great. The lower the level of the sun in the sky the better. After a Maryland touchdown I was downsun from the cheerleaders as they twirled and flipped through the endzone. I snapped this quick shot of one of them looking back towards the sun. The shot came out well because her face was properly exposed while the rest of the frame was in darkness.

Sharp light can be your friend.

Football: Maryland Terrapins vs Middle Tennessee State

2009-09-19T23:17:00.003-04:00

Today was the perfect day for a football game: bright beaming sun, temperatures in the upper 60s or lower 70s, and a light breeze to cool you off if you happen to be out in the direct sun. Kickoff was 3:30pm this afternoon and I couldn't be happier.

Light on the field was superb and the temperature was great. This marks the second week in a row where we've lucked out and avoided the humidity and high temperatures that are typical for the opening 2 or 3 football games at Maryland. The only element that would've made it more perfect is if some high puffy clouds would've settled in.

I chose to shoot the first half with the sun over my shoulders. I could've shot into the sun and gone for some rimlight but I figured that this was football and I didn't want to experiment too much. I stuck on f/2.8 for my aperture and varied the shutter speed to properly expose. It worked well.

During the second half the shadow of Tyser Tower occupied most of the field and I adjusted my position. I shot into the sunlight at times and at a 90 degree angle from the sun at other times. I like the 90 degree angle from the sunlight because you get some decent exposure but you also still get the rimlight.

Towards the end of the 3rd the field entered this interesting state where a tiny sliver was lit by the sun while everything else was in shadow. I positioned myself to take advantage of it and the photos really popped. It was pretty neat because for about 10 minutes we had players in full sun while the background was completely in shadow. Perfect...

Field Hockey: Maryland Terrapins vs Towson

2009-09-18T21:52:00.002-04:00

After shooting some soccer up at Ludwig I drove down to the Field Hockey and Lacrosse Complex to photograph the Maryland Terrapin field hockey team play the Towson Tigers. The lighting at Ludwig was spectacular and I expected equally great light down at the Field Hockey and Lacrosse Complex. The Field Hockey and Lacrosse Complex is lined with 50 year old oak trees that create really nice shadows on the field so I knew I would have lots of material to work with today compared to yesterday with the overcast skies.

There were so many great opportunities for unique photography with the light and the shadows from the trees today. Unfortunately the gamers (action photos) are what people are interested in. None the less I was shutter happy on the sideline before the player introductions and grabbed a lot of shots with shadows from the trees and bright blue skies that look really great.

For the first half I retreated to the side of the field where the Terps shot. This allowed me to shot my "rim" or "halo" shots. These are shots where the sun is located behind the player. Normally photographers want to shoot with the light behind them but shooting into the light can create unique exposures. In the case of field hockey shooting into the light is very advantageous due to the moist nature of the field.

Prior to field hockey games the facilities group waters the field. Interestingly enough this helps increase traction for the players. The benefit to photographers is that water droplets from the field are propelled into the air as the players race down the field and their feet impact the field. When they shoot or smack the field lots of water droplets are ejected up into the air.

The sunlight bounces off these droplets when you shoot into the sun. When you shoot with the sun to your back you don't see them very much.

I was very much looking forward to my first full-sun field hockey game this season because I really wanted to capture the light reflected off the water droplets.

I had to bail towards the end of the game so I didn't get to capture the entire game. However, the vast majority of my shots that I ran were into-the-sun style exposures.

Women's Soccer: Maryland Terrapins vs James Madison

2009-09-18T21:46:00.002-04:00

After arguably the best birthday of my life I awoke Sunday morning to chirping birds and a beaming sun. Later on in the day the women's soccer team at Maryland faced James Madison. I headed over to Ludwig field to get some shots.

Sunday was my first visit to Ludwig in quite awhile. I shot a lot of soccer during Fall 2008 but Spring 2009 I was vacant as other photographers shot the men's lacrosse team. It was nice to get back to the field.

The weather could only be described as fabulous. Temperatures in the mid 70s with plenty of sun and high puffy clouds. I grabbed my second body and a 14-24mm lens to accompany me with my usual 400mm lens I use for field sports like soccer.

I was so happy that I brought the 14-24mm lens. The shots of the clouds came out very well and I feel like they captured the game better than the tight 400mm lens. For a couple of corner kicks I got down on the ground and shot the player with the clouds in the background.

Field Hockey: Night Shoot

2009-09-18T21:32:00.002-04:00

Inside Maryland Sports may run a story on the success of the Field Hockey team. Since DC Sports Box also planned to run a season preview and requested a special shoot of the team I decided to tag along and get a few shots in myself.

Yuchen Nie and I talked about different shots we were looking for and we were both on the same page: a night shoot. We both own strobes and speedlights and wanted to put them to work on the field.

I wanted to get a few shots of both Terrapin goalies (Melissa Vassolatti and Alicia Grater) as well as a midfielder or back. My plan for the goalies was to light the goal with something red, orange, or yellow using my speedlights and then use my Alien Bees AB800 to light the player.

The University was very agreeable to the shoot and accommodated us very well. After a practice they shut down the lights in the stadium so that we were only working with our own controlled light. That was a huge advantage for us. It made working conditions difficult because we kinda stumbled around in the dark but it was worth it.

Although we had the modeling lamps of the strobes it was still difficult to focus. I did my best but several shots were out of focus. The most difficult shot I worked on was for forward Nicole Muracco. I dumped out a pitcher of water on the field and asked her to shoot the ball while I took a photo from on the field. It was difficult to focus on her face because her shot came forward through the focus pane (rather than side to side). We had to take several shots before I finally got one where her face was sharp. If I had another modeling lamp that would help.

It was a very fun shoot and I'm getting much more comfortable and familiar with my strobes, remotes, and with exposure. Artificial light is all about blending the power settings on each of your strobes. The more practice you get the easier it gets!

Football: Maryland Terrapins vs James Madison Dukes

2009-09-18T21:26:00.003-04:00

Saturday evening I headed out to Byrd Stadium and shot the Maryland Terrapins and the James Madison Dukes. It was the opening game for the Terps in the 2009 season and it was very exciting. During the first quarter I ran around so much that I hardly noticed the score. I focused on field position, possession, and what down it was. I didn't notice the score until the opening of the 2nd when I finally glanced up at the scoreboard.

The game was very exciting for spectators and I had an enjoyable time on the field. Most home openers I can remember unfold under sweltering heat where you struggle just to make it down the field. Today's abnormally cool weather (with overcast!) created a nice atmosphere. I'm sure the folks in the stands appreciated it!

I carried my belt with my 70-200mm and my 14-24mm lens. On my other camera I used my 400mm lens. I used the 14-24mm for crowd shots and the 70-200mm for endzone shots. In the end I exposed close to 2000 frames and got all the way up to ISO 3200 at 1/500th. I noticed motion blur at 1/500th so I may crank the ISO higher next weekend in order to get some faster shutter. I love sports.

Post processing at home took a couple of hours due to the large volume of photos. Hopefully next week I'll be more selective in my shots. Maybe not!

Field Hockey: Maryland Terrapins vs Penn State

2009-09-18T21:21:00.002-04:00

Saturday morning I headed down the Field Hockey and Lacrosse Complex at the University of Maryland to shoot the Field Hockey game between the Maryland Terrapins and the Nittany Lions of Penn State. The light was suboptimal due to overcast skies.

Clouds act as a giant diffuser and they push down the peaks in the exposure of a photograph. You can use an overcast sky to get great under-the-helmet shots of players faces but at the same time the photos don't pop the same way they do under bright sun or flash. None-the-less you can't control the weather so you have to work with the inputs you are offered.

I knew I couldn't get any decent spary shots due to the lack of direct sunlight so I just stayed on the side of the field where the sun was primarily over my shoulders. I say primarily because it was a mid-day game with overcast. Thus there was very little difference in my shots based on my location on the field.

It was good to get back onto the field and behind the long glass again.

Field Hockey: Intra Squad Practice

2009-08-20T23:36:00.002-04:00

After shooting my final football practice of the season I decided to stroll down to the Field Hockey and Lacrosse Complex to take in some pre-season field hockey. All summer I've been thinking about getting some into-the-sun shots of the field hockey players.

A field hockey field is typically watered down before the game and during half time. Ironically the wet nature of the field reduces the potential for injury. One would think that a wet field would increase the likelihood of injuries but evidently it's the opposite. Go figure...

Late day field hockey games at Maryland pit one team shooting nearly directly into the setting sun. I typically sit with the sun over my shoulder and catch some brilliant light falling on the players. However, I've done a lot more shooting-into-the-sun type shots this summer and I've seen how the light can reflect off of water droplets suspended in mid air.

When a field hockey player swings their stick it can generate an enormous amount of water droplets that fly up into the air. If you shoot into the light you'll get really sharp beams of light coming at you from those droplets. The camera loves it!

The difficulty with this approach is to avoid under or over exposing. The meter in your camera will insist that you are drastically over exposing and it is correct to some extent. For the most part the entire frame will be overexposed. But you don't care about the entire frame - you care about the player that is your subject. You want to properly expose them and since they have their back (or side) to the sun you need to overexpose the entire frame to properly expose them.

Today's shoot at the Field Hockey and Lacrosse Complex gave me the chance to shoot from several different angles and try my hand at properly exposing the players. It was very difficult - many of my shots came out overexposed. But some came out very well.

And it gave me an idea for another posed shot I'd like to attempt. It's just an idea right now but I think it could turn out really really well. More later!

Football: Maryland Practice, Day 10

2009-08-20T22:54:00.002-04:00

This afternoon I returned to the practice fields at Maryland for one final time before my 2 week getaway to North Carolina. The practice was scheduled to begin at 3:30pm but didn't open up until around 4. I was happy with this because it gave the sun a little more time to drop lower in the sky.

Shooting football practice these past 2 weeks has been very instructive to me because it's forced me to look for different angles and lighting to try to keep my photos fresh. It's taught me about using the meter as a guide (rather than an absolute) because shooting directly into the sun is something you're going to have to do from time to time.

Hopefully between now and the home opener on September 12th my football skills won't decline too much.

Football: Maryland Practice, Day 9

2009-08-20T00:10:00.002-04:00

Monday morning I hit the football practice fields. The light was low because the practice began at 9:15am and that made me happy.

I ran the normal gambit and raced around the field looking for different angles and different subjects. In the end I was happy with the balance of shots I grabbed. After shooting many traditional practices I narrowed down on a defensive line practice headed by Coach Sollazzo. Sollazzo is a caring hard-ass kind of coach. He can think the world of you on one play and think you're worthless the next play. But, he's good and he makes good players great. His energy on the coaching staff is unmatched and without him on the coaching staff the Maryland squad would not look the same. I have enormous respect for Coach Sollazzo.

This morning Coach Sollazzo challenged a player to rise to the season. He could be considered harsh but in football that's what a lot of players need to hear. The lead photo for this blog shows Coach Sollazzo's energy level on the team.

The rest of the practice seemed pale in comparison to Coach Sollazzo's enthusiasm. It was difficult to find squads that responded to his energy level.

Football: Maryland Practice, Day 8

2009-08-19T23:50:00.002-04:00

Monday afternoon I headed over to the University of Maryland for practice. I looked forward to this practice because it started an hour later than the practices last week and I recognized that the power of a lower sun could create some opportunities for some fantastic photos.

I've been very fortunate this summer that my other contracting work has placed me close to the University of Maryland at College Park and has allowed me to jump over to campus for a 25 minute photo shoot and jump back to my other commitments. I recognize that this is a unique opportunity that will probably not present itself again in the coming seasons so I've made a conscience choice to take advantage of it this year.

This afternoon I took my regular approach of running around as quickly as possible to as many different drilling stations so I could capture as many different drills as possible from as many different perspectives as possible. It's a lot. But I have knee-pads. And yes, you are free to make jokes about that.

The light on Monday was particularly perfect because it was late-day 5:25pm light and it had a lot of color in it. Additionally, the players tend to look down (rather than up) so the lower the light the better the chances are that I can get some exposure up under the helmet.

I shot some offensive linemen on the block today while propping up my monopod on my left knee and discovered a new technique. I was able to anchor my monopod between my thigh muscle and my knee pad and that provided enough stability to allow me to aim my 400mm lens towards my subjects. This position allowed me to stay up for a good 6 minutes while part of the team drilled. During part of that 6 minute period one of the players washed down with a water bottle and I was in the perfect spot to capture the moment. It was worth the bruise on my leg...

Football: Scrimmage

2009-08-19T23:37:00.002-04:00

Saturday evening I headed over to the football practice fields to shoot a scrimmage. It was scheduled to begin at 5:15pm and I managed to convince my family members to give me to 6:00pm to shoot before I returned home to rejoin the rest of the collective to celebrate Julie's birthday.

During those 45 minutes I shot as many different players and angles as possible. In post processing I thought "wow" as I imported over 500 frames. It was a lot to process.

The event itself was decent because it was the first time the offensive and defensive teams got a chance to square up to each other. It was a lot more difficult to capture the action of the event because it was not sequenced - it was a scrimmage rather than drills. I looked at this as good practice for the upcoming football season.

Towards the end of the scrimmage I managed to catch a shot of a wide-receiver who snatched a catch and looked to run up the sideline. My focus was sharp and the lighting was just perfect to catch his eye as he stared down the defensive player. The shot in this blog post is one of my all time favorites simply because the receiver's eye is wide open.

The photo gallery of the first Maryland football scrimmage of the 2009 season can be view over here.

Football: Maryland Practice, Day 6

2009-08-19T23:25:00.002-04:00

This morning sparked the beginning of 2-a-days for the Terrapin football squad. I attended the morning practice at 9:15am and it was brutal.

Meteorologically the wind often drops to zero over night for a variety of reasons not covered in this blog. Morning can be a very difficult time to exercise because the humidity is very high and there isn't very much relief from wind. I'm sure the football program knows this and wants to take advantage of it as a way to improve the skills of the team.

So Saturday morning I showed up to capture the first 5 periods of the practice. Even though I've shot practices at 4pm during the previous week I think that this morning's practice was the hottest. The air was stagnant and almost tangible due to it's humidity. The water girls were the saviors delivering cooling to the players.

It is amazing to me that men with such large physiques, augmented with protective pads, helments, and jerseys, could function in the Saturday morning heat ... much less perform. I drew a heavy sweat just running up and down the field to capture photos. I was very humbled.

The practice went much like the rest of the practices this week in that it was heavy drills that lasted 5 minutes before the players moved on to a separate location to practice. I ran around looking to capture as many different lighting angles and perspectives as possible. My late afternoon shoots this week and my early morning shoot has given me a more intimate relationship with my meter. I appreciate the complexities of exposure under harsh lighting conditions. And I understand how the meter can guide you but cannot be used to tell you how to expose. It's been a very illuminating (pardon the pun) experience.

Football: Maryland Practice, Day 5

2009-08-19T22:56:00.003-04:00

Friday afternoon I drove over to the practice fields on campus and shot the Football team practicing at 4:25pm. The light was perfect because it was somewhat late in the day. I had several different angles I could work with and that opened up a lot of options for me.

I've been playing around with shooting into the light and today I used that technique a lot. However, I like to keep a balanced gallery so I took some traditional shots with the sun over my shoulders.

My equipment for today was my D3 with a 400mm f/2.8 lens. I've been shooting f/2.8 exclusively this week since Tuesday and I've been very happy with it's performance. In the past I've shot with a narrower aperture (f/4 or even f/5.6 at times). My motivation for shooting narrow was to increase sharpness. However, I've found that I can increase sharpness in post-processing to good enough level. The out-of-focus background is more apparent to the viewers of my photos than a slightly sharper subject. Lightroom is amazing.

My lead-in photo for this blog is Junior wide receiver Adrian Cannon (7). I have several shots of him reaching out to make a play and he's quite remarkable. Inevitably my best shots from the practice involve him in some way or another. The shot I featured for this blog post is an example of him reaching out to make a catch. My only regret is that a coaching assistant is camera right and ruined what could have been a perfect shot. Oh well...

Chris Blunck's slideshow from today's Maryland football practice is viewable on Flickr.

Football: Maryland Practice, Day 4

2009-08-13T23:45:00.003-04:00

The sun was much more favorable for this afternoon's practice. There were some storm clouds afoot but the weather wasn't overcast like yesterday. A lot of photographers like overcast because it diffuses the sunlight but I prefer the direct sun. I would rather try to work with it than against it and hope for an overcast sky.

I skipped lunch today and showed up at the practice field hungry and thirsty. Fortunately I had time to head home and change into shorts before the photo-shoot. I'm really happy I spent my 20 minute lunch break at home changing rather than showing up to the artificial turf in jeans and an office shirt - it was crazy hot today!

The usual crew of reporters were present today: a guy from the Washington Times (I don't know his name), Seth (from Inside Maryland Sports), Fabian (from MGN), Mark Clem (from Terrapin Times), and Keith (from Terrapin Times). We all chatted briefly outside the gate before practice began and we were permitted access to the artificial turf.

During our pre-practice chatter we remarked on the 2003 Hurricane Isabel practices. Mark Clem remarked on how the practice schedule was shifted around to accomodate the inclement weather and how a 4pm practice had been bumped up to 6am so the team could get in their drills before the bad weather arrived. The support staff for the football team arrived at 5am to prepare everything. When the players arrived at 6am the support staff amped the regular practice music over the public address system. Mark said that 10 UMPD cars arrived within a few minutes... I lol'ed.

He said the police told the support staff they had to turn the music down because it was a nuisance to all the students in the dorms across the road. The athletic support staff, with the fear of Coach Friedgen in them, refused and told the police they'd have to take the issue up with the coaching staff.

I thought that was hilarious.

I remember Hurricane Isabel (albeit not from a photographic or athletic standpoint - I was interested in the depression from a meteorological standpoint) so this was pretty funny to me.

For today's practice I decided to open to f/2.8 to see how things went. I'm sold on it. My shots came out sharp from Lightroom's post processing. I'll reconsider this during indoor sports (e.g basketball, wrestling, and volleyball). However, for now I'm sold on f/2.8 on outdoor sports.

Football: Maryland Practice, Day 3

2009-08-12T22:24:00.002-04:00

It's mid-week and I've shot more these past few days and I've shot over the past month. Sports are on the brink of returning and I can't wait.

In addition to football kicking into full-speed the Maryland Field Hockey team is standing up and will play it's first exhibition game this weekend. Unfortunately it's up in Boston so I won't be able to attend. We're trying to schedule a shoot with a few players and I have some ideas of some poses I'd like to set up.

The light was software this afternoon from some clouds low in the sky. There was also some drizzle towards the end of our 25 minute viewing and that made for some interesting shots. That reminds me that I should probably order my Aqua Tech soon in anticipation of the Fall sports and the inevitable rain storms I'll be out at on a cold Thursday evening.

I've been shooting through the long glass for the past 2 practices: 400mm. I've stuck at f/4 but I think tomorrow I'm going to open up to f/2.8 just to see if it makes any noticeable difference in the sharpness of my shots.

I also changed some of my publishing procedures and they have become significantly easier. I'm pushing directly out of Lightroom and up to Flickr. I can post a link to a slideshow from Flickr up on our website. This works a LOT easier than firing up my own custom-developed software. A LOT easier! I'm very excited...

Football: Maryland Practice, Day 2

2009-08-12T22:19:00.002-04:00

Practice Day 2 came around quickly and a 4:25pm start time gave me some great light to work with. The lower the light in the day the more pleasant it is to play with. You can get completely different feels from your subjects when you shoot them with light from different angles. For instance, you can go for a really traditional shot where the light is over your shoulder and the subject is looking directly in your direction. Or you can flip it 180 degrees and shoot directly into to sun and rim the player with light.

Both are great and all the angles in between create interesting effects as well. I like working when the light is low in the sky because there are so many options you can explore as a photographer.

Like yesterday we were limited to 25 minutes of shooting and observing so I had to move quickly to get as many shots as possible. I timed the practice perfectly and walked in just as they began their first set of drills.

Football: Maryland Practice, Day 1

2009-08-12T21:54:00.002-04:00

After heading home, showering, cooling off, downing some Tylenol, and offloading my posed and candid shots from the Media Day event I headed back to campus for a 7pm practice. The start time was pushed back due to the oppressive heat and I was quite happy to shift my afternoon activities around so I could hit football at 7pm rather than 4pm.

Practice was enjoyable to shoot because I hadn't seen the team in action since the April 18th scrimmage. We were only permitted to shoot and observe the opening 5 periods, each of which has a 5 minute duration. As a result you have to move around quickly and shoot as much footage as possible. I managed to grab the defensive line, QBs, offensive line, wide receivers, and some coaches.

Exposure was not difficult tonight because the sun was down below the clouds and was regular and consistent. ISO 1600, f/4, 1/500th or faster shutter worked just fine.

Post-processing went pretty quickly. I dropped 505 exposures down to 28 published photos.

Football: Maryland Media Day Candids

2009-08-12T21:49:00.002-04:00

After roughly an hour of shooting various football players in several different posed positions I put down my 14-24mm lens and readied my 70-200mm for some rapid fire candid shots. The coaching staff signaled the team to join the staff over in the stands for a team shot. It took several minutes for the players to line up based on size and squad. During that time I rushed around and ripped about 150-200 frames of the players hamming it up with one another.

After shooting carefully posed shots and balancing the ambient sunlight with my own artificial light it was kinda nice to go back to just pure ambient light. As usual the meter saved me as I moved all over the field in different positions relative to the sun. Sometimes I shot with the sun over my shoulder, sometimes I shot with with the sun right in front of me.

To my surprise the candids didn't come out completely under or over-exposed. I expected them to not come out at all because of how quickly I was moving around the field and throwing the shutter around.

Football: Maryland Media Day Poses

2009-08-12T21:35:00.003-04:00

As we closed out July the heat really turned up in the Washington DC area. The Sunday before Media Day at Maryland the forecasters predicted the hottest temperatures of the year: high of 98 with a heat index of 105. And there we were: scheduled to photograph the football team down in the bowl of Byrd Stadium on the hottest day of the year.

I've shot 2 other football media day events at the University of Maryland and in both instances the heat was overwhelming. Prior to this year's event I put together a game plan of my own:

Wear short-shorts (GAD), light colored shirt, and bring my photo-hat
Bring water bottles in a cooler filled with ice
Bring towels to put over my cameras so they don't reach 150 degrees in the heat
Arrive 30 minutes early to set up and test all of my equipment

I also gave considerable thought about how to pose some of the players. In my bag of tricks was an AB-800 strobe and 2 SB-800 speedlights. I brought an umbrella but didn't pull it out - instead I stuck with a 20 degree bee cover for my strobe. I gelled one speedlight with light blue and rigged it all together with Pocket Wizards. The last speedlight I left as white and I used it for supporting light in different poses.

It was interesting to work with the football player in posed scenarios. Some of them were uncomfortable around the strobe and speedlights while others took quite naturally to it.

I started off the exposure process by starting at f/16 and 1/125th second exposure at ISO 100. That was a little bright during full sun so I brought it down to 1/250th and narrowed to f/18. That looked pretty good. I then worked on the output power of my strobe.

I started at 1/8 and brought it up to 1/4, then 1/2, and eventually full power. The players varied in complexion and their distance to the strobe. Some players were comfortable posing within 3 feet of the strobe while others stood back a good 5-8 feet. Even though I'd reposition them or adjust my own position I found that they'd back up or shift. So I'd work with zoom or I'd dial up the strobe output power to compensate.

Unfortunately there was a lot of noise in the background from other photographers and teammates. There really isn't anything I can do to control that though.

I was very happy, although exhausted, by the end of the shoot. I wound up with 105 shots we can run in the magazine and they look pretty good. During the middle of the shoot I inadvertently smudged the front of my 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. The smudge mark is present on several of the shots and that disappoints me. But I learned a lot from the event. I'm looking forward to the next posed photoshoot of some athletes!

Women's Basketball: Washington Mystics vs Indiana Fever

2009-08-12T21:22:00.002-04:00

On Sunday I packed up my gear and took the metro down to Verizon Center to catch the Mystics take on the Indiana Fever. I was looking forward to seeing Terrapin greats Crystal Langhorne and Marissa Coleman on the hardwood. It's too bad I missed the game a few weeks ago where Kristi Toliver competed against her former teammates. That would've been cool to shoot.

Every time I walk out onto the floor of Verizon I'm humbled by the scoreboard. It's incredible. Sometimes I want to just stand there and stare at it in awe.

Settings for the evening were the usual indoor stadium white balance, ISO 2000, 1/500th shutter, and either f/2.8 or f/4 for aperture. I've gone back and forth on whether to shoot f/2.8 or f/4. The D3 gives me the high ISO so I can narrow down to f/4 and pick up some extra sharpness. However, Lightroom exports contain sharpening that does a pretty good job. So the question is: do you use the optics for sharpness or isolation? I don't know the answer to that...

For lenses I stuck with my standard basketball issue: 300mm and 70-200mm. From time to time I wish the 70-200mm could back out to 35mm so I could catch the players under the hoop a little easier. I guess the real question is: would I trade mm at the long end of 70-200mm in order to get wider? If Nikon sold a 35-150mm would I use it? I don't know...

It was good getting back onto the court and taking some shots of the team.

Women's Soccer: Washington Freedom vs St Louis Athletics

2009-07-22T23:39:00.002-04:00

The into-the-sun shots in my last Freedom shoot really jumped out at me and during this afternoon's game I wanted to take every advantage of the afternoon sunlight. I arrived with 10 minutes to go before first kick and I trimmed down my pack. This afternoon I only carried a 400mm and a 300mm with 2 Nikon D3 bodies. I also lotioned up with sunscreen before the game and chose a baby-blue t-shirt to wear for the game. I was determined to defeat the sunburn syndrome I've experienced so many times while shooting outdoor sports as a red-haired photographer.

I arrived and took my position at the side of the field that looked towards the sun. During the last game the Freedom shot towards this goal in the first half so I figured I was safe. However, as the teams took the field it looked like the Freedom would shoot towards the opposite side of the field. I was very surprised by this!

In all the sports I shoot the home team shoots towards one side in the first period and then things switch. That's just the way of things. However, this afternoon the Freedom shot towards the opposing team in the first half.

I stood my ground and shot into the light looking for my halo shots. However, it was tough because many of the Freedom players had their backs towards me. Additionally, I was positioned on the attackers left hand side of the field. Most of the attacks came up the right side, which meant I had all the dirty background of the home and visiting team. I moved over to the attacker's right hand side of the field and that opened up a LOT more shooting opportunities as the Athletics drove up the wing. However, when they inevitably crossed I didn't have the same quality halo like I had when shooting from attacker's left. It was a tradeoff - if I stayed on attacker's left I'd have great shots of crosses but they'd be few and far in between. If I stayed attacker's right I'd have so-so shots before the cross but I'd have a bunch of them. And there'd be action there as the Freedom tried to redirect, steal, etc...

I stuck in my position for 2/3 of the first period and then moved to the far end of the field so that I could shoot some Freedom attacks into the sunlight. I figured that I didn't want all of my shots from the game to be alternative-style halo shots. From the side of the field where the sun was over my shoulders I was able to grab some decent shots. I shifted around from attack-left to attack-right and caught a lot of action on the right hand side of the field. The light wasn't as favorable but it was decent.

Strobist says that flash mounted on the camera is dull because it fully-illuminates the subjects but it fails to show depth. A flash mounted off-camera can cast shadows based on a subject's features (brow, chin, nose, lips, etc) that gives more life to a photo. Shooting 30-45 degrees off of the sun can give some shadows on the players that bring them to life.

Shooting from the attacker-right corner for the close of the first half was beneficial because I caught favorable light that provided some depth to some of my photos. It was a good spot to be in.

However, in retrospect, all my favorite shots from the afternoon came from looking into the sun. It was very difficult to properly expose the players because often times the background reflected so much light that the cameras's built-in meter would report the image as over-exposed. Many of my shots turned out under-exposed because I did not anticipate how off the built-in meter could be.

During shoots I often review shots during dull periods of play. This works well inside buildings but it can be difficult outdoors when your eyes are adjusted for bright sunlight. During this "shoot-into-the-sun" experiment I tried to review photos but the LCD was simply too dark to give me a good idea of how well my shots came out. I attributed the darkness on the LCD to my eyes failing to adjust rather than to the shot being underexposed. I had to throw out many of my into-the-sun shots afterwards.

However, many of the shots came out very well and I was very pleased with them. The Freedom play 2 more home games this season. I can't make 1 of them due to a family commitment but I might hit the other one up. The difficulty is that it is played during the week and up in Gaithersburg. It'd be much easier if they played all home games in DC!

Women's Soccer: Washington Freedom vs Chicago Red Stars

2009-07-22T23:16:00.002-04:00

This afternoon I shuffled off the dust and headed down to RFK stadium for an afternoon tilt between the Washington Freedom and the Chicago Red Stars. Hats off to my Garmin Nuvi 760 for routing me around a 20 minute delay on the BW Parkway. I arrived with about 5 minutes to spare before opening introductions.

Since I have a little rust on the shutter I wasn't optimized for the shoot. I went to fail-safe defaults, which involves carrying as much equipment as I could possibly transport into the stadium and out onto the field. I traveled with 400mm, 300mm, 70-200mm, 24-70mm, and 14-70mm (all f/2.8) along with flash, battery pack, shooters chair, 2 bodies, and spare batteries. It's always better to be prepared...

I met up with Jose (the team photographer) and introduced myself. I chuckled as several photographers scrambled to get the pre-game team shot while standing on the sideline. The starting lineup was a good 30-40 feet away from them and most of them shot with lenses smaller than 50mm. Of course, if they aren't full frame that might work. Or they can crop down. I probably would've shot 70-200 and kept closer to 70-100 but... I also thought it was funny that they used flash at a distance of 40 feet when there was plenty of ambient light to work with.

As usual I surveyed the field for the best spot from a lighting perspective. That took me to the Freedom defensive side of the field. From that location I caught several decent shots of the defense but my witness to the events was limited. An attacker from the visiting team would face me while my home team had their back towards me. While there were times that my home team faced me (often while chasing down a loose ball) I realized that even though the light was favorable I had to move in order to catch the faces of the subjects I was sent to shoot.

2/3 the way through the first half I migrated to the opposite side of the field so that I could catch the Freedom shooting into the goal. Since I was shooting towards the sun I decided to go full-bore and positioned myself such that I shot directly into the sun. I was going for a halo effect on the players and it came out quite well.

Shooting into the sun is a challenge because the built-in meter in the camera tends to over-estimate the light entering the sensor. It'll give you indications that you are overexposed because a bunch of light reflects off the rim of the player in focus (or the background).

When photographing someone you want to draw focus to the subject and force the background into an after-thought. There are several ways you can accomplish this, the most common being using a wide aperture (f/2.8 or f/1.8 or even f/1.4). You can also throw light onto your subject using an artificial source (e.g. a strobe or speedlight) and meter for that exposure while throwing the background into darkness. A third alternative is to throw your background into overexposure while your subject is relatively dark but properly exposed. This works very well in stadiums...

If the sun is setting and bouncing hard off white concrete and white bleachers in the background you can meter for your relatively dark player and make them stand out in the overall picture. It's true that they are darker than the background but they are still isolated, and that's what you're going for.

This poses a real challenge though because the meter in the camera is going to spike in reaction to the abundance of ambient light reflecting off the background. If you properly exposed the background your subject in the foreground would be underexposed. What you're shooting for in this situation is an over-exposure of the background with a proper-exposure of the subject. The meter isn't set up to do that kind of thing...

One technique one can apply is to follow your subject from a dark area of the field into a light area of the field while adjusting shutter speed. Metering the subject while the background is in shadow will allow you to properly expose him/her when the background is in full-sun. Remember: the key is to properly expose the subject, not the background. Of course, this is a challenge. And I have by no means mastered it or even been able to reproduce it.

So during my first return trip to the field in a few weeks I decided to go with this approach when faced with the realization that my subjects would keep their faces looking away from my shutter.

The shot I chose for this post is variation of the approach I described above. In the shot I exposed for the player but the background was in the shadows relative to the sun. In the shot you'll notice the sweat beeds in mid-air as the Red-Stars player heads a shot out of the 18-yard box. This should give you an idea of some of the detail you can capture when you shoot into the light.

Men's Basketball: Elite Camp

2009-06-15T21:58:00.002-04:00

Saturday evening at 11:09pm a customer of mine emailed and asked if I could shoot a basketball camp at Comcast Center the following morning at 9:30am. A Sunday morning basketball camp on campus? I thought it had to be a mistake...

But sure enough it wasn't and the Terps were hosting a summer camp in Comcast Center for some high school players from around the region. To my surprise many of the varsity squad were playing, referee'ing, or coaching. Even the coaching staff was on hand (including Coach Williams) to observe the players and offer advice.

I focused on a handful of players and got the shots we needed. It was enjoyable being back inside Comcast and seeing the team scrimmage. On the way out I had to catch myself though - I instinctively went to bundle up before heading out the freight-door of Comcast. My Pavlonian instinct was that the outside temperature would be freezing due to the cold weather that is common during basketball season. It was quite a shell shock stepping out into a sunny summer mid-80s environment!

Women's Soccer: Washington Freedom vs Chicago Red Stars

2009-06-15T21:46:00.003-04:00

It's been awhile since I posted. But hopefully I'm back for awhile. My responsibilities increased a lot in the late Spring and I couldn't find the time to maintain my blog as religiously as in the past. But now that summer is here I believe I'll have a better shot at regularly updating my blog.

That being said...

On Saturday I shot a Freedom game down at RFK. My new Garmin Nuvi 760 routed me around a traffic jam on the BW Parkway and took me through Washington DC to avoid the delay. I made it to the venue with a few minutes to spare and headed to the field to assemble my gear.

Fortunately the weather played along with the game. Despite showers all week Saturday was sunny and spectacular. There was plenty of light on the field!

I shot the first half with the sun over my back and focused on the Freedom defense in the near side of the field. Towards the end of the first half I walked over to the far side of the field and shot into the sun. I like the halo effect you can get when you shoot directly into the sun. I got a nice shot of a player with some sweat coming off her brow after she headed a corner kick. It would've been better if I had caught her eyes. But oh well...

Earlier this week I reorganized my Lightroom Catalog. I have over 35k files in the original catalog Lightroom created when I first ran it less than a year ago. When I switched from Aperture to Lightroom I noticed a remarkable speedup. However, it's been running slower and slower as I cram more and more files into it. After doing some research I decided to split out my images into separate catalogs.

Of the 35k files in my catalog 30k are in the "Maryland Terrapins" folder. I split those off and made a separate catalog for the Terps. I then partitioned my remaining 5k files into a Personal catalog (family, friends, work, etc) and Projects catalog (night life, professional teams, etc). The key to this was asking Lightroom to avoid placing DNG copies in the catalog as well as to skip thumbnail creation/copying.

While my "Maryland Terrapins" catalog is still large and slow my other catalogs move along a lot faster. I've given some thought about how to carve up the "Maryland Terrapins" catalog but I haven't come to any conclusions yet. A logical choice would be to demarcate my Terrapins catalog based on sport or based on time frame (e.g. FY2008). However, the down side with that approach is that I couldn't easily cut across sports or produce a full dump of all my published Terrapin imagery. So it's still up in the air. I have some time until Fall semester sports begin in earnest so I'll probably come up with something between now and then.

Water Polo: Maryland vs George Washington

2009-04-03T22:01:00.002-04:00

On Wednesday evening I headed over to Eppley Natatorium to report on the meet between the Maryland Terrapins and the neighboring Colonials of George Washington. Maryland's had a tough ride this season and has only competed in 2 meets at home this year. The squad was on the road for the past 45 days and competed against top-25 teams on the west coast. With this evening being the final regular season home meet for the Terps I wanted to make sure I was there to capture it.

I went with a 400mm remote (using a PocketWizard MultiMax) trained on the Maryland goalie using manual focus. Unfortunately I didn't have the focus quite right in the first half and all my shots were off by about 3 feet of focus. It sounds like a lot but when you are a good 50 yards away the 3 feet is a pretty slim margin. None-the-less the shots were unusable. I corrected in the second half and was able to walk away with some publishable shots of Ashleigh Jobson in goal.

At halftime I had some fun and got a pretty cool shot of the team as they prepared to return to the field for the second half. I held my D3 out over the pool a good 2 feet while using a 14-24mm lens at 14mm. I was really happy with how it turned out. After breaking the huddle I headed over to where the referee dropped the ball and grabbed some shots of both the Colonials and the Terps swimming it down. They weren't as great as they could've been - the remote pole that Yuchen Nie uses in some of his huddle shots would've been really useful.

All in all the game was a lot of fun and I played around with the shutter speed a lot. The nice thing about water polo is that the swimmer's faces don't move around much compared to football, basketball, or lacrosse. The movement is in their arms as they fire a shot or make a pass. Thus you can slow the shutter to something like 1/250th and you'll get some nice blur on their arm that shows motion.

Go take a look at my article and photo gallery of the Maryland Terps water polo team facing the George Washington Colonials over on the DC Sports Box!

Women's Basketball: Maryland vs Louisville

2009-04-03T21:26:00.002-04:00

I headed to a python programming conference in Chicago over the weekend and that prevented me from attending the Maryland Sweet Sixteen game against Vanderbilt in Raleigh NC. With Coleman's historic 42 game in the record book I looked to the calendar to plan how I would make it down to Raleigh on Monday for the game against Louisville.

The NCAA has rules about credentials that stipulate a requirement where photographers have to follow the team on the road in order to be granted Final Four credentials. With a win on Monday evening the Terps would advance to St Louis and I really wanted an opportunity to shoot a Final Four. As a result I was compelled to travel to Raleigh on Monday afternoon to shoot the game against Louisville in order to preserve my credential to St Louis.

Julie headed south with me and we had a great time on the drive down. The weather was sunny, the traffic was light, and the GPS was a lot of fun as it told us exactly when we would arrive. We had a long chunk of time to talk and get reacquainted, which was really nice considering I was just in Chicago for several days a programming conference. We arrived in Raleigh roughly 1 1/2 hours before tipoff and headed to the RBC Center. My parents were also in town for the game so we surprised them at the entrance to the arena. They were really excited to see us and were filled with smiles. That alone made the trip worth it.

Navigating the RBC Center was a breeze. I found the media room and tucked away my bag and laptop before heading out to the floor. I took a few samples and was pretty surprised by the flatness of the light in the arena.

Photos shot with flash have a lot of pop. That is, the histogram of the colors is very spikey. This provides great differences in color and brightness in the photo. I'm not sure if how much a photo "pops" is a factor of narrow aperture or if it is determined by the type of light that illuminated the subject in the frame. After tonight I lean towards the type of light being the driving factor.

After a few test shots I noticed that my photos seemed really flat. The RBC Center was well lit and I could shoot reliably at ISO 1600, 1/500th, and f/3.5 but my photos didn't have the same "pop" as they do in Comcast. The colors just seemed flatter.

The shoot was a lot of fun because I was in a new arena and surrounded by excited fans rooting on their team. Unfortunately Maryland lost but that opened up some decent tear-filled shots. It was sad to see Kristi Toliver and Marissa Coleman lose so badly in their final game in a Terrapin uniform but at the same time you can't forget the accomplishments of the two players. National champions with over 2,000 points each is no small feat.

After the game in the press conference I bumped into a photographer/videographer from Inside Women's Basketball. I didn't catch her name but I believe it's Kelly Kline after checking out their website. I bumped into her back during the Maryland vs Mississippi State game earlier this year while she was shooting some SLR Video in the media room after the post-game press conference. SLR Video is an exciting new area of imagery that combines the action of video with the detail of still photography.

A typical 1080p signal has a resolution of 1920x1280 which is roughly 2.073MP . In contrast a 10MP FX D3 sensor captures at 4236x2832, which is over twice the detail of a TV camera. The D3X, with a 24.5MP FX sensor, shoots images at 6048x4032. If the D3X could shoot SLR video it would contain roughly 3x as much detail as a 1080p signal.

Additionally, the image processing engine on a D3 is a streamlined monster that brings out great color and dynamic range in a photo. The colors on a SLR camera are considerably richer than stills shot on a TV camera, even when you drop down to lower resolutions. Simply put, a 2MP shot on a D3 will outshine a still from a TV camera due to the image processing engine on the D3.

Some really bright people in industry have looked at the greatness of SLRs and asked: what if we leave the shutter open and simply shoot video straight off the sensor? With sports photography cameras already reaching 11fps it's not too unreasonable to think about striving for 18 more frames to get us up to TV speed. In fact it seems unavoidable. I predict that in 10 years SLRs will shoot 25-29fps. Mark my words.

During the Maryland game over the winter I didn't catch the name or the outlet of the videographer/photographer shooting SLR video in the media room but I was extremely interested in what she was doing. It was the first application of this exciting new area of imagery that I had witnessed. Naturally, when I bumped into her at the Louisville game I was very excited to hear about how the SLR Video interview came out.

Fortunately she gave me a flyer that directed me to their website. I found the video of Kristi Toliver after the game interviewed for Inside Women's Basketball and it looks really good. Go take a look!

Women's Basketball: Maryland vs Utah

2009-04-03T21:08:00.002-04:00

On Tuesday evening I returned to Comcast Center for my final home game of the 2008/2009 season for the Maryland Terrapins. The women's basketball team hosted the first and second rounds of the NCAAW Tournament and after Maryland's win over Dartmouth on Sunday I had the privilege to return Tuesday night for a tilt between the Lady Terps and the Utes from Utah.

I'm no stranger to Comcast and have learned a lot this season about shooting basketball from a variety of different angles. During my first year or two my excitement about being on the baseline and my inexperience proved too much from the standpoint of exploring the arena. This season the newness of shooting basketball has waned and I looked for different angles and spots to shoot from. By roaming around the various parts of the Comcast Center I learned a lot more about effective ways to shoot basketball.

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your perspective) this evening's game was packed with fans. The higher the attendance the more difficult it is to move around in the stands and shoot from different angles. I did my best but the limited space cornered me into 2 or 3 spots in the first half. I built on Sunday's experience and brought both my 300mm and my 400mm into the stands. I used the 300mm for play on the close end of the court and the 400mm for play on the opposite side. I was very pleased with how well it worked.

Post processing this evening was especially time consuming due to the large volume of photos I shot. With this being the last game I wanted to capture as many shots of KT and Coleman as I could as well as of the visiting Utes.

Women's Basketball: Maryland vs Dartmouth

2009-03-22T22:43:00.002-04:00

This afternoon I shot the Maryland's women's basketball game against Dartmouth. I've shot every home game for the Terps this season in Comcast and I'm very comfortable with the light and the environment.

Drawing on my great experience using the 400mm from the stands I decided to rely more heavily on the long glass for the second game of the afternoon. I remained in the stands for the entire first half and shot at 300mm and 400mm. It was partially by choice and partially by necessity. Amazingly all of the photo spots on the floor were occupied. I say "amazingly" because in the 2008 NCAAW Tournament there were very few photographers on the floor. I'm not sure what's different this year but every available spot was taken.

I wasn't upset though because my shots from the stands often come out on equal footing to my shots from the baseline. There's a lot more light up there and you get a lot better shots of players faces when you are up higher.

At halftime I retreated from the stands and made my way onto the court for a spot on the baseline in the second half. There was 1 spot that opened up on the Maryland baseline for the second half and I grabbed it. I stayed out on the court to hold my spot for fear of it being taken by another photographer!

I shot the opening minutes of the second half with my 300mm lens but I quickly switched to the 400mm with 15 minutes remaining. The transition to the 400mm was a bit difficult at first because it's such a powerful zoom but the shots came out really well. You definitely get more shots on the 300mm but the quality of the shots on the 400mm is simply amazing.

The only problem I had this afternoon came during post processing. Last night while cleaning one of my D3 camera bodies I noticed a compartment in the battery area that seemed to detach. I decided to explore it and I found a battery present. I believe it is the CMOS battery and sure enough when I post processed today all my photos were out of order. When I removed the latch it disconnected the CMOS battery and the date on the camera reverted to 1970. Oh well... Guess I learned my lesson there. :)

Women's Basketball: Utah vs Villanova

2009-03-22T22:34:00.003-04:00

On Sunday afternoon I photographed the Utah Utes battling Villanova in the opening round of the NCAAW Tournament. Comcast has been a great venue to photograph this season and I've learned a lot about shooting basketball this season. I pay a lot more attention to which center is going to tip and which hand they use to tip along with which direction each team will face in the first half. All of this input flows into the equation of where to sit so you have the best chance of catching a great shot.

I changed my approach slightly this afternoon by bringing my 400mm lens into the stands so I could better photograph the far end of the court. I typically shoot the better part of the first half from the stands and focus on Maryland's shooting on one end using a 300mm lens. That usually puts the other end of the court out of reach for the 300mm but today I decided to extend it by switching to the 400mm on the far side. The results were great!

The only problem I had was from crowd density. There were enough people in Comcast this afternoon that I had to take a suboptimal spot in the stands where I wouldn't disturb anybody. My position behind a handrail blocked about 1/3 of the far side of the court. I suppose it wasn't too bad though - the area of the court the handrail blocked was close to the Maryland bench and there would've been a lot of noise from the coaches standing up and directing the defense.

I got some great shots of Utah shooting in the paint in the first half and moved down to the floor at halftime. Rather than offloading I thumbed through my photos on the camera and weeded out the out of focus, cluttered, or boring shots. At the end of halftime I had it down to roughly 100 photos.

During the second half I shot entirely from the baseline and got some great shots of the defense. It's incredible how much difference there is in the quality of the light on a 300mm prime lens vs a 70-200mm lens. I use the same body, same exposure settings, same AF strategy, and same white balance but my 300mm shots come out looking incredible while my 70-200mm shots come out lacking. I wish I knew how to make my 70-200mm shots look like my 300mm shots. Maybe an 85mm prime would look better...

After the game I fired off a quick lead-in photo while I started post processing. I didn't get very far before I had to head back down to the court for the Maryland game vs Dartmouth.

Baseball: Maryland Terrapins vs Boston College

2009-03-22T22:10:00.002-04:00

After 10 days off I got back behind the lens and shot a baseball game at Shipley field between the Maryland Terrapins and Boston College.

The game was televised and there were cameras on the first and third base lines as well as behind home plate and in center field. I seem to recall a handful of games that were recorded last year but I don't remember 4 cameras on the days when the games were captured.

I took advantage of the TV behind home plate and climbed up onto the roof of Shipley to capture a wide angle shot of the field and the stadium. Unfortunately there weren't very many fans in attendance and the stadium looks pretty empty. None-the-less it was a fun shot to take, even though the camera man barked at me to "walk lighter". I don't know if that is physically possible. Walk "software" maybe, but "lighter"? Last time I checked I didn't have control over gravity or could quickly manipulate my body mass.

I also shot from a variety of angles including on the ground at first base. I was going for a shot where I could see completely under the runner as he slid back into first. I couldn't get quite low enough though and my exposure was too dark. I'm going to give it another shot when it is sunnier.

Julie wrote up an article on the Maryland vs Boston College baseball series and I posted my photos up on the DC Sports Box.

Gymnastics: Maryland Terrapins vs Pittsburgh

2009-03-22T22:03:00.002-04:00

Gymnastics has been an interesting sport to photograph. It is played in the Comcast Pavilion where the lighting is extremely difficult to work with. On the other hand, the gymnasts work to perfect their routines over the course of the year. That makes them somewhat predictable. Additionally, they are offered a 3 minute "touch" period where they can warm up and practice their key movements. Observing their practice period before their actual exercise helps you as a photographer anticipate what direction they will face and how they will perform.

I've gotten steadily better in photographing gymnastics this season and this evening's match was my final competition for the season. I anticipated the routines pretty well and was able to prepare for where the gymnasts would be when they finished a routine. I also worked with the available light a LOT this evening and slowed down to 1/320th at times when there wasn't very much motion.

The colors in my photos from this evening were remarkably better than before. I'm not sure how that happened or if there is any way I can reproduce it. It might've been the added sensitivity and slower shutter speeds that produced more accurate colors. Or it might've been leprechauns - I don't know. I was just happy that in post processing the colors didn't come out completely green and yellow like they normally do in Comcast Pavilion.

Julie attended the meet and wrote up an excellent article for the DC Sports Box. My photos are also included. Click over to the DC Sports Box to read about Maryland gymnastics win over Pittsburgh and view my pictures and photos.

Football: Scout Day

2009-03-22T21:58:00.002-04:00

On Wednesday afternoon I was sent over to the practice fields to photograph some Maryland wide receivers running routes for scouts from the NFL. I haven't shot this event before so I didn't know what to expect. I packed my standard bag and towed it out to the practice fields.

I was surprised to see so many members of the media present. A couple of people had 400mm lenses and I wished that I had brought mine. Fortunately I keep my 300mm in my standard bag and I was able to make do.

I took all of my shots from as low on the ground as possible so that I could really make the football players stand out. All of the other media at the event stood upright with monopods shooting through 70-200mm lenses. I was happy to be on the ground a few inches off the artificial turf and my photos came our really well. Of course not as well as a 400mm lens but...

Post processing went very quickly for this event because I only had a handful of photos. A quick publish to the web and I was back at work on the keyboard an hour or so later...

Softball: Maryland Terrapins vs Gardner Webb

2009-03-22T21:44:00.003-04:00

After returning home from a trip to the University of Virginia I headed over to Robert E Taylor Stadium the following afternoon for a softball game between Maryland and the visiting Gardner Webb crew. Maryland hosted a tournament this weekend and all told I believe there were 5 or 6 games played over the course of 3 days. It was quite a lot of softball from what I hear.

Dave and I did some synchronized shooting for part of the game. We used PocketWizards to synchronize our cameras and I brought handheld radios so that we could communicate. During baseball my brother and I relied on some primitive hand gestures to signal each other and agree on the subjects to track. I thought that handhelds would work better. It's a toss-up...

The handhelds emit an awkward blip noise when you finish talking. The noise is very disruptive and obnoxious. I'm sure that fans around us wouldn't appreciate the distraction and I'm doubly sure the players and coaches wouldn't take kindly to it. It was also difficult to grab Dave's attention over the radio because he often tucked it into his camera belt. Visual signals were much more effective.

If we had earbuds, vox, and microphones it would probably work much better. But if we jumped to those accessories we'd have the wires that we'd have to deal with. After a post-mortem after the game we both came to the conclusion that hand signals were probably the best bet.

We also talked about how best to manage the media produced by synchronized shooting. Regularly when 2 people photograph a game both sift through their photos and send 12-13 individual shots to whomever is designated as the "gallery publisher". The gallery publisher integrates the other person's 12-13 shots and then uploads the gallery to the site.

However, when you are synchronized you have to consider who is going to do the photo merge of the synchronized shots. Additionally, how are you going to handle that in post-production if the shots are on the same media as the rest of the other shooter's photos? Despite having our timing synchronized our focus isn't always sharp, the shot isn't always interesting, and the exposure isn't always right. In post production you have to go through the 15 or so synchronized "setups" and then pick 1 or 2 that actually worked out. Doing so requires access to the photosets from both photographers.

We're thinking that before we do any additional synchronization we're going to assign mashup responsibilities with merging and publishing. Whoever is the person that's going to merge will give a card to the secondary shooter to be used whenever we do synchronized shooting. After the game the second shooter can take their own card home and return the synchronized card to the merger for mashup in PhotoShop.

The game this afternoon taught us a lot of things and I believe that after another few games we'll have a nice process down that will offer us some incredible shots!

You can't find more photos of Maryland softball's win over Gardner Webb on the DC Sports Box.

Men's Basketball: Maryland vs Virginia

2009-03-08T01:28:00.002-05:00

On Saturday Julie and I traveled to the campus of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville to report on the final men's basketball game of the 2008-2009 season for the Maryland Terrapins. Julie did an extensive pre-season review of men's basketballand also wrote up a couple of gymnastics events for the DC Sports Box. She's also reported on a couple of wrestling matches. She's also gotten involved with baseball recently. Her recent involvement with the DC Sports Box is really invigorating!

After working through some last-minute credential request issues we were both approved to attend the game. Julie wrote for the DC Sports Box while I shot for Inside the Shell. The travel time from College Park to Charlottesville VA is quite reasonable (2 hours) and the mileage is decent (126 miles from house to arena). John Paul Jones Arena is quite remarkable and the lighting is superb! I was able to shoot ISO 1600 (and even 1250 sometimes!) at 1/500th at f/3.5! Wow!

Although John Paul Jones Arena only seats 11,050 the venue is really nice. The brickwork, lighting, and scoreboard are top-notch. Several people I work with remarked on the scoreboard by saying "it looks like a little Verizon Center." The University of Virginia pulled out all the stops in building the John Paul Jones Arena and the experience really shows it.

It took about 8 minutes before the fog of the opening player introductions cleared and I could get a clean shot. However, once that fog cleaned up I was really happy with my exposures. ISO1600 through a 300mm at f/3.5 and 1/500th and I was properly exposed. Everything was great except for the venue officials.

The backstage Arena officials were polite and courteous while helping me find my way to the media room. However, the floor officials were typical - arrogant, condescending, and closed minded. I don't want to go into the details but I'll just say that I felt really unwelcome at the event, and that was surprising considering Virginia is 9-17 this season, the students are on Spring Break, and a lot of paid ticket holders were missing this evening.

However, the light was spectacular! ISO1600 at 1/500 at f/3.5 and I was sufficiently exposed! I needed a touch of lightening in post production but it was nothing like Comcast. In Comcast Center I'm at ISO2500 or 2500 at f/3.2 at 1/500th. It was very refreshing!

On the quick drive home both Julie and I got a chance to write our articles and post process our photos for publication. Driving up route 29 from the campus is dreadful and the timings of the lights are awful, but once you escape the greater Charlottesville area the drive is quite nice. I'm looking forward to next Fall's football game with the Wahoos and hopefully Julie will join me!

Men's Basketball: Maryland vs Wake Forest

2009-03-08T00:54:00.002-05:00

There was much anticipation of the Maryland final home game matchup against the No. 10 ranked Wake Forest Demon Deacons. With a win over No. 2 ranked Carolina and a narrow loss to Duke it seemed like the Terps finally got their feet under them and a home matchup against a top-10 team was a great opportunity to secure their inclusion into the NCAA Tournament.

Unfortunately the Deacons had other plans.

Maryland honored Dave Neal before the game this evening by bringing his family out to the court and presenting the lone senior with his jersey behind glass. Dave Neal has had a tough 4 years while playing injured and behind the likes of Bombale Osbey and James Gist. However, Neal has been a cornerstone for the Terps this year both symbolicly and physically on the court. He's the only man the Terps can put in the paint this year to protect against the opposing team on defense. Braxton Dupree hasn't filled that role this year and Neal has been the lone forward out to protect the basket.

I was a little late to the game but I knew that the senior ceremonies would be quick. I readied my SB-8A power pack and 24-70mm lens before heading out to the court. I got some decent shots before game, however, the ceremony wasn't too momentous. As a result the photos were pretty bland and I don't think we even decided to run them as part of our gallery on Inside the Shell.

Like the Boston College women's game I approach Greg Fiume and asked for permission to shoot the player intros and team huddle for the final home game. Greg agreed and I took my position close to the perimeter during the player intros. I put my camera to the ground while I shot at roughly 20mm to capture the bench while the spotlight shone down on them.

Afterwards I was really happy with how the photos came out. I tried to stay as close to the out-of-bounds line as possible so that I didn't interfere with the spotlights or TV and that worked out pretty well.

As usual I shot most of the first half from up the students section. To my surprise Coach Gary Williams played Braxton Dupree for several minutes and during that time I captured a dunk by the sophomore. Braxton began the season as a young-and-hopeful starter but was unfortunately relegated to bench warmer and didn't serve playing time in several in-conference games. His unexpected re-appearance was very interesting from a domain perspective and his dunk made for a great photographic capture. Unfortunately I think that the impact of my capture of his dunk was lost because he only played a couple of minutes and the Terps lost the game. However, had the Terps won and had Braxton played more minutes the photo might've been a headliner. Funny how that happens ... same photo but just different circumstances.

Baseball: Maryland Terrapins vs Quinnipiac

2009-03-08T00:37:00.003-05:00

Olympic Sports at Maryland is starting up for the Spring and that introduces some welcome changes to the schedule. Olympic sports are typically outdoors and can be a lot of fun.

This Saturday marked our first involvement with Spring Olympic Sports and both Julie and I attended the Maryland vs Quinnipiac baseball game played at Shipley Field at Maryland. Julie has started writing for the DC Sports Box and has covered a couple of wrestling matches, men's basketball games, and gymnastics meets. She has a background in English and Journalism and her experience is relevant to our growing organization. It's also been nice to have her at the same games I attend because we're able to spend more time together.

Baseball is a difficult sport to cover because the teams typically play 3 games in a series and each game takes at least 3 hours. Some games have gone as long as 5 hours. When you add it all up you're looking at a least 9 hours of gametime for a series compared to 40 minutes of gametime for a basketball game. It's a huge difference!

This afternoon I shot the Maryland vs Quinnipiac game while Julie wrote. Andrew has shot a couple of women's lacrosse games this year for Maryland and he arrived at the baseball game to return some of my equipment. I brought 2 PocketWizard MultiMax units for an experiment I cooked up a week or so ago...

The idea was the use multiple photographers to capture parts of a game while synchronized using Pocket Wizards. Two different photographers from different vantage points communicate with one another and agree on a focusing pattern while one photographer controls when the shutter is released. As long as the cameras have their times synchronized you can very easily line up the timestamps on the resulting files and build a nice composite picture of an event that occurred using different perspectives.

With Andrew's help I took a stab at this approach during the Maryland vs Quinnipiac game. We started out with Andrew on the first base line on a 400mm lens shooting the pitcher while I sat behind plate on a 300mm on the pitcher. The problem we had was that the 400mm was too strong from the first baseline. It was difficult to relay that information to each other because we didn't have radio contact.

The next approach we tried was for me to be on the first baseline following the ball while Andrew was high above 3rd base following the ball. We got some decent shots with this approach. The tightest shot we got was a combination where I was low and got a Maryland batter diving back to first while Andrew caught the pitcher making the throw back to first. It really came out well in post production!

Having personal radios would've helped a lot because it would've meant we didn't have to run around the ballpark to communicate. I plan on picking up some batteries to run the radios we use for skiing so that the next time I head to a multi-photographer event I can use radio to communicate.

I also headed way over to the football practice fields so that I could climb the observation deck and shoot through the 400mm from a great distance from the outfield. the angle was definitely unique and I wish I had a 600mm or 800mm lens to use from that position. It's close off the pitcher to catcher line but down the second base to third base alley so it's a great spot for some long shots. I'd love to marry it up with some PocketWizard multi-angle shots but I need to think about how to compliment the shot well.

While I was perched up there I was fortunate enough to capture a steal to second base (including a slide) as well as a batter rounding third heading for home. It's a great spot but it's a huge distance from the ballfield.

Julie's article, along with my photos, of Maryland's sweep of Quinnipiac in baseball at Shipley Field can be viewed up on the DC Sports Box.

Women's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs Boston College

2009-03-08T00:09:00.002-05:00

Senior nights are always special moments for student athletes. However, no two seniors can rack up as many accolades as Marissa Coleman and Kristi Toliver from the women's basketball team.

From sinking a 3 pointer in Maryland's NCAA Championship berth to Marissa Coleman's 2000 point achievement it's hard to question if two other players had a bigger impact on the Maryland program than these two. Both Coleman and Toliver have left large shoes to fill for juniors and sophomores anxious to expand their impact.

This evening the Terps honored the memory of these two players with a pre and post game celebration where their jerseys were hung from the rafters in a sign of respect. The two took it all in stride and exhibited their usual care-free demeanor off the court. When tipoff came the two where all business.

Coleman and Toliver lit it up and combined for the first 30 points of the Terps. Boston College struggled and trailed behind while the duo bombarded the Eagles with beyond-the-arc shooting. The two were stoic in their performance.

Prior to the game I received special permission from team photographer Greg Fiume to shoot the starting lineup for the Terps. The player introduction of the starting lineup is one of those "protected class" scenarios where precedent dictates you want to receive permission from the team photographer before approaching the bench. This year I've stayed away from the starting lineup and introductions but with this being the last game I wanted the chance to catch the two iconic starters (Coleman and Toliver) in their final home-game regular-season march-out to the floor. Fortunately Greg obliged and I took my position.

The shots from the player intros were a lot of fun. I love sharp light in situations like starting lineups because you can really accentuate the color differences in the frame. You can max out the contrast to really draw the players into a spectacular position. A completely black background helps accentuate the players and draw the viewers focus to their position in your frame.

The game itself was a lot of fun to shoot. I shot all the women's and men's basketball games this season for Inside the Shell magazine and that's roughly 35 games total in a 4 month period. At an average of 10 games per month and 4 weeks per month that's 2.5 or 3 games per week. In that timeframe it's easy to get really locked in on the behaviors of basketball players. I can feel myself improving heading into March and I'm kind of sad that basketball is coming to a close.

I got some great shots of Marissa Coleman this evening as well as DeMauria Liles. Coleman has been such a joy to shoot these past few years because she's a very versatile player and that allows me to capture her in a variety of different positions. I can grab her on the long lens racing up the backcourt after a turnover, or I can snag her at 100mm on the perimeter shooting the 3-ball. I can also capture her under the basket fighting for a rebound, or I can shoot her on the dribble-penetration in the paint. I liken her to Greivis Vasquez in that regard as a highly versatile player that you can't shoe-horn into a shooting guard, point guard, power-forward, or defense player. She's been a lot of fun to shoot and I'll miss her presence on the Terrapin bench.

After the game Maryland Head Coach Brenda Frese made many kind remarks about Kristi Toliver and Marissa Coleman. I prepared for this by readying my SB-8A battery pack from Nikon along with my 24-70mm lens. The SB-8A is a $150 alternative to the $400 Quantum Lithium Ion pack. The SB-8A offers < 2 second recycle time and it runs on 6 AA batteries (optionally rechargeable). The Quantum is a rechargeable pack that offers a faster recycle time but comes at roughly 3 times the cost. I like the Quantum's $0 variable cost in comparison to the recurring cost of AA batteries for the SB-8A but at the same time I realize that I rarely shoot flash. A pack of 36 AA batteries costs $12 at home depot. That's 6 full recharges on an SB-8A. The $250 difference in price represents 20 purchases of those batteries, or roughly 120 recharges. Since I shoot flash about once a month that's roughly 10 years before I could recover the cost of a Quantum. It's simply not worth it for me...

Before the game ended I grabbed my SB-8A and connected it into my SB-800 on my hotshoe. The 5 AA batteries just power the circuitry at that point while my SB-8A powers the flash and I went pretty wild shooting the two seniors at midcourt. While most went back to ambient light or waited for 6-9 seconds for a recharge I was able to fire away and get some good moments of the two players looking at each other or at the coach.

I also prepared myself for the over-the-shoulder shot looking from down low behind the players while their jersey was lifted to the rafters. I anticipated this shot during a former women's game but was beaten out for it by another sports photographer. I wanted to make sure I got the Coleman/Toliver shot this evening.

Men's Basketball: Maryland vs Duke

2009-03-07T23:55:00.002-05:00

Nothing amps up the Maryland faithful like a match between the Terps and the Blue Devils.

On Wednesday evening the Terps entertained the Blue Devils at Comcast. Coming off a North Carolina victory on Saturday this game had a lot of hype heading into it. A win over the No. 2 ranked team in the country meant the Terps could take down a great team and a win over Duke would help Maryland re-establish itself in the hunt for an NCAA post-season ticket.

I had a lot going into this game tonight from a photographic standpoint. As a photographer your natural instinct draws you to the privileged spot of the baseline. However, experience begs to differ. Shooting from the stands gives you higher vantage points, better light, and better composition because your player is framed by spectators rather than vacant boring ceilings with sound dampeners and sharp lights.

I hesitated to gain elevation in my shooting perspectives the last 2 years although I did experiment with my 400mm from time to time. I visited the upper levels of Comcast and noticed that I could shoot at ISO 1250 at 1/500th second at f/2.8 without problems and have plenty of light on my subjects. However, the perspective isn't always great.

If I had to sum up what I learned this season it would be: shoot from the stands. And do it often. My shooting and dribble-penetration shots of Maryland while sitting in the stands are some of my favorites from the season because the faces are so visible! When you're on the baseline you get a ton of leg, torso, and chin shots but faces are hard to come by when a player goes for a dunk. Often times all you can get is a downward facing glance after the ball has been dunked. But, if you're at eye level with the basket you can get a lot more face. And as the old saying goes, if you can't see the eyes I'm not interested...

It was difficult to balance my enthusiasm for the Maryland vs Duke game with my knowledge that shooting from the stands in the first half was the right thing to do. However, I'm an engineer and I know that doing the right thing rather than the emotional thing leads everyone to better pastures. As a result I remained in the stands and varied my position several times in the first half of the ball game.

Towards the end of the half I retreated down to the baseline and captured some shots. It's difficult though going from shooting in the stands down to the baseline position because the perspective is so much lower. Shooting all the way across the court on the 300mm is so much easier than looking through the 70-200mm trying to grab a guard driving to the net.

In the end the Terps couldn't hold it together and 2 3-pointers by Duke sealed Maryland's fate. I give the team a lot of credit though for taking a great Blue Devil team to the final 3 minutes of play. After losing to Morgan State a lot of people questioned if the Terps could hang tough in tight competition. The answer is still up in the air, but the fact that they took the Blue Devils to within 3 points with 2 minutes to go is impressive.

Women's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs Duke

2009-03-07T23:21:00.002-05:00

After wrestling I headed down to the media room and prepared for the women's basketball game between the Terps and Duke.

I had a special interest in this game after Duke's performance in the 2008 NCAA Tournament. Up by 24 with under 40 seconds to play Duke Head Coach Joanne P McCallie, still less than a year old on the Duke Coaching Staff, encouraged her squad to continue the full court press, drawing the ire of the mixed Maryland and Murray State crowd. In the post-game press conference she was unaware of the cause of the booing that ensued. After having it explained to her by a reporter she opined on the Maryland crowd "They're just great coaches aren't they. ... Clever. That must be the turtle IQ."

The put-down was noticed by others in the media and Maryland Head Coach Brenda Frese tangentially remarked on it during her Maryland Madness address and again at a subsequent game at Comcast where she encouraged Maryland faithful to "show Duke Maryland's IQ." I don't think many people connected the reference but it struck a cord with me on a personal level. Pummeling an opponent with your starting lineup with a 24 point lead with 40 seconds remaining is pretty low, but doing it with a full-court press is poor judgment from a coaching standpoint. Little is learned or gained from leadership like that.

As media you are supposed to maintain a certain predisposed disposition to the events you witness while on the job but it's impossible to be completely impartial. Experience lends itself to biasness no matter how open minded you are. And with Coach McCallie's comments fresh in mind from less than 12 months ago I was extremely open to a solid Maryland throttling of the Blue Devils. And if Maryland happened to lead by 24 with 40 seconds remaining and Coach Frese decided to put all 5 starters in play and apply full court pressure that might just be poetic justice...

Truth be told Maryland throttled the Blue Devils and soundly sent them back to Durham 77-59 losers in the contest. Interestingly enough as the game came down to the final minutes Maryland protected an 18 point advantage over the Blue Devils. Coach Frese sub'ed out starters Demauria Liles with 1:35 remaining, Marissa Coleman with 1:42 remaining, Kristi Toliver with 1:42 remaining, and Lynetta Kizer with 2:24 remaining. As the final seconds ticked off the clock and the 77-59 (18 point) upset of No. 7 ranked Duke by No 9 ranked Maryland went into the record books the lone starter on the hardwood was Marah Strickland. There was no full-court press by all 5 starting Terrapins. There wasn't any running-up of the score. It was undeniably 180 degrees in the opposite direction that Duke Head Coach Joanne McCallie led her squad last year in her NCAA Tournament win.

I think that's quite interesting.

This game was also special from a photographic standpoint. A few weeks ago I picked up a Manfrotto 2929 swing arm in addition to a super-clamp. I've been purchasing used Pocket Wizard MultiMax units off of the Buy/Sell forums at FredMiranda.com and the opportunity to place a remote camera at events has opened my mind to new angles I could use to capture different perspectives of an event. I've gotten Greg's permission to attach my camera to the stantion on the hoop support structure. That gives me a much higher perspective on the players.

A few games ago I used my 14-24mm lens because I wanted to capture as much of the action as possible. After reviewing the photos I realized that a lot of the space in the paint under the net is behind the backboard and there isn't much action there. As a result I changed my approach for this game and I used a 24-70mm lens zoomed in around 35mm. I practiced my framing with the help of Emery Wallace from the Terps prior to the game.

I set my f/stop to f/5.6 so that I could have a wide depth of field when shooting. When you're up high there is a lot more light you can capture reflecting off the players and as a result an ISO of 2500 at f/5.6 with 1/500th was a good enough exposure setting. It was slightly dark but the colors were properly captured and I could increase the exposure a stop or two in post-production.

The shots from the stantion were incredible! I would love the chance to use that angle for a men's game because the presence in the paint is so significant. However, with 2 bodies I don't want to sacrifice myself and go down to a single body while on the baseline. Fortunately for me Al lent me his D3 tonight so I had 3 bodies to work with. However, if I wanted to do this on a more regular basis I'd have to invest in a third body. That might not be a problem though with Julie's growing interest in sports writing and photography.

All in all the game was an exciting one and I'm glad the Terps gave the Blue Devils a throttle. I'm sure they'll meet again this season in the ACC Tournament or in the NCAA playoffs.

Wrestling: Maryland Terrapins vs Virginia

2009-03-07T23:00:00.002-05:00

After an awe-inspiring win by the men's basketball team over the No. 3 ranked Tar Heels of North Carolina on Saturday night I headed back to Comcast on Sunday for a wrestling dual between the Terps and the Cavaliers of Virginia. It was senior day for the Terps and I snapped a few shots of the lone graduate of the class.

I shot the dual through a combination of a 300mm lens on one body and a 70-200mm lens on the other. In the past I've only used the 70-200mm lens for wrestling but having the reach of the 300mm was really beneficial this afternoon. I could get in really tight on the wrestlers faces and get some great shots of the competitors.

Unfortunately I was short on memory cards. The past few days were really busy for me and I loaned out a pair of cards to Andrew to use for women's lacrosse. I also neglected to re-pack my Think Tank CF card carrier and as a result when I flipped it open today all I saw were 3 2GB cards. Those get chewed up really quickly when shooting 9FPS on 2 bodies where each photo is roughly 6MB!

When heading out to the mat I only loaded a single 2GB card into both bodies. I planned on being very judicious with my shots but wrestling is a fast sport at times and the down-time between duals is tiny. I kept my eye on the "remaining" count on my first body (with the 70-200mm) while I continued to rely heavily on the 300mm lens. When I reached 20 shots remaining at the end of a dual I raced over to my bag to grab the last 2GB card in my stash. I popped it in and readied myself for the next dual.

It was a good thing I grabbed the card because the next contest was quite memorable. The Terrapin wrestler trailed through the entire match but gained ground in the 3rd period by challenging the Virginia wrestler. As time elapsed Maryland closed to a single point and as time ran off the clock Maryland scored a 2 point take-down. The referee signaled Maryland as the victor but the UVA coach challenged. He had a great spot to observe the time and the referee whereas the referee had his back to the clock as he watched the two competitors.

The UVA Head Coach ran around the mat, raced over to the scorer's table, and even approached the Maryland bench as all the fans in attendance came to their feet to support either team. The other 2 photographer sitting at the mat started ripping frames (as did I) while the coach exploded in emotion. Had I not grabbed my card I would've been out of space and forced to go to the 300mm lens. A 300mm would've been too tight for that type of display and would've failed to capture the moment.

Being short on memory cards today reinforced the need to be prepared. I've been sharing my equipment lately and the need for additional CF media has become more apparent. I plan on ordering some in the next week or so.

Julie wrote up an excellent article and I posted my photos on Maryland's win over Virginia at the DC Sports Box.

Men's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs North Carolina

2009-03-01T00:11:00.002-05:00

Wow.

There's nothing else I can do to describe the game tonight between the Maryland Terrapins and the Tar Heels of North Carolina. Maryland was inspiring, collected, committed, and stoic in their performance.

Being in Comcast for the wrestling dual against George Mason I was plenty technically prepared for the contest of the afternoon between the unranked Terps and the No. 3 ranked Heels. Before the game I had plenty of time to get my laptop ready to receive photos and make my way out to the visiting team baseline for spot.

Several games ago a couple of photographers assigned to the home baseline grabbed my spot and were unsympathetic to my dislocation from my assigned spot on the visiting baseline. Accordingly I've been diligent in arriving early to retain my spot on the visiting baseline so that I don't get muscled out.

Although the spots are assigned by Media Relations several photographers and TV people fail to appear for an event. This leaves spots open. The regulars know this happens and they grab their seats. Sometimes in the seat-grab my seat gets sat in even though I'm there for every home game in Comcast.

For a game as big as the Terps vs North Carolina I wanted to make sure I was there with plenty of time. Fortunately I was and nobody grabbed my spot.

I shot the opening minutes from the baseline but quickly retreated to the student sections to grab some shots from higher up. This season I've really opened my eyes to the quality of the shots you can grab from the stands. The baseline shots are the standard ones you see in the paper but the ones from the stands can be really unique and inspiring. As a player drives to the basket your view from the stands of their face and upper body is a LOT better than your angle on the baseline and at knee level. A lot of the shots I see in the Baltimore Sun and the Washington Post come from stadium perspectives rather than baseline.

As the game headed late into the second half the momentum favored the Terps. While on the home side baseline (I switched at half time) I started thinking about the post-game celebration. I noticed the students congregating near the aisles and I anticipated they would rush the floor. At a free throw with 11 seconds remaining I raced back to the media room to replace my 300mm lens with my 14-24mm lens so that I could capture the breadth of the excitement.

As things tend to happen in basketball games the following 11 seconds consisted of a lot of fouls and free throws. This gave me some time to collect my thoughts and prepare for the ground-swell. As usual I looked to the more experienced photographers on the baseline to see what they were doing. All were perched up on their knees with their spare body safely shouldered on a strap. Most of the time us baseline photos put down our second body on our lap while we shoot with our other body. The fact that they had their second body strapped to their shoulder they were on their knees implied they were ready to run at the conclusion of the game.

I readied myself similarly. I shouldered my 70-200mm while I held my 14-24mm in my right hand. I was torn about this because I wanted to get the inevitable ball-throwing up in the air as the time elapsed. But I figured that getting to the center of the team before the ground swell was more important.

I followed the TerpVision lead and bolted towards midcourt as time elapsed.

I was overwhelmed by the number of students on the court and I had a difficult time finding the players. I gave favoritism towards the TV and other photographers and let them cross in front of me. In retrospect I probably shouldn't have done that.

I held my 14-24mm lens up high and shot the crowd rush for several minutes. It was difficult to hold my D3 body and the 14-24mm lens above my head by I did it. As the crowd died down I shifted my focus towards the macro and looked for a way to capture a wide shot of the students down on the hardwood.

I grabbed a quick set of photos of Gary Williams talking with Johnny Holiday using my 70-200 before I ducked between the CSC and Maryland Police to head towards the home team basket. The AP photographer and the Washington Post fella were climbed up on top shooting the crowd. The AP photographer shot 70-200, which seemed odd to me, but the WP photographer was going wide.

Since I've climbed up on the basket in the past to rig up my remotes I was experienced and comfortable one-legging it up there. I hustled up there, grabbed a support arm, and hung off from the stantion shooting the crowd. I got intimately close to the AP photographer and was no more than 2 inches from her ear and shoulder while shooting wide. I don't think she minded though - she knew why I was up there.

After snapping a bunch of frames from the basket I raced up into the stands to get a higher vantage point for the photo. At this point I was sweating a good deal from being so close to the players and the students in addition to running around and jumping up on the basket. Climbing a bunch of steps added to the heat and fatigue.

I apologized to about 20 people while jumping up the steps and seats before finding a couple of spots to shoot from. I shot a variety of f-stops to get different exposures while adjusting zoom. I wanted to capture as much as possible.

It took me awhile to get back down to the media room to offload my photos but it was worth it. The sweat and the rushing around were good learning experiences and were exciting to live through.

Wrestling: Maryland Terrapins vs George Mason

2009-02-28T23:36:00.002-05:00

When I started photography sports a few years ago I was overwhelmed by the commitment the genre required. Regular practice of photographing sports keeps your reaction times sharp and keeps you fresh. On top of that your regular involvement in events keeps your face "fresh" with the media folks involved in the industry. Quite simply put: if you ain't there you ain't nobody.

Accordingly, I shot as often as possible in as many different venues as possible. My emphasis was a combination of breadth and depth of experience: shoot different sports, and shoot a lot of the same sport. By going both deep and wide I thought I could expand my horizons and grain a bigger understanding of this domain.

As I've filled in the pieces to this puzzle my immediate family members have become interested. Most notably my brother Andrew, who has always had a passing interest in photography, has become notably involved. This came to a head several weeks ago when I asked him to fill in for me for an NCAA men's basketball game between the Maryland Terrapins and the Virginia Cavaliers at the Comcast Center.

Since that event he's been uniquely interested in sports photography. Wrestling is the only Olympic sport with regular events so I punted the photography to him while I sat behind the desk and wrote the stories. I'm no writer and my knowledge of wrestling is limited to 2 years of watching events (albeit through a microscopic lens). My true love is photography, but the Comcast Pavilion is anything but a photographer's Eden. Exposing Andrew to the difficult lighting of Comcast during a wrestling match was a way to throw him into the deep end of the pool.

To my surprise he swam.

Lighting in Comcast for wrestling is nothing less than despicable. A black mat, inconsistent lights above that force you to ISO 4000 or above at 1/400th for dark exposures... I think it's worse than high school gyms, although I won't swear to that since I haven't shot very many high school games.

Andrew has done well and that's allowed me to focus on writing. This season I didn't shoot any duals and instead sat behind the press area with Joey Flyntz and quietly took notes on the duals while Andrew shot.

As winter turned to spring the other Olympic Sports started up and that presented scheduling conflicts. Andrew agreed to shoot a women's lacrosse game between Maryland and UMass so that I could focus on the wrestling dual.

This afternoon was my first wrestling dual of the season behind the lens even though it was the final weekend of the home schedule. I enjoy attending wrestling duals at Maryland a lot. When I first dipped my feet into the genre of sports photography wrestling was the first Olympic Sport I was exposed to and it was very welcoming. As a result that's left a bit of a soft spot for me for the mat.

I varied my shots this afternoon and shot from both down low and up high. While shooting from up high you can get better reflection of the overhead light. However, you sacrifice the intimacy of being tight in on the wrestler's faces. As a result it seems like the best bet is to go for a combination of wide and tight. The wide paints the picture of the overall event while the tight gets you the emotion.

It was enjoyable shooting the event wide this afternoon. When Andrew showed up with my 400mm lens I decided to give it a whirl and see what I could capture. It turned out really well but you have to shoot from up in the stands to get a good composition.

Gymnastics: Maryland vs New Hampshire

2009-02-20T23:40:00.002-05:00

On Friday evening the Terps gymnastics team faced New Hampshire at the Comcast Pavilion. The history of the gymnastics team is truly remarkable. Head Coach Duke Nelligan has held a firm hand on the wheel for 31 years and is set to hand over responsibilities to his son Brett Nelligan next year. 31 years is a long time to do any one single thing. I have a lot of respect for anyone that can pursue the same occupation for that amount of time and even more for someone who has managed to succeed year in and year out as the Head Coach at a Division-I school.

I attended my first gymnastics event a month or so ago because I wanted to expand my sports photography horizons. Maryland has 27 sports and that presents a lot of opportunities to shoot unusual sports that you wouldn't otherwise get a chance to photograph every other day. I shot 2 of their meets and after retrospecting the events I wanted to go back for more to see what else I could do with different lenses and angles.

In particular I was jonesin for a shot of Kaitlin Joseph on the beam. As part of her routine she somehow manages to lift her full body into the air while her chin holds all her weight on the beam. I knew that getting in tight on her face against the beam would make for a great shot and I brought my 400mm lens (normally used for field sports like football, baseball, lacrosse, and sacrosse) to the Pavilion tonight so I could grab the moment.

Unfortunately I didn't get the shot.

Kaitlin didn't perform on the beam and I was really bummed about it. I've been hoping for this shot on and off for the past month or so and I know it would've come out well. After all, you've got to pour a lot of emotion and energy in supporting your entire body weight on a 4 inch beam. Fortunately the gymnasts will perform 1 last time in Comcast in 2 weeks and I have another chance to grab my shot. We'll see how it goes.

I played around with the 300mm lens a lot this evening with mixed results. The nice thing about being tight is that you can focus in on facial expressions. However, unlike nearly every other sport out there, gymnasts use ALL of their bodies during their performance. A volleyball player wants to jump high, a basketball player wants a strong arm for dunking, and a field hockey player wants biceps for the wrister shots. A gymnast wants flexible joints so that they can leap into the air and perform some twist or move that is awe-inspiring.

You can't shoot tight. It seems like you have to shoot wide to get the full effect of what their performance. If you lock in tight on their face you might miss the key part of their performance (their twist on the beam). I guess in this case you have to settle with less facial detail in exchange for a more macro frame.

Water Polo: Maryland Terrapins vs Princeton Tigers

2009-02-20T23:14:00.002-05:00

Saturday evening the Maryland Water Polo team took to the pool and faced the Tigers of Princeton. The story of the Water Polo is truly remarkable. The squad debut'ed in 2004 and lost nearly every game. But in 2005, 2006, and 2007 the Terps climbed back to a winning record under the advisory of Head Coach Carl Salyer and Assistant Coach Meghan Sullivan.

I shot 2 water polo matches last year and I was very interested in the photographic aspects of the sport. The combination of the action of athletics, the vibrance of blue water, and the visual effect of water droplets as a player whips a shot was very compelling. Unfortunately we (the DC Sports Box) didn't report on the water polo team last year in very much detail. When we did report on the team we reported from the stands.

As usual I updated my photoblog with details about those two events and good fortune (along with Google searches) drew one of the coaches to my blog site. This opened the door to pool-side access this year to the Eppley Natatorium.

The support of the coaches, trainers, and players on a team goes miles in terms of your ability to capture the emotion of a game. Media relations gets you into the venue but the comfort level of the players, coaches, and support staff with you as a photographer makes a world of difference. If you're there for every game the staff and players know you as a photographer and are comfortable with you. They don't hold anything back when they're in your huddle and you're firing frames. You're there to preserve the moment for them.

When the coaching staff buys into your presence it just makes a world of difference and I've seen this in several of the sports at Maryland (including Football). Knowing the coaching staff and having their support really opens doors from a photographic perspective. I cannot understate it's importance.

As a result I had wonderful photographic opportunities this evening while shooting water polo.

I picked up 3 PocketWizard MultiMax units off FredMiranda.com and have been itching for chances to use them. I brought along my tripod and trained a D3 and a 400mm lens on the Maryland goalie. I set the focus to manual and used the appropriate PocketWizard cable to keep the camera active. I then fired the camera remotely using an additional PocketWizard while I sat poolside.

The only problem I ran into is that I accidentally switched channels in the first quarter. As a result I missed a bunch of shots and since I was out of ear-shot from the remote I didn't notice that I missed the shots until I checked the camera at the end of the first quarter. In retrospect I could've checked the channel number on my local PocketWizard but I didn't think to do it. Live and learn...

I was extremely thrilled with my shots this evening. In sports there's this tradeoff between freezing action and preserving the sense of motion in a game. Sports are fast paced and sometimes you want some motion blur in your exposure. But you want it in the extremeties because everyone wants to see the athlete's face. It's ok if the legs, arms, hands, or ball in play have some blur but the eyes and the face need to be sharp.

Lots of times photographers increase shutter speeds beyond 1/500th second to freeze the motion. But that sometimes makes the scene appear unnatural. A slam dunk is fast paced and you don't expect to see every single frame of it in fine detail. The mind wants a motion blur for something like that.

Water droplets bridge the gap for pool based sports.

They show the motion in an action even if you freeze your subject in place. I can lock a water polo shooter at 1/800th but the trailing water droplets from her arm and head give the viewer a sense of motion. In any other sport you don't get the same effect because air doesn't appear on the exposure.

Unfortunately Maryland only plays 1 more home game at Eppley Natatorium this season. I'm very bummed about this. I really would've enjoyed the opportunity to shoot more of the Terps in the pool because this sport is really exciting and unique. Hopefully in the coming seasons Maryland will play host to more teams. One can only hope...

Women's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs Rutgers

2009-02-20T23:07:00.002-05:00

On Sunday I shot the Lady Terps vs Rutgers. Last year Rutgers erased a 10 point lead the Terps had in the second half and handed Maryland a loss. This afternoon's game was a chance for the Lady Terps to level the playing field and they did well.

I intended on setting up a remote on the stantion but I failed to make it to the arena in time to get my remote mounted and configured. Greg has a "1 hour before tipoff" policy that basically says you have to have all your rigging ready to go 1 hour before tipoff. Because I ran late I wasn't able to get my equipment in place. Oh well... Better to follow rules...

I really liked a photo of Greg's he shot during the previous men's game. During the introduction of the team he stood far away and used the reflection of the court to get a really cool shot of the team huddled up. I loved the contrast between the pitch black darkness and the colorful jerseys of the team. It's easily one of my favorite sports photos I've seen.

I decided to try my hand at reproducing it tonight. I got a decent shot of the Lady Terps huddling up and I thought the pink jerseys gave the photo an extra something. I really liked it.

Men's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs Virginia Tech

2009-02-20T23:01:00.002-05:00

After a fantastically enjoyable break in the Rockie Mountains of Colorado I returned home to Maryland to resume my regular life. We flew in Friday night and on Saturday I shot the Terps vs Hokies men's hoops game at the Comcast Center.

As usual I started up in the stands for the first half. This approach has worked well in the past but this evening it didn't pan out so well. I don't know if it was just the rust of being 1 week separated from the shutter or if the Terps were firing differently but my timing and positioning was just not right. Normally I get several dribble-penetrations and layups in the first half but tonight I came up lagging.

On the other hand I did manage to get some great emotion shots of Dave Neal from up high. The Washington Post ran photos from the same moment in time but their perspective was much lower and they captured considerably less of Dave Neal's face than I managed to grab from up higher. I lucked on in the sense that I was just at the right place at the right time with the right equipment.

I juiced up the sensitivity to 3200 and 4000 tonight to bring in more light. The shots looked considerably better. There's definitely a difference between increasing real exposure versus increasing brightness in post production.

Competitive Cheer: Maryland Terrapins at Terrapin Invitational

2009-02-20T22:51:00.002-05:00

I shot the Competitive Cheer contest Maryland hosted on the weekend of February 6th. The venue was Comcast Center so I was extremely familiar with the lighting and the environment. I showed up plenty early to catch both sport and non-sport (is that the right term?) squads cheer.

Greg walked me up into the rafters while he powered on his strobes. I got a chance to scope out some spots for future remotes. Greg has mounted a remote up in the rafters that looks right down on the basket on the visiting team's side of the arena. I would love the chance one day to put remotes up in the rafters but I know that's a long ways away. None-the-less, it's always exciting to walk around in the rafters of an arena and contemplate what future shots you could capture.

There were 9 collegiate level squads that competed tonight and I used the folder feature on my camera to keep things straight. Each time a new squad came out I upped the folder number so that I could easily import the photos into Lightroom and keep them separated. I like to caption all of my shots with the team and location so that I can easily search them later. Importing all the shots from one folder and then splitting them out later seemed a lot more difficult than making different directories for each team before I shot.

Shooting competitive cheer is difficult. I've only shot 1 other competition so it was beneficial to hit this event and see what I can do. I did a little better than my last time out but I still struggled. I don't know what the "good" shot looks like for competitive cheer. Is it a wide angle shot of the whole group, or is it a tight shot of an individual cheerleader smiling and pumping her fist?

I'm glad I shot the event and got some more exposure to this sport. It always helps to expand your horizons and learn something new...

2009-02-06: Maryland Terrapins vs NC State

2009-02-20T22:44:00.002-05:00

On Thursday the Lady Terps took on the NC State Wolfpack. This was an especially emotional game for both teams given the recent loss of iconic Head Coach Yow from NC State. Coach Yow's positive influence on women's athletics (and basketball in particular) cannot be put into words and a blog posting does not do her justice. As a result I'll just move on to discuss the photography of the game.

I expanded on my recent climbings into the student "wall" at Maryland during this game and decided to head even higher than normal. I shot some initial shots down low in the stands but my curiosity about the view from above got the best of me. I climbed the 45 degree student wall and sat comfortably in an aisle seat next to some enthusiastic engineering students.

While up high I stepped down the aperture to f/5.6 and even f/6 at times. The overhead lights reflect really well off the floor and players when you are up high and you can get away with 1/500th at decent ISOs (2500) at smaller apertures. Plus, when shooting from up high the background is the court, which is extremely uniform in nature. You wouldn't want to shoot f/6 at the baseline (unless you strobe) because the background is going to be in decent focus and that will draw the viewer's attention away from your subject (the player). But when you are up really high an exposure at f/5.6 with the court as the background allows you to get the entire player (and their defender) in focus.

I also shot from down low and was in the perfect spot to capture Drey Mingo getting mauled by a Wolfpack forward. It was one of those things where I just dropped down out of the stands and the timing worked out. I couldn't have planned my spot or my timing better - it just worked out.

Football: Byrd Stadium Improvements

2009-02-20T22:32:00.002-05:00

February 4th is signing day for collegiate football and Inside the Shell asked me to photograph the press conference Coach Ralph Friedgen scheduled in the afternoon. The press conference was nothing unusual - the typical Maryland Terps backdrop was in place with lights on either side of the Head Coach.

I selected shots where Coach Friedgen looked up at the audience (or at me) during his comments. I've been around Coach Friedgen since his arrival at Maryland both professionally through the DC Sports Box and Inside the Shell as well as personally. Both Gloria and Ralph, along with their daughters, are genuinely good people and care a lot about the well being of the family, friends, and fans that surround them. I used to attend the Sunday evening "Dinner with the Fridge" events over at the Inn and Conference Center as well as the TV recordings at the Outback Steak House over in Montgomery County. Coach Friedgen recognizes me that helps when I'm behind the lens looking for a smile or some other personal gesture that helps my photos stand out from the others.

I've heard from Seth and Jeff that the folks on the forum at TerpCenter.com are interested in getting a photographic update of the Tyser Towser expansion at Byrd Stadium. As the press conference with Coach Friedge and Coach Sollazzo drew to a close I pulled the chute early and headed down to the field level to get some wide-angle shots of the construction. I was careful about my timing and left during the last 15 minutes of sunlight so that I could get some pretty colors on the construction.

It was snowing during this event and that helped make the pictures stand out a little bit more. It wasn't a blinding snowstorm by any means but there were some flurries in the air and through increasing the contrast in my photos I drew them out a little bit more.

While walking across the field I was a little concerned about someone stopping me and telling me to leave. While contemplating my response to an eventual confrontation I realized: who's going to hassle me? The CSC staff weren't present because there was no game. Is somebody going to call the Maryland Police to shoe me off the field after a press conference? That seemed kinda crazy to me...

So I took my shots, headed up into the stands, and shot a bunch more angles. I opened up the aperture and stepped it down as well while I played with how much light I wanted to throw onto Tyser Tower. I was shooting directly into the sunset towards Tyser Tower while on the Upper Deck side of the stadium. That meant that the details of the expansion were not well lit because the sun shined directly in my direction. During this whole exercise I considered the Active D-Lighting feature on the D3 and hoped it would perform well.

If I increased aperture or reduced shutter speed to properly expose Tyser Tower the clouds and sunset would be blown. But if I properly exposed on the sunset and clouds Tyser would be dark. As a result I shot a bunch of different exposures and hoped to adjust in post processing.

Men's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs Miami

2009-02-20T22:27:00.002-05:00

I've fallen behind on my photoblog for the past 3 weeks. This evening I'm trying to warp speed up my posts so that I get something out that documents the thought processes I went through during the games.

On January 31st I photographed the Maryland Men's Basketball team vs Miami. I arrived late to the game but was in the arena with plenty of time before tipoff. I don't rig up remotes and I usually spend the first half shooting from the stands so this wasn't too big of a deal. The only negative aspect to my late arrival was that I couldn't find a good spot to drop my laptop in the media room.

As ACC season cranks into full swing the media room at the Comcast Center becomes significantly more busy. There are lots of folks from various media organizations and they all claim their spaces with backpacks and jackets on the backs of chairs even though laptops don't reside on the tabletops. Most of them take their laptops out to the arena floor for notetaking and sometimes I wish that they wouldn't claim spaces in the media room that they don't intend to use during half time. All I really need is about 24-36 inches of space and there is ton of desk space available but it's all claimed by ghosts. Oh well...

I decided to shoot the game at f/4 this evening and the results came out well. I continued at ISO 2500 even though I'm thinking about ramping up to 3200 or 4000 given my smaller aperture. I climbed higher this evening for some shots and the different in reflected light is significant.

Men's Basketball: Maryland vs Boston College

2009-01-31T00:11:00.003-05:00

Tuesday evening the Terps took on Boston College. I shot the game without doing any remote setups this evening because I wanted to collect my thoughts from the last shoot. It's also nice having both bodies available to me during a basketball game (1 on the 300mm and 1 on the 70-200).

The game was fairly uneventful from a photographic growth standpoint. I shot the same exposures and angles I've shot in the past and my post processing was very quick and painless. I remember discussions with other sports photographers who have become jaded with this genre and have looked elsewhere (other teams, other events, etc) for inspiration. I understand what they're going through but I still believe that every event is what you make of it. You can choose to try something new (e.g. 400mm from the rafters, remote on the backboard, 400mm on the baseline, wide angle from the stands).

I definitely understand the monotony of this occupation but I resist the conclusion that the profession is boring. Instead I look more towards the photographer that lacks the inspiration to try something new and think: you're boring. It's true that shooting the same thing day in and day out is monotonous, dull, uneventful, and uninspiring. Creative motivation has 2 high level sources: outside and within. You can rely on your subject for fresh new angles or you can look to yourself to keep things fresh. I believe the folks that pursue the latter strategy are successful and the folks that pursue the former wash out.

This evening I lacked creativity in my shots and I didn't look for a new angle to give me a fresh look at the court. I have reasons for that but they exist outside the realm of why I maintain this blog. The point is that tonight I went to the dark side and I see what's going on for folks that don't make an effort to keep shots fresh. It's a good learning experience for me because it reinforces the need to find new angles, new exposures, and new moments to capture.

I'm looking forward to the start of the Spring season and the return of more Olympic sports at Maryland. I'm really looking forward to Water Polo and Lacrosse matches using my remote. I really feel like I have a lot of potential to try some new angles this Spring and I'm looking forward to giving it a shot. Maryland has been very good to us (the DC Sports Box) in so far as access and I'm excited about what I can do to pay that favor back through stunning imagery and interesting articles.

Women's Basketball: Maryland vs North Carolina

2009-01-30T23:16:00.002-05:00

The problem with photography is that a shoot is always out of reach. It always boils down to equipment, time, or access to a particular spot to capture a moment. The latter (time and access) are often out of the range of your control as a photographer. You are largely influenced by external factors that give (or takeaway) the time you need and the access you require in order to make a particular shoot. It's difficult to influence those 2 components because they are usually out of your control.

Fortunately Julie has not placed any constraints on my time and has deeply encouraged me to pursue this creative thread. And also thanks to the DC Sports Box I've been able to gain the access I need to capture some of those compelling moments in time. I'm very fortunate that both of those external forces have lined up in my favor. I'm very grateful to both Julie and Al for making my photography possible.

The one variable over which a photographer has complete control is their equipment. Even then there are some external forces at play because equipment is quite expensive. Every photographer has to make a choice when they swipe their debit card, hand over their cash, or run their credit card through the machine. You choose what lenses and body you'll buy and you have to live with those choices.

I've gone through a couple of spending cycles where I have purchased various lenses and bodies, then sold them, and then purchased higher end lenses and bodies. I lost money in the process but through it I learned more about the economics of the photography business and I learned a lot about my own personal commitment to this creative art. 3 years ago I didn't know if this curiousity would turn into the passion it has become and I spent conservatively on lower end bodies and glass. All the while my interest grew and I felt restricted by the capabilities of the equipment I purchased.

With enormous support from Julie I purchased 2 professional bodies and a variety of lenses all at f/2.8 apertures. The purchases were a stretch but since then I have never felt constrained by my equipment. With Julie's support I eliminated the 1 item over which I had control in my photographic growth: equipment.

Recently my interests have expanded into flash photography and I've expanded my equipment inventory to include some pocket wizards and a mounting bracket from Manfrotto. The costs really start to pile up due to an aggregate effect but it still pales in comparison to purchasing lenses. A used MultiMax Pocket Wizard will run you $230 on FredMiranda.com, and a Manfrotto 2929 bracket can be had for $100 on Adorama.com. Lastly, the super clamp is < $50 on Adorama. The prices are reasonable.

These items open up a whole new approach to photography.

After purchasing the clamp, bracket, and pocket wizards I worked with the Maryland team photographer to arrange a remote setup on the supports for the backboard during a women's game. He was happy to assist and after mounting my camera myself he jumped up on the supports and locked it down tightly. The Manfrotto 2929 support bracket has several different pivot points that allows a lot of flexibility. As my D3 camera and 14-24mm lens dangled there precipitously close to the backboard Greg laughed and asked me if I was nervous. His query made me laugh because I wasn't nervous in the slightest - I had full confidence in the support bracket, clamp, and in Greg. It still made me laugh though - I've been in a lot more precarious scenarios but I rarely am nervous.

Prior to the event Greg informed me that I would need a secondary support strap that would save my camera in the event of a collision with an athlete. I went to Home Depot and spent a considerable amount of time looking through the hardware section for a solution. After much search I settled on a 3/16th" braided steel wire with a plastic sheeth along with a 1/8" chain repair kit and a 180 degree loop coupling. I used a copper pipe tool to unsheath approximately 4 inches of plastic from the cable (I had to cut it in roughly 1/2 inch segments and use pliers to pull it off). It took about 30 minutes to make the cable but in the end it worked out perfectly - the 1/8" chain repair fit perfectly into the metal strap interface of the camera body.

I had a lot of difficulty negotiating the firing of my local Pocket Wizard. In the days leading up to the game I focused on the engineering aspects of mounting my camera as well as the electronic details of configuring the Pocket Wizard transmitter and receiver. I didn't give much thought towards the practical matter of: how am I going to hold my camera and lens as well as fire my pocket wizard at the same time? The pocket wizard can sit on top of the hot shoe and will transmit whenever the shutter is closed. I used that method for awhile but realized I was wasting shutter firings a lot. There were lots of times where I'd shoot through the 300mm lens but the subjects were not under the basket (thus wasting the shutter on the remote). Other times I'd shoot under the basket using the 300mm knowing I was blocked but relying on the remote to capture. It was clearly suboptimal.

In the future I'm going to give more thought towards how to improve firing of my remote camera. A lot of other photographers use gaffer's tape to secure the Pocket Wizard to a monopod that they use. They then rest one hand on the shutter release and body while their other hand grips the monopod and pocket wizard. I prefer to hand-hold my 300mm when shooting the opposite side of the court (which requires two hands). Either way something would have to change - either I have to switch to a monopod and give up flexibility or I have to continue to hand-hold and rely on a mouth-based trigger or some other mechanism to fire the remote. I'm sure I'll figure it out.

Post-processing took a LOT longer than usual because tonight I ended up with over 1100 shots from the game. I deleted a LOT of them because they were blank shots under the basket triggered off my firing of the shutter when looking through the 300mm at something that happened at midcourt. None-the-less, it was good to learn about all this stuff.

I've been thinking a lot lately about where I can place remotes for Maryland Olympic Sports this spring and the mental exercise has me tingling with excitement. What kinds of structures can I build and maybe place in the back of a soccer, field hockey, or lacrosse net to protect a remote? Can I attach a remote to a post high above the goal and grab that perfect shot? The possibilities are truly endless and the potential keeps me up at night thinking about what great angles I can shoot.

Please go cruise over to the DC Sports Box and read about Maryland's win over North Carolina and view my photo gallery.

Gymnastics: Maryland vs NC State and Denver

2009-01-30T22:53:00.003-05:00

I covered my second Gymnastics meet a week or so ago at Maryland when the Terps faced the Wolfpack of NC State and Denver.

I shot my first Gymnastics event a week prior and although I was familiar with the lighting in the venue (Comcast Pavilion) I was unfamiliar with the sport of gymnastics. As a result my photos weren't so hot. Giving gymnastics a second shot gave me a chance to evaluate my progress in this sport and I was happy to see that my shot selection and timing improved.

The team photographer was there for the event and offered some invaluable pointers during the shoot. He has some tricks and techniques he shared with me that were really eye opening. He mostly offered some focusing techniques and although I couldn't duplicate his approach I understood his methodology. His technique involved a combination of pre-focusing and angles so that you get a crisp in-focus shot of your gymnast in a particular exercise. His comment on his approach was something along the lines of "that's what 20 years of experience teaches you" and that message is very consistent with my own experience in the field of photography. Experience is king. Reading about photography is no replacement for getting out and taking photos.

I benefited from having attended last week's gymnastic's meet and that allowed me to pre-position myself for exercises for the Terps. For example, I anticipated the Terps would move to uneven bars after vault and would huddle around the chalk bin before the coach gave them some tips and last-minute motivation in a prep-talk. While I didn't capture that moment I expected it to happen and it was very validating to see it unfold. Next time if I'm looking for a coach shot or a shot of the gymnasts around the chalk bin I'll know where to look.

I found a nice spot for the beam exercise this evening: right at beam level looking straight down the beam. Last week I was off to the side and down low. This evening I rotated a little and I really liked some of the shots I got. I stayed low so that I was out of the way of the team photographer but I definitely recognized that by sitting up an additional 12 inches I would get a great distance shot of an athlete with their chin balanced on the beam. I'm looking forward to the next meet and I'm going to do my best to get that shot. I may even use the 300mm to capture the shot.

Lastly, as the athletes headed to the floor exercise I realized that they perform the same routine as the previous week. That turned out to be a real benefit because it helped me anticipate their position on the mat. In retrospect it made me wonder if all of their routines are recycled. I'll bet that they are and that the athletes work to perfect their routines (rather than alter than) over the season.

Overall I enjoyed my evening shooting the gymnasts. As always the lighting in the Pavilion is a challenge. However, it's good tucking another feather in my cap and being able to say "I've shot more than 1 gymnastics event".

Photos of Maryland's gymnastics competition with NC State and Denver are over on the DC Sports Box along with an article. Please go take a look!

Women's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs Virginia Tech

2009-01-18T22:29:00.002-05:00

This afternoon I shot the Maryland Women's basketball squad take on the Hokies of Virginia Tech.

I've gotten into a pattern for tipoff at Maryland by heading up into the stands on the opposite side of both benches. I guess that's because the tipoffs I've seen all have involved the Maryland center using their left hand to tip. Tonight Lynetta Kizer went up and used her right hand, which threw off my whole routine! Seeing that made me think about my opening tipoff strategy: I think it pays to know how the centers tip so that you can plan where you're going to shoot.

After a handful of minutes shooting just beyond the arc on the visiting side I headed into the Terrapin well near the band. I got some decent shots of Terps shooting before I ultimately headed down to the baseline with roughly 7 minutes to go in the first half. There was plenty of room on the visiting baseline (where Maryland shot) - Greg was out on the wing and a guy from the Rebounders was about half way in. I could've nestled in next to Greg to get some wide shots but I opted to go directly under the basket. I knew I wouldn't get decent under-the-basket rebounds but I hoped for some dribble penetrations where I could get the faces of the Terrapin players on the attack.

It didn't work out too well. Maryland shot perimeter for much of the end of the first half and that limited my shooting chances. However, I got some decent stock photos of Terrapins in isolation shooting from beyond the arc.

At half-time I ripped through my imagery. I put on my headphones, turned up my Girl Talk, and managed to process roughly 150 images down to 14 photos to publish. I even cropped all of them and adjusted exposure! I was very pleased with myself!

During the second half I shot from the weak side of the Terrapin court (close to the bench). I've been shooting on the strong side (where I shoot towards the Terrapin bench) for the whole season so I decided that a change would be fun. I was also curious how differently the referees behaved on that side compared to the photographer side. I'm constantly blocked by them while on the strong side!

The real story for me came after the game when I tried out my Manfrotto 2929 support bracket. I purchased one from Adorama for roughly $100 this past week. I also picked up a "Super Clamp" from Manfrotto (roughly $30) that attaches to the support bracket. These two devices allow me to mount a camera to the support structure of the basketball hoop. You also have to use a remote triggering device to activate your camera.

I spent roughly 20 minutes after the game monkey'ing around on the basket familiarizing myself with how to mount the 2929 to the metal. It took awhile to figure out the mechanics of the device but it was well worth the time. It made me think about how the camera was mounted as well as consider the safety implications of my equipment. When I previously looked at James Lang's remote setup I examined it from an ingredients standpoint: what equipment is needed to take this shot. After obtaining the equipment and mounting it I looked at it from a safety standpoint: how can I mount my camera so that it does not interfere with the players and doesn't fall?

This brought to light some very basic questions like: can the lens stick out beyond the mat wrapped around the support bracket? I took photos of my mounted camera and after a few quick back and forth emails with the Maryland team photographer I realized that I had to place my body back behind the mat.

I'm glad that I spent the extra time after the game today to rig up my camera and familiarize myself with the mounting process. It made me think about a bunch of different constraints and also made me realize that I don't need a tripod in order to shoot slow exposures in low light situations. I plan to use my Manfrotto 2929 bracket on Tuesday during inauguration activities rather than dragging around a tripod. That alone made this 20 minute exercise worth it!

Swimming & Diving: Maryland Terrapins vs Pittsburgh, Villanova, and Penn State

2009-01-18T22:11:00.002-05:00

Friday evening the Terps hosted a swim meet against Pittsburgh, Villanova, and Penn State. Last Friday evening I shot the gymnastics squad face Kent State and this Friday evening I opted to head to the Eppley Natatorium and shoot the Terrapins in the pool.

Last winter I covered a handful of Water Polo matches between the Terps and various teams. However, I didn't get a chance to attend any of the swim meets. This season I'm trying to expand DC Sports Box's coverage of Maryland Athletics and swimming was one of the teams I wanted to hit.

Having covered water polo gave me some ideas of what to expect at the Natatorium from a lighting perspective. However, my coverage last year was on the D200 and I never ventured north of ISO 1600 due to high amounts of grain. With a D3 this winter I'm free to venture up as high as ISO 6400 and that opens up a lot of other exposure alternatives.

My brother Andrew joined me for this afternoon's shoot. I loaned him one of my D3 bodies and also gave him my 70-200mm lens. I opted for the 300mm on my D3 body.

When we arrived at the pool deck I looked for the Maryland Media Relations representative. Whenever I shoot a new sport for the first time I like to talk with the media relations people to get a good understanding of the rules and places where I can shoot from. The representatives almost always tell me exactly what I need to hear: you can go in these areas in these times, and avoid these places at these times. The last thing I want to do is interfere with a competition and having someone there to tell me where I can and can't go helps a lot.

Unfortunately I didn't have a chance to speak with the Maryland Media Relations representative so I was not familiar with how the meet would take place or where I could and couldn't go. I had to play it by ear and that always raises the stress level.

Andrew stuck to the concrete pool deck while I ventured out onto a cross-beam that spanned the pool. It was a little disconcerting walking out into a pool full of water with roughly $8k of camera gear. However, after swapping lenses at 1,000 feet in a helicopter without any doors while leaning outside I wasn't too nervous.

It was really difficult to photograph the swimmers because I'm very unfamiliar with the sport. I don't know about the different strokes and what to expect from them and I'm unfamiliar with the various relays. I did my best though to adjust and I was pretty happy with my results. Some of the strokes were very difficult because the swimmer only popped up above the water momentarily to breathe before going back below the surface.

White balance was very easy because the lane guards were white and red. It was very easy to adjust white balance afterwards because I could sample the white colors in the lane guards.

I wrote up a very brief article on Maryland vs Pittsburgh, Villanova, and Penn State and posted a photo gallery over on the DC Sports Box.

Men's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs Georgia Tech

2009-01-10T18:41:00.002-05:00

This afternoon Maryland kicked off their in-conference schedule with a game against the visiting Yellow Jackets of Georgia Tech.

I headed up into the stands for the opening tip and found my usual spot. The Terps always line up for the tip facing the visiting team's basket. Maryland's Landon Milbourne usually takes the tip and he goes up with his left hand. That opens him up looking away from the Maryland bench. Accordingly, I position myself so that I'm half-way between midcourt and the basket and am facing the Maryland bench. From that spot I'm almost guaranteed to get a decent tip off shot.

Another photographer was up in the stands and he opted to go straight on for the tip. I might try that for the next game just to see how it looks.

I shot the opening 5 minutes from my tip off spot before heading over to the corner behind the visiting team bench. I'm a big fan of that spot in the first half because the Terps drive up the right hand side and often rely on a quick reverse under the basket. You can get some nice finger-roll shots if you hang out in the corner well.

James Lang configured a remote on a Manfrotto 2929 bracket. He had it attached to the backboard. I've been thinking about getting one and triggering it using Pocket Wizards. I bet you can get some good shots of players going for the rebound or attacking the basket. I asked James to send me some old photos so I could take a look at how they come out.

I also asked him for advice on purchasing the 2929. He said to make sure you get the one that has a rotating tightening mechanism. The clip based on can become dislodged if a basketball strikes it at a particular angle. I'm glad he suggested that - the thought never would've occurred to me.

During the first half I was very surprised about the tightness of the baseline. In a previous post I expressed my appreciation for assigned seats on the baseline. I should've qualified the post by saying that assigned seating works well when the photographers and videographers sit in their assigned locations. This afternoon I headed down to the baseline after 13 minutes of shooting from above to find extremely little room for me at my assigned location. Other photographers and videographers had slid over to the visiting baseline (where my spot is) making it nearly impossible for me to sit. For about 5 minutes I sat with my knees up while shooting before I finally packed it in and headed for the home baseline.

I opted out of going back to the media room at half time so that I could preserve my spot in the second half. I spent halftime reviewing my photos on camera and deleting the bad ones. After 15 minutes I had it down to around 100 or so photos between the two bodies.

After the game I rushed back to the media room to offload all of my photos. It was a big offload since I didn't offload at halftime. As a result I was late to the post-game press conference by Coach Gary Williams. I ended up standing in the back of the Pavilion while resting my laptop on a garbage can in order to post process. I like hearing Gary's post-game comments while I work through my photos.

Events this week will be pretty quiet as both the men and women head on the road to face opponents. I plan to use the time to catch up on some much needed software development. I also need to close out the books from 2008 and send them off to the tax accountant for return generation.

Gymnastics: Maryland Terrapins vs Kent State

2009-01-10T01:42:00.003-05:00

I was introduced to a new sport this evening: gymnastics!

A few sports the Terps play don't have very regular home schedules. This includes swimming/diving, competitive cheer, and gymnastics. Last year I didn't cover any of them for the DC Sports Box and this year I wanted to improve that record. With so few home contests I figured I could make an effort to get out for them and capture some photos.

The last new sport I shot was competitive cheer and that was a month or two ago. However, before that I hadn't shot a new sport in a long while. Shooting sports is a very patterned occupation - the more regularly you do it the better you are. You understand the game and the flow. That allows you to anticipate the action.

When you shoot a sport for the first time you have no idea what you're doing. You base your actions on previous events you've shot but you don't know where you can go to get the good shots. You can't anticipate the action. All you can do is shoot and pray.

Regular shooting of a particular sport is like sniper shooting. You anticipate and you close the shutter only a handful of times. Shooting a new sport is like multiple shotgun blasts: you have no idea whats going on so you shoot as much as you can in the hopes that you'll get something worth publishing in the end.

This evening I was buck wild.

I ended 2 hours of shooting with 1,306 exposures for 4 competitions (vault, uneven bars, beam, and floor). That's ridiculous! In 2 hours of basketball I'll finish up with 200 shots on a bad night. Winding up with 6x that amount is evidence that I didn't know what I was doing from a "understanding the sport" standpoint.

None-the-less, I had a ball.

It's fun to not know what you're doing and to try to adapt to the environment. Fortunately I was very familiar with the venue (Comcast Pavilion) and the lighting environment. Exposure didn't challenge me, but position for a decent shot did.

I tried a bunch of different lenses tonight, from 14-24 up to 24-70, through 70-200, and eventually up to 300mm. I shot them from a variety of different spots looking for the shot. It was really difficult!

Overall I have to say that the most challenging aspect of photographing gymnastics is that the subjects move very rapidly in and out of the focal plane. At narrow apertures like f/4 it is a real challenge to keep your subject in focus. The uneven bars is a great example of this.

The athlete is going to wrap themselves around one of the bars so it seems logical that you can simply pre-focus on the bar and rip away when their face comes into the frame, correct? Please... No...

The fact that the athlete is spinning around the bar and that their arms can be 2-3 feet throws their face out of focus for nearly every exposure except for when they are straight down (the most boring from an action perspective).

What you want to capture is the face of the athlete as they drop down onto the bar and are swinging around. However, that requires you to AF lock onto their face and track it as they spin around. That's really really difficult!

I had a very good time photographing the gymnastic team this evening and I'm looking forward to their next home event. Hopefully I can keep it under 1,306 exposures next time!

I wrote up an article on Maryland Gymnastic's win over Kent State and posted it on the DC Sports Box along with a photo gallery.

Women's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs Wake Forest

2009-01-10T01:23:00.003-05:00

On Thursday evening the Terps opened up their conference schedule with a matchup against the Demon Deacons of Wake Forest.

This evening's game was very enjoyable to shoot. The competition on the baseline for men's games is pretty intense and there are a lot of photographer who'll gladly bump you or give you the cold shoulder. That's not the case at women's games. It is considerably less stressful to shoot a women's game than a men's game.

I've realized this for a year or so now. It makes me think about what some of my other coworkers go through shooting the Wizards or the Redskins. I've seen some rough patches just shooting the men at Maryland but I'm sure that's only a fraction of what goes on in the NBA and NFL. It definitely makes you think...

I moved around a lot in the stands for the first half and continued shooting at f/4.5. I've been so happy with the sharpness and brightness of my photos using f/4.5, 1/400th, and ISO 2500. Towards the end of the first half I actually opened it up to f/2.8 and dropped the ISO to 1600 or so. The results of this experiment were obvious: no noticeable difference in subject isolation due to narrowed depth of field from the wider aperture, and no noticeable reduction in grain in the photo. In summary I sacrificed sharpness and got nothing in return: no increase in subject isolation and no noticeable reduction in noise.

This reinforces my infatuation with the D3 high ISO performance and strengthens my believe that f/4 glass will become more prevalent at sports arenas in the future.

While shooting at f/4.5 this thought inevitably occupied my focus. I questioned why folks like Bill Vaughn and Greg Fiume shoot with f/2.8 glass up at f/7.1 with the help of strobes. Why don't they pack in AF-S f/4 glass and call it a day? Certainly the muscles in their forearms would thank them.

I then remembered my conversation with Mitch Layton a few games ago. He questioned me regarding the unsanctioned use of Greg's strobes at Comcast. His comment was that when he stopped firing flash someone else picked up on the frequency and used the strobes without permission. Up until that point I assumed that anyone that had the assistance of strobes in the rafters strictly relied on them for their game photos. It was 1/250th at f/7.1 and ISO 200 the whole game, or bust. I guess not so...

The fact that Mitch dropped his use of strobes from time to time makes me question that belief. It seems like even if you have strobes you might go down to pure ambient light for your shots.

I deal exclusively with ambient light but I don't shoot at f/2.8. So that begs the question: why get f/2.8 glass? I think it comes back to flexibility. Even if you have strobes and shoot f/7.1 you might want to go down to ambient light at f/4. But, I've also seen Greg shoot at the Comcast Pavilion where he has to open it up to f/2.8 at ISO 4000 to get a decent exposure.

So I think it comes down to flexibility. I may shoot f/4.5 at Comcast at ISO 2500 because the ambient allows me to do it. But I also need to go into the Pavilion and shoot at ISO 5000, f/2.8 and drop down to 1/320th at times in order to get exposure. Without the f/2.8 glass I couldn't do it.

What I've learned through all of this is that observation and analysis goes a long way. Thinking about the different combinations and configurations of helps me understand why more veteran photographers choose one lens and body over another. Without seeing what they shoot with and without shooting it myself (along with all the other venues I shoot) it would be really difficult to figure out what to buy!

Men's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs Morgan State

2009-01-10T00:56:00.002-05:00

On Wednesday evening the Terps played host Morgan State. I arrived with plenty of time to spare so that I could get my laptop configured and ready for offloading. After connecting my laptop and assembling my glass and bodies I headed out to the hardwood.

Where to sit on the baseline is a real challenge.

There are regular photographers that shoot for Terrapin Times, AP, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, and UPI that know all the rules. There's a pecking order when it comes to spots on the baseline and for the most part the regular folks know how the algorithm works and they follow it.

However, there are always out-of-towners that come in for a single game and are unfamiliar with the process. That's completely understandable and I've been in the situation before having traveled to remote venues. Saying "hey I'm new here and need some help" is not unfamiliar to me.

The organizations that send photographers to Terrapin events receive their credentials and then it's up to the team photographer (Greg Fiume) to assign spots on the baseline. I'm sure that Greg hears nothing but grief from various photographers about their position in the lineup (hint: seniority corresponds to spots out towards the edge), and I've seen a lot of photographers become quite vocal when they believe their position on the baseline does not accurately represent their seniority.

Despite the headache Greg puts the cards out for nearly every game the Terps play. Despite the politics that inevitably fall out of this "who's who on the baseline" game the end goal is to clearly identify where photographers should sit so that there isn't disagreement at the last minute. I think this is tremendously valuable!

If you ignore the bickering amongst local photographers and instead look at how local and remote photographers interact it quickly becomes obvious that having assigned seating makes a whole lot of sense! Photographers on remote assignment from distant schools don't know where they are supposed to sit and having the help of a team photographer to explicitly say "you should sit here" (via a sheet of paper on the baseline) seems like a really good idea.

Greg's been out for the past couple of games covering the Terps on the road and as a result the seating assignments were not handed out. There was some confusion on the baseline that I described in previous blogs and I was happy that with Greg's return the seating assignments were reestablished.

So, after preparing my camera gear I headed out to the baseline to scout out my spot. Almost ironically, I found that the same individual who had given me the cold shoulder a week ago had again grabbed my spot. Again I went through the mental question of "do I make a big deal of this?" and concluded that it was not worth it. I've been shooting from the stands for most of the first half and realized that by the time I moved down to the baseline there would most likely be a space for me. None-the-less, I chuckled thinking about how I had looked forward to Greg's return (along with the seating assignments) but now that it had happened the process broke down and my spot was taken!

I also had the opportunity to meet Adrian Hood, a new photographer we hired at the DC Sports Box. Adrian shot the Terps back in Cole Field House and was able to talk shop when it came to the optics and bodies associated with photography. I tried to help him out by going over some basic ground rules at Comcast that would help him stay out of trouble but I'm sure it was difficult for him to hear it all - the band was playing in our ear for most of the time!

Football: Maryland Crab Bowl Photos

2009-01-03T21:25:00.002-05:00

Photos of the 2008 Maryland Crab Bowl can be purchased on my Photo Shelter page.

Men's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs UNC Charlotte

2009-01-03T20:42:00.002-05:00

This afternoon I cut my weekend vacation short so I could head back to College Park to shoot the Terps vs UNC Charlotte. It was the first game for 2009 and there aren't too many non-conference games left before Maryland enters the meatier part of it's schedule.

I shot from the stands for the first half using the 300mm lens at f/4.5 aperture, 1/400th second, and ISO 2500. There were some great opportunities for photos this evening because both teams were highly competitive but I missed a lot of them. There was always a referee in the way, an defender's arm crossing a guard's face on their way to the net, or the player took a shot with their close in arm and blocked their face. It was frustrating because the action was intense but the shots just weren't there in a lot of circumstances.

I headed down to the court for the last 3 minutes of the first half and managed to snatch a few decent frames before heading into the media room at half-time. I think I ended up running 1 or 2 of those shots because they came out pretty well. I'm thinking more and more about trying to avoid running the shots where the face is not prevalent. It's difficult though because so many of the photos that feature players shooting fall into this category - the player looks up at the net while they shoot and I'm down low in the paint. Photographers out towards the 3 point line and beyond have a better angle but then again they can miss a lot of the action that unfolds in the paint.

During the last game I synchronized the clocks on both my D3s and that has helped a lot during post-processing. The clocks were off by about an hour because the previous owner of one of them didn't believe in daylight savings time. As a result my Lightroom albums had out-of-order photos, which made it difficult to add context to each caption. After synchronizing the clocks post processing has become much easier.

I though about changing the camera post-processing for color enhancement from "standard" to "vivid" but then held back at the last minute. I've been happy with how my cameras have performed and tweaking something like that just before a game seems like its going to invite trouble.

During half-time I offloaded roughly 160 photos from 2 CF cards and brought the photos into Lightroom. Lastly I tagged the publishable photos and the photos to delete all before there was 6 minutes left in the halt-time. It's helpful to have a fast card reader (note: I use a Lexar FW800), all your directories in Lightroom created, and your computer ready to import before you head out for the first half!

Men's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs Elon

2008-12-30T22:57:00.003-05:00

After a quick run home to watch part of the 2008 Humanitarian Bowl between Maryland and Nevada I raced back over to Comcast for a men's basketball game between the Terps and Elon. The media room was packed with reporters watching the 4th quarter of the Humanitarian Bowl and Maryland was up 42-35 with about 7 minutes to go. That made the media room especially pleasant this evening!

As I prepared my laptop and equipment I recalled my last experience at a men's game. In it my seat was grabbed by some other photographers while I snapped a shot of Gary Williams entering the arena. I debated whether or not to head out to the court early to stake my place on the baseline or to punt and head into the stands for the first half. My shots from earlier in the day from the stands came out very well so I decided to opt for the latter choice and headed up into the 100 level section.

I spent part of the first half parallel to the basket and caught a few decent profile shots of players heading to the rim. At the 12 minute whistle I headed into the student section and snapped a few decent shots of players under the basket. I wanted to get a little lower but students were present for the game and I didn't want to move in front of them to get to a vacant seat.

During the first half I shot approximately 100 or so photos I could probably publish. That's a lot for me! I also experimented with different apertures from up in the stands. I wanted to see how f/2.8 compared with f/4 when shooting players on the court while I sat in the stands. The difference was hardly noticeable. I took 2 shots of a CSC staffer on the court during a timeout at f/2.8 and f/4.5 and after examining the photos in the LCD I had a tough time distinguishing between the two from a depth of field perspective. The court looked very similar at f/2.8 and f/4.5. However, the sharpness on the CSC staffer was evident even on a 3" LCD.

I thought about the experiment some more and realized that shooting a smaller aperture in basketball might not be as bad as many people would have you believe. If you shoot from the stands the surrounding backdrop will hopefully either be the rest of the court (which is uniform in it's texture, color, and shape) or the seats in the distant background. At high zooms (e.g. 300mm or 400mm) you get a decent separation between subject and background even at f/4.5 under those circumstances. And at that smaller aperture you obtain considerably sharper photos.

This experience has definitely reinforced my prediction that slower glass will wedge it's way into sports shooting in the future. Bodies with better high-ISO performance will allow photographers to shoot at reduced apertures that will result in crisper photos that still maintain sufficient separation between the foreground and the background to be aesthetically pleasing to the casual viewer.

By the time I left Comcast this evening I had all my photos offloaded and my 25 images for publishing cropped, lightened, and ready for captioning. A quick check of the final stats helped me out and I was all wrapped up about 15 minutes after making it home. It's definitely nice to be fast on the computer and have a post-processing workflow I can execute within 15 minutes of making it home. I'm sure Julie likes that too...

Women's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs Mississippi State

2008-12-30T19:01:00.002-05:00

I post-processed all of my photos from the UNC Asheville vs Marshall game by the time the Terps took to the hardwood. I also managed to scrape together a couple of paragraphs to describe the game.

When the Maryland game began I went straight for the stands for some up-high photos. I marked out a spot on the visiting side of the court so I could catch the Terps shooting in the the beginning of the first half. One thing led to another and the next thing I knew I was up in the stands in the entire first half. I got some great shots from up there and was ecstatic for what I was able to publish - KT drove the lane, Coleman had some dribble penetrations, and I captured my lead-in photo of tournament MVP Demauria Liles with a nice two-legs-up layup. I never would've grabbed that photo had I not shot from the stands and moved around to the baseline.

I'm definitely gaining a greater and greater appreciation for in-the-stands photography. The baseline shots are definitely good but I'm realizing how many more photos you can get from up a little higher. It's remarkable!

I narrowed the aperture to f/4 while up there because the built-in camera meter indicated that f/3.5, 1/400th second exposure at ISO 2500 was slightly overexposed, even with a 1/3 EV correction. The benefit of f/4 exposure is sharper images but it comes at the cost of a wider depth of field. The stands in the background are more noticeable and the players are not as isolated.

How much does this matter? Do people pay more attention to the sharpness of a photo or do they care more about isolation of the subject? If I shoot at f/2.8 from the stands and isolate my players through shallow depth of field do people like that more than a sharp image of a player driving to the basket with a little bit of the background in focus? I don't know.

Most people print at 5x7 or 4x6. Sometimes they go to 8x10. At those sizes a lot of softness can appear sharp enough. That argues that f/2.8 exposure would be better because you isolate your subject. However, if you look at imagery on the web where you have higher resolution it might be better to go with a smaller aperture. It's definitely made me think...

Afterwards I met up with a photographer from "Inside Women's Basketball" using SLR video for an interview with Maryland Head Coach Brenda Frese. Out in the parking lot I helped this photographer find the media entrance and I talked with her on the baseline a little bit. I was very interested in her SLR Video approach and asked her to send me a link to the content once she posts it. SLR Video is a really new approach to game imagery that gives extremely high definition video to games using still cameras and long lenses. It has a lot of promise and I predict it will become a bigger and bigger deal over the next 5 years. I'm very interested in seeing how the interview turned out.

I wrote up an article on Maryland's win over Mississippi State and posted a photo gallery up to the DC Sports Box website. Please go take a look!

Women's Basketball: UNC Asheville vs Marshall

2008-12-30T18:33:00.004-05:00

This afternoon I saddled up and headed out to the Comcast Center for the closing day of the Terrapin Classic. Up on the schedule was UNC Asheville vs Marshall as well as the Terps vs Mississippi State.

I arrived early and made my nest in the media room back off the court. I realized that I haven't talked much in my posts about some of the processes I apply in the media room so I thought it would make some sense to describe it in some more detail.

Media rooms are often hectic places. They are busy with lots of other press and media officials that are busily working on their laptops, cameras, or notepads. Sometimes it is difficult to find an open spot at the work tables during busy games. When I arrive I pull out my laptop and connect it to AC power and bring up Lightroom. I also connect my Lexar FW800 CF card reader so that it is ready to go. Lastly, I create some directories in Lightroom for the game I'm shooting. The goal of this pregame prep-work is to reduce the amount of time it takes me at halftime to offload photos.

During a shoot I try to reduce the amount of time it takes me to post process my photos. I do that so that we can get our story out quickly after a game. Accordingly, I delete out of focus images on my camera and I try to keep the photoset short before I begin offloading. During halftime I bring all the photos into Lightroom so that they can be thumbnailed and properly indexed. Lastly, I go through as many photos at halftime as possible and put them into the "publishable" and "published" category. By getting through all of this I speed things up for my after-the-game work.

The game was very enjoyable to shoot because both UNC Asheville and Marshall were very competitive with each other. They both applied a full-court press and that resulted in a lot of shooting opportunities. I chose to shoot 2/3 of the first half from the stands and I recorded a remarkable number of publishable shots in the first half. At halftime I was shocked that I had 130 publishable photos. Usually at the end of the game 130 photos is towards the upper end of how many I want to have. I captured that many in the first half of the game! Hats off to both UNC Asheville and Marshall for putting it all out there and creating a lot of exciting shooting opportunities!

During the second half I shot from the baseline. I was torn about it because I had such good results from the stands in the first half. However, getting players in isolation from the baseline on the court can make for really great photos. I clocked fewer shots but I got some keepers. It was a good learning experience though because I realized that you don't have to be on the baseline to get great shots.

I wrote up a quick article that summarized the game and published a photo gallery to show UNC Asheville vs Marshall in the Terrapin Classic.

Women's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs UNC Asheville

2008-12-29T23:09:00.002-05:00

After Mississippi State and Marshall finished up their match the Terps took to the court and prepared for their contest against the UNC Asheville Bulldogs. I worked hard to prepare some interview questions for Crystal Langhorne and Laura Harper and between the two matches I kept an eye out for the two alums. They were expected to be in attendance for the Terrapin Classic and I arranged an interview with the two players. I wanted to make sure I didn't miss them during the game.

I took my spot on the visiting team baseline for the start of the first half and readied my 400mm and 70-200mm combo. It worked pretty well during the previous game so I figured I'd give it a shot for the Terps. f/3.5, 1/400th, and ISO 2500 on a pre-set white balance as usual.

There was plenty of space and I had room to keep my 400mm lens next to me while I used my 70-200mm lens on the close side of the court. After about 10 minutes of play I swapped the 400mm for a 300mm and headed up into the stands. I wanted to get my stands-shooting out of the way early in the game and I thought the closing 10 minutes of the first half would be a great opportunity. Up until that point the Terps were leading but UNC Asheville clawed their way back into it and took a 1 point lead with just over 6 minutes to play. When that happened I shifted from my spot parallel to the rim to a location that would allow me to catch the players coming up the court.

The upswing to shooting from the stands behind the baseline is that you can capture some great dribble penetrations up the lane. The downside is that baseline drives from the opposite side are out of the question. The backing of the basketball hoop completely occludes the player from view when they drive.

I also discovered a new shot from this elevated baseline position - the in-the-paint inbound pass. Just before the end of the first half the Terps inbounded the ball and Marah Strickland jumped up in the air, caught it, and put up a shot. It happened extremely quickly and I couldn't focus quickly enough on the shot. However, if the shot was in focus it would've been superb and I probably would've led with it. I'm going to keep this shot in my back pocket and practice it some more tomorrow during the Terrapin Classic games.

I spent the second half on the home baseline and continued my 400mm / 70-200mm combo. It never disappoints. I got some great shots of Lynetta Kizer on the far side of the court, as well as some great shots of Marah Strickland in the front court going up for the jumper. After the game I ended up with over 120 publishable photos from the event, and 35 I flagged as "to publish." I chipped that down to 24 and ended up running them with a story I wrote. You can read about Maryland's win over UNC Asheville and view a photo gallery at the DC Sports Box website.

Women's Basketball: Mississippi State vs Marshall

2008-12-29T22:59:00.002-05:00

This afternoon the Terrapin Classic was played at the Comcast Center and I was assigned to report on it for the DC Sports Box. My mind was notably absent today as I was focused on other events this morning and the shoot was really different. I found myself staring at the court during timeouts before being brought back to the game by the blow of a whistle. None-the-less, it was good to get out of the house and focus on something else. Timeouts were tough though.

I shot from the baseline in the first half but then headed up to the stands for most of the second half. Shooting from the stands provides better light and you can catch a lot more of the players faces when they drive towards the basket. When shooting from the floor you get a lot of chest shots and chin shots but not too many face shots because they players look up at the basket and away from you. The stands are elevated and as a result you can capture a better image.

You can also get some good isolation shots of players as they bring the ball up the court. The only trick is to hold your shutter until all of the player is on the court. If you shoot them on the far side of the court half of their body will be against the fans in the background. You have to wait until they're closer to you and their entire body is surrounding by hardwood. Shooting a subject at narrow apertures using this technique can yield great sharpness and great isolation.

As usual I shot the game at f/3.5 at ISO 2500 on my D3. While in the stands I relied on my 300mm lens but while baseline I switched to the 400mm lens. I hand-held it, as I always do for basketball, and that worked pretty well. I like the reach of the 400mm from the baseline but it is definitely a challenge to get enough of the players in the frame to tell a story. I can get a great rebound shot but I can't capture 3 players leaping through the air to block a shot.

The 300mm lens is great from up in the stands because it backs you away from the action enough to fill up the entire frame. I've considered bringing the 400mm up into the stands though. Come to think of it ... tomorrow I'll probably give it a shot.

The other lens I used this afternoon was a 70-200mm. I carried the 24-70mm and placed myself in the paint under the home basket but I didn't reach for the shorter lens in the second half. I found there to be more shooting opportunities of players driving the lane or orbiting around the perimeter than there were down low and under the rim. There were a few times where I wished I had the 24-70mm lens on the body and wound out to 24mm. Unfortunately I couldn't move quickly enough to swap the lenses. Oh well.

Men's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs Bryant

2008-12-27T20:12:00.003-05:00

This afternoon I covered the Maryland Terrapins facing off against the visiting Bryant Bulldogs. The temperature was gorgeous for this time of year (mid 50s) and in stark contrast to a few games ago where everyone shivered on their way from the parking lot to the arena.

There was a decent amount of media on hand for this afternoon's game but it wasn't overly congested on the sideline. After arriving extra early I plunked down a 400mm and 300mm lens on the visiting baseline while I shuffled off to the home court side of the stadium to photograph Coach Gary Williams enter the arena. I don't have any fist-pump shots of the Coach from this year so I figured I'd grab a handful this afternoon. I didn't spend more than 3 minutes on the far side of the court before I realized that my space had been gobbled up by some other photographers!

After capturing my Coach Williams shot I returned to my spot and asked some of the photographers who had descended onto my spot where they were planning on sitting for the first half. One of them didn't utter a word and instead pointed straight towards my gear while showing me a menacing eye. Confused I remarked that I was there before, I was only gone for 3 minutes to get a shot of Coach Williams, and that I had left my lens there as a sign that I intended to return. The photographer was indifferent and shrugged off my questions. Another photographer remarked "I have to be here, I'm on assignment."

I retreated to the opposite baseline where I sat alone for the first half and shot through my 400mm lens contemplating the exchange. I suppose a more forceful or disagreeable photographer would've made a scene, stormed off to find the team photographer, or otherwise would've escalated the situation. I chose to walk away and shoot through my long lens. However, during half-time I remained on the court in my spot so that it would not be taken seconds before the start of the second half.

Most of the first half was spent looking through the 400mm lens at f/3.5 and ISO 2500 at 1/400th. I like the sharpness of the photos at f/3.5 and the noise at 2500 on a D3 is very manageable. I also like having plenty of reach in the optics. Using a 70-200mm lens for across-the-court shots is simply insufficient for what I'm trying to produce. A 400mm or 300mm lens, even at f/3.5, produces sufficient separation between the subject and the background to create a publishable photo.

After the game I headed to the media room where I gave a guest photographer a quick tour of Adobe Lightroom. He has shot a few games for us in the past and his workflow is based on Linux and moving around files by hand. Lightroom really speeds up the post-processing workflow by automating a lot of routine steps. You can create filename templates that are applied at time of import or export. You can create IPTC metadata profiles you can apply to a bunch of photos that greatly reduce the amount of copy and paste. Lastly, you can schedule file exports and resizes to occur while you go off and work on another process (e.g. spinning up a browser to point towards wherever you intend to publish). By the time we left the arena we had all of his imagery fully post-processed and published in under 45 minutes. His last event required roughly 4 hours of post-processing time. Lightroom definitely helps!

Next up are a series of games at Comcast on Monday and Tuesday as the Lady Terps compete in the Terrapin Classic. I'm looking forward to the event and I plan to cover all 4 games for the DC Sports Box. Afterwards, on Tuesday night, the men face off against Elon. I need to put together some tricky scheduling that will allow me to cover the Lady Terps at 2pm on Tuesday, high-tail it home to catch the Humanitarian Bowl on TV, and then book it on back to Comcast in time for tipoff at 7pm. Should be tricky but fun!

Men's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs American

2008-12-23T11:26:00.005-05:00

After a pretty long stint away from Comcast while the student athletes took their final exams the men's basketball schedule resumed and I found myself courtside for a rematch between Maryland the the American Eagles. Last year American defeated the Terps after Maryland had a 9-day break, thus setting up the rematch that unfolded at Comcast this evening.

There was a lot of anticipation leading up to this particular game as it was an opportunity to smudge away part of the blemish that was put on Maryland's record last year.

I opened up the game by shooting from up in the students section for the first 5 minutes. I was hoping for some quick drives to the hoop by Maryland to establish an inside game but that didn't happen. Dave Neal shot from the outside in the beginning and my spot up in the stands didn't really help me much for that photo. However, I did catch a decent shot of Landon Milbourne dishing off a pass after driving up the lane.

Before the game I adjusted my white balance using a neutral card. My preset was still adjusted to the lights at Verizon Center and I wanted to get them back to proper Comcast settings. I've written in the past about how I don't like to use auto-anything on my camera because it can produce unknown results. 2 photos shot one-after-the-other with auto white balance can have drastically different colors. Fixing each individual shot in post processing is time consuming. Setting the white balance to a fixed value (even if that value is slightly off), allows me to come back around in post-processing and adjust ALL the white balance settings the same way. If I'm off by 150 degrees K I can turn down the temperature 150 degrees on ALL the of the photos. With auto white balance my photos may be off 100, 75, 150, 125, and 100 degrees and I have to adjust each one.

I tried my best to get some shots of assistant coach Keith Booth for a feature we're running on him in the next magazine. He's a tough man to shoot because his complexion is very dark and he's very tall. I shoot from down on the floor and when I take a picture of him his head is so high up that the background is dark behind him. Accordingly there isn't a lot of separation between Booth and the background, and that's not good.

Towards the end of the game I floated back up into the stands and positioned myself on the left side of the court just parallel to the backboard. Any player that drove to the right (which is the power side for a lot of right-handed players) and shot the layup would be a perfect capture. I just happened to luck out and be at the right place at the right time for a steal and a layup by Greivis Vasquez. I probably have dozens of these photos from the baseline but the photo I took of him this evening stands out. You can see his face and his eyes as he puts it in.

You can view view DCSB photos and read Julie Gilden's summary of Maryland vs American over on the DC Sports Box.

Football: Maryland Crab Bowl

2008-12-22T23:29:00.002-05:00

On Saturday I was assigned to cover the Maryland Crab Bowl at Johnny Unitas Stadium on the campus of Towson University just north of Baltimore MD. Fortunately for me I was familiar with the venue because I covered the 2008 NCAA Women's Lacrosse Tournament at the same stadium over Memorial Day. As a result I knew what to expect in terms of parking and where to find the media folks.

I arrived at the stadium with approximately 30 minutes to spare and parked pretty close to the field. The crowd was of decent size but it didn't interfere with my ability to find a spot in the media lot. While heading to the field I thought about what kind of pre-game shots I wanted to get. I recalled that Chuck had mentioned an MVP appearing for the coin toss but I didn't know if that would pan out.

After making it down to the field I readied my 400mm and 24-70mm lens. I attached an SB-800 to the camera with the 24-70 and headed out to the field. I met up with Mark Clem and compared some notes on the recruits. I neglected to bring along my notecard with the numbers for all of the recruits but I was pretty familiar with their numbers, names, and faces after shooting them earlier in the week. Most of them recognized me with my red hair so when I approached them they spotted me out and called me over for a photo.

During player introductions I went through the lineups of both teams and shot all the Maryland recruits so that I could have some file photos for use later on. It turns out that the shots came out pretty well and they decided to run them.

After the coin-toss I took my place on the sideline behind the blue line back a few feet from the sideline. That's when I learned my first lesson of shooting high school football: other photographers don't respect the rules. At division-1 events there are rules about where photographers can and can't shoot from and if you step over a boundary the team photographer (or another professional) gives you a warning and instructs you to head back into the proper area. Not so much in high school...

For example, I stood at the 30 yard line shooting upfield while along the blue line. Another photographer was at the 35 and also shooting upfield. As the play commenced the receiver headed towards the close sideline. The upfield photographer stepped out over the blue line and clipped the line-of-sight for several photographers and videographers. Afterwards one of the photographers with a Nikon Professional Services strap approached him and asked him to respect the blue line. The photographer let fly all kinds of profanity and obscenities...

That kind of thing would never fly in division-1 NCAA events.

During the rest of the event I looked for ways to avoid competing with the other photographers for line-of-sight because I observed several of them clipping other photographers in their quest to get the shot. I'm glad I'm not paparazzi - that kind of behavior really turned my stomach...

Towards the end of the game I turned my focus towards the bench and I took several frames of players without their helmets. I used my 400mm at f/4 for the shots and the shots came out wonderfully. Shooting at f/4 kept the imagery sharp and at 400mm and close range the background was sufficiently blown out to fully isolate my subjects. I was very happy with the effect and I'm going to use it again to capture sideline players.

After the game I noticed several other photographers offering their cards to the players. My business cards have "DC Sports Box" written all over them and since they weren't the credentialing agency I couldn't hand them out with promises of "photos from the game will appear up here." None-the-less I took note that there is potential in the Crab Bowl to market photographs to players and next year I will be more prepared.

Football: Crab Bowl Practice

2008-12-17T22:43:00.003-05:00

This evening I was assigned to photograph some Maryland football recruits practicing for the upcoming Crab Bowl on Saturday at Johnny Unitas Stadium in Towson MD. I photographed the squad on Tuesday evening during a dinner and in the process got to know several of them. After chasing them down several times I got to learn some of their names, numbers, and what they actually looked like. That helped a lot tonight.

I also took some time today and typed up a list of the players I was interested in hitting this evening at practice. The official Crab Bowl roster contains probably 60 players and I'm interested in approximately 10 of them. Narrowing that list down to something that is the size of an index card is tremendously valuable while you're racing around the sideline and on the field looking for your subjects.

I shot with both bodies tonight because I wanted to use a combination of glass. I wanted the 300mm lens so that I could capture 2 items of interest: close-ups between plays and in the huddle, and receptions down the field. A 300mm gives great reach for both situations. I also wanted the versatile 70-200mm workhorse lens that I seemingly always use. It's a perfect focal range for getting pretty close-in on your subjects but it can also go out wide enough to capture full-body shots from a pretty close distance.

Once again I was back up in the high ranges of ISOs: 3200 and above. The lights on the practice field are obviously considerably darker than the lights in Byrd Stadium or in Comcast, so I had to resort to high ISOs and slow shutter speeds for proper exposure. No flirting around with f/3.5 or f/4 tonight - I was wide open at f/2.8 and I slowed down to a dangerous 1/125th from time to time to properly expose at ISO 3200. I realize I could've got up considerably higher in the ISOs (I've sold photos shot at night at 6400) but I like to keep the ISO as low as I can for the shot I want.

I considered activating VR on both the lenses but opted against it in the end. I'm not sure how much VR helps once you work above 1/125th a second shutter. My hand was steady enough on most of my 1/250th shots but there was some jitter on some of my 1/125th shots.

Post-processing went pretty quickly and I was able to push up the photos to the site. So far we've heard very good things about our coverage of the Crab Bowl - both parents and coaches are keeping an eye out for us and asking us about buying photos.

Football: Maryland Crab Bowl Media Day

2008-12-17T22:27:00.003-05:00

I was assigned to photograph the media day event for the Maryland Crab Bowl this evening at the Gossett Team House at the University of Maryland. While walking down from Lot 1 to Gossett Team House my attention turned towards dinner and I wondered what kind of food would be served. In my past experiences at Gossett they've had the milk machine running and actively churning out 800 calorie glasses of thick chocolate milk at a cool 50 degrees. Since I didn't have much to eat today I was looking forward to a thick cold glass of chocolate milk!

The media day was the standard affair where several reporters make the rounds and interview players. A few photographers and videographers were present but nobody was using flash. That surprised me because the lighting was awful and many of the players had very dark complexions. I used my 24-70mm lens with an SB-800 flash and the built-in diffuser. I set my ISO to 400, WB to flash, aperture to f/5.6, and shutter to 1/250th. I decided to use TTL with a +0.7 compensation so that I could overexpose many of the players. When your subjects start off dark it helps to slightly overexpose because it is often easy to increase the strength of the black colors in post-processing.

Seth provided me with a list of 10 or so recruits that have made verbal commitments to Maryland. I traversed the room carefully avoiding the generous servings of lasagna the players had removed from the buffet table and introduced myself to several of the players. They photographed quite well. I was half expecting them to want to strike a cheesy pose or do something foolish but they actually posed quite well. All of the shots came out without smiles and they looked like football players should look - all business.

While taking a few shots inside the cafeteria I decided to take one of the more energetic recruits out to the hall so I could photograph him next to some trophys. I kept the aperture at f/5.6 because I wanted to be able to capture some of the trophys in the background while still being sharp on my player. I had a bit of a problem with bounced light off the trophy case but I was able to work around it by rotating the flash head away from the glass.

I was really pleased with how the shots came out in the hall. I'd like to get a Terrapin or two out there this Fall.

Afterwards Seth and I hung out and waited for the players to meet with their coaches and go over their respective playbooks for defense and offense. Once they concluded I rounded up the roughly 10 commits and gathered them around a large Terps sign so I could grab a picture of them looking like future Terrapins. Unfortunately I wasn't able to hold onto a couple of the players because they had to leave and head back up to Baltimore. But I got most of them.

For the group photo I went with my 14-24mm lens backed all the way out to 14mm. Those players were HUGE and I needed to be really wide to get them all in the frame. There was no possible way that I could've gotten all of them in that narrow hallway with a DX sensor and a 24-70mm. I barely got them with a 14mm on a full-frame, and on a DX a 24mm would effectively turn into a 36mm. I would have to be roughly twice as far away if I wanted to take a similar shot. And I would've lost a lot of detail in their faces too.

I've enjoyed shooting more flash photography. It's a fun spice to use to add some variety to your photos. And it's definitely enjoyable shooting below ISO 2000!

Men's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs Delaware State

2008-12-12T23:55:00.002-05:00

After a week off I got back behind the glass this evening to photograph the Terps in their matchup against their eastern neighbors, Delaware State. I arrived 15 minutes early for the event so that I would have enough time to prepare and get my laptop opened up and all my camera equipment assembled.

I bumped into Kirk Queen out on the floor along with Jackie Borowski. After some chit-chatting I bailed on the baseline and went up into the student section to get some heads-up shots of the Terps driving to the net.

When you're on the baseline you're at about knee-level with the players. Given that they're going up against a hoop that's roughly 8 feet up it can be tough to get player faces, and that's what a lot of people want to see. You can get some great down-the-court shots of the players breaking up court or playing defense, but in-so-far as dunks, layups, and dribble penetration you're often capturing a lot of necks and chins when you shoot from the baseline. The only exception to this is if you shoot early when the player goes up for the shot. Unfortunately, without the hoop in the frame it leaves context out of the shot and leaves it wanting more.

If you go up a little higher you can catch a good amount of the players faces as they drive towards the basket. You have to be careful though about where you go and how high up you position yourself. If you opt to go really high you have to go more towards the sideline so that the backboard doesn't block your shot. If you go sideline then the only shots you get are the baseline drives and those are few and far in between (most of the time the players drive up the middle).

Alternatively, you can stay directly behind the basket but then you aren't looking at the players straight on as they head to the hoop. It all goes back to something I discussed a few posts ago - think about where the players will be on the court, what hand they'll use when they shoot, and where you can be to best capture the shot. If players shoot with their right hand then you want to be on their left so that their shooting arm doesn't block their face.

I was happy with the shots I got from up in the students section this evening. I wouldn't want to camp out there for the whole game but having a few of the frames gives the gallery some spice.

I went back to flourescent white-balance this evening because I lost my WB presets Sunday evening when I attempted to adjust them at the Verizon Center for the BB&T classic. Flourescent worked pretty well but I'm making a mental note to bring my gray card to the next event in the Comcast Center. That's where I shoot most of my events so that's where I'm going to need to set my pre-set.

As usual I shot ISO 2500 with 1/500th shutter and f/3.5. The f/3.5 aperture is just narrow enough where I get some decent sharpness on my exposures and 2500 doesn't kick in a lot of noise. I can also do a lot of lightening in post-processing in Lightroom. I'm a lot happier with f/3.5 than I was with f/2.8.

This has made me rethink a lot of stuff about "fast glass".

A year ago the upper-bound on usable ISO for Nikon gear was 1600. Even then you had to lighten and blacken your photos in post-processing. But the D3 changed all that. I can effectively shoot ISO 6400 and it looks better than 1600 a year ago. When I shot 1600 I had not choice but to shoot f/2.8 and all my exposures were soft.

These days I regularly shoot above 1600 and I drop the aperture down to f/3.5. Sometimes I even go down to f/4. The results are noticeably crisper due to the reduced aperture.

"Slower" glass (f/4 or narrower) is significantly cheaper than "fast" glass (f/2.8 or wider). It is also a lot lighter than fast glass because there is less material used in constructing the optics. If all I shot was men's basketball at the Comcast Center and I was comfortable with ISO 3200 noise I could shoot with f/4 glass for a lot less money than f/2.8 and my shots would come out great! If that's the limit of what you use the lens for then you have to ask yourself: does it make sense to pay a lot more for glass you aren't going to use? If you don't plan to shoot between f/2.8 and f/4 due to the softness then why pay a premium for a f/2.8 lens?

The answer is obvious: versatility. Photographers don't typically just shoot in the same place day in and day out. Sports photographers sometimes do because they shoot in the same venues. But they almost always work on side-projects where the lighting is different. Then again, how often does a sports photographer need to pull out a 400mm f/2.8 lens in a wedding or a corporate board room?

Given my experience in technology I predict 2 trends over the next decade: there will be huge advancements in low-noise high-sensitivity CCDs, and arenas/gyms will become brighter as the cost of lighting continues to drop.

Given all that it doesn't seem too unreasonable to me to look ahead and see more sports photographers shooting with f/4 glass. I predict that this will happen inside arenas but will eventually spread to outdoor fields as the bulbs in the existing lights are replaced.

Accordingly, I'd say that if you are a sports photographer on a budget you should consider f/4 glass as an alternative to f/2.8 glass that is typically used in the field today. If you instead invest in a D700 you'll be able to shoot at ISO6400 and that will make up for the reduced amount of light a f/4 lens will capture. You'll also take sharper images than others shooting at f/2.8.

The only caution I'd add is: avoid variable aperture glass!

With variable aperture glass the maximum aperture varies as your zoom changes. In a f/4 - f/5.6 70-200mm lens the maximum aperture at 70mm is f/4 but the maximum aperture at 200mm is f/5.6. In many situations your shutter speed drives your exposure: in sports you want 1/500th to stop motion, in a bar on rear-curtain-sync you want 1/10th so you can blur the background. Many times you adjust your aperture so that your exposure is proper given your shutter. In sports you may say "ok, at 1/500th I need f/4 to properly expose". Alternatively, in the night-life rear-curtain-sync world you might need f/11 or f/13 to properly expose at 1/10th.

It's not trivial to find that proper exposure level. In sports you often stay in the same place and the light remains constant but in bars or other environments you can contend with shifting light sources and varying distances to your subject. You want to be able to say "f/11 at 1/10th second" is your exposure regardless of whether your zoom is 24mm or 50mm or 70mm. If the aperture changes as your zoom changes you can't do that.

Accordingly, while I say that slower glass may become more prominent I still believe that fixed-aperture glass will remain prominent for professional photographers. Dealing with variable-aperture glass introduces an unnecessary variable into a process that is difficult to begin with.

Men's Baksetball: Maryland Terrapins vs GWU Colonials

2008-12-10T22:53:00.002-05:00

After a late night out on Saturday shooting One Louder perform up at Sonoma's Bar and Grille I headed down to the Verizon Center in Washington DC to shoot the Terps face the GWU Colonials in the 14th Annual BB&T Classic.

Last season I didn't cover any Wizards or Mystics games so it's been awhile since I've been to the Verizon Center. In fact, it's been so long that I believe the last time I was there the facility was called the "MCI Center". Coming up the escalator I was very impressed by the recent improvements to the surrounding neighborhood. When Julie and I attended Caps games several years ago the neighborhoods were undergoing a revitalization and there was a lot of construction. Nowadays with all the construction finished the area around the Verizon Center is really quite nice.

I made my way to the media entrance and found my way down to the media room without any problems. The media room had a lot of equipment in it but I staked out a little corner and unpacked my gear. At times like these I'm happy that I have a Think Tank with a lockable strap and zipper. After taking out my gear I locked up my bag and secured it to the table.

Heading out to the floor I was amazed by the quality of the scoreboard in Verizon Center. It was spectacular! I ended up watching the trailing end of the Virginia Tech and Navy game on the scoreboard because it looked so great!

Once Virginia Tech and Navy vacated the floor I kept my eyes peeled for what side the Terps would take as their home bench. I wanted to shoot on that side so that I was close to Gary Williams and I'd get the Terps shooting towards me in the second half rather than the first. After settling in I tried to adjust my white balance but had little success without a neutral gray card. I tried to set the white balance off the back of my white press credential but failed - the colors came out green and disgusting. I ended up going down to auto white-balance in the first half and it didn't work well at all. The colors were inconsistently off and I was not at all impressed.

At half-time I changed my white balance to flourescent so that the results would at least be consistent. By going with a fixed white balance I can then at least copy and paste the white balance adjustment in Lightroom afterwards. When the camera auto-calculates the white balance it means that I need to adjust the white balance for each individual photo I publish. It's a lot easier to just make sure that every photo is off by the same amount and then apply the same correction in post processing.

Overall the lighting in Verizon is very good and I was able to shoot around ISO 2000 at f/3.5. I've been keeping my aperture tighter than f/2.8 lately so that I can increase my sharpness. With the good high-ISO performance of the D3 I can flirt with f/4 sometimes if I kick the ISO up to 3500 or 4000 in some cases.

Please go over and read the article and view the photos on Maryland's win over GWU at the BB&T Classic over on the DC Sports Box.

Competitive Cheer: Maryland Terrapins at JamFest

2008-12-06T20:54:00.002-05:00

The lesson for today is: Don't Trust Google Maps on the iPhone.

Let me say that again: Don't Trust Google Maps on the iPhone.

I split early from the men's soccer game so that I could come home, offload, swap lenses, pick up Julie, and head down to the Show Place Arena at the Maryland Equestrian Center in Upper Marlboro MD for Maryland Competitive Cheer's performance at JamFest. The arena has an address of 14900 Pennsylvania Avenue Upper Marlboro MD. Well, where Google points you sure isn't the Show Place Arena.

On the iPhone it's even worse - Google Maps places you INSIDE the Beltway!

Julie and I got all double-crossed up going back and forth on Route 4 trying to figure out where the Show Place Arena is located and ended up arriving late. With Maryland set to perform at 3:55 and our arrival time being no earlier than 4:10 I planned on just trying to get some shots of the cheerleaders after the event. Fortunately for me the performances were running about 30 minutes late and my arrival was about 5 minutes ahead of when the Terps headed out to perform.

I made my way around the floor and located a couple of the coaches of the competitive cheer team. I told them who I was with and arranged for a group photo after the routine. The coaches were excited to have someone photographing the routine of their team - I don't think they get very much photographic exposure.

During the routine I ripped through as many photos as possible on both bodies. When one body slowed down for the cache to be synced out to the compact flash I'd pick up the second body and start ripping frames. I haven't ever shot cheerleaders before so I didn't know what I was doing. As a result I figured I'd take the buck-shot approach and get as many photos as possible!

Afterwards I headed backstage and attached my SB-800 to one of my bodies. I have 3 SB-800s but I only brought 1 to the event today (I didn't want to have to carry the second or third around with me). I took some test shots over near the water jugs and settled in on ISO 800, 1/160th second exposure, and f/6.3 aperture. I wanted the aperture to be pretty high because I knew that the girls would have to be in 2 or 3 rows in order to all fit in the frame. I also wanted them all to be tack sharp and I knew that I needed something above f/5.6.

It was really easy to get the girls lined up for the group shot. They all just piled in and actually lined up quite perfectly from a balance standpoint. I took 2 shots on the 24-70mm lens and then I got close up for a couple of 14mm shots. The cheerleaders out towards the edge of the frame are a bit distorted but the ones in the middle look really good. I made sure I got players only as well as players and coaches.

Finding a location for the shot was a bit difficult. The arena didn't have any good backdrops I could use so we just went into a tunnel and I took the photo there. With solid green walls on either side and with no light coming from the back of the tunnel it created a decent enough scene for the photo. Plus with the SB-800 set to +1.3 exposure compensation and my aperture at f/6.3 I was pretty safe in that very little light from the background came through into the photo.

Julie and I stuck around in the arena until the conclusion of the event and waited for the awards ceremony. It took about an hour before all was said and done and in the end it probably wasn't worth the wait. There wasn't a gold or silver trophy and the teams didn't line up afterwards for photos. They just accepted it and headed for the bus. I got a shot of a few girls with the trophy and maybe the magazine will use it.

Afterwards we headed home through the somewhat heavy snow, warmed up some leftover spaghetti, and settled down in the living room. I got through all of my soccer and cheer photos and even was able to get both blog posts up before heading out to the One Louder show in Columbia later on.

Men's Soccer: Maryland Terrapins vs Creighton

2008-12-06T20:29:00.002-05:00

On Friday evening the weather forecasters in the DC area began to forecast the chance for some light snow on Saturday afternoon. I crossed my fingers hoping that I would be able to snap a few shots of the Maryland Men's Soccer team competing in snowshowers.

Unfortunately Mother Nature didn't cooperate.

None-the-less, the weather was a decent overcast and that made for a relatively painless exposure. When the light varies it can be difficult to properly adjust exposure. Additionally, changing your white balance can be a problem. You could rely on auto white-balance settings but those sometimes don't work too well.

This was my first soccer game in awhile where I've shot with 2 bodies and I didn't quite know what to expect. Last season I shot with 2 bodies but this year I've just used the D3 with the 400mm lens. At times I've felt too long and have wished I had a second body for shorter glass. Today there were a bunch of opportunities to get some shots on shorter glass and I took advantage of them whenever I could.

However, in post processing I found that I might've selected one of the shots rather than very many. I shot with both cameras set to f/4, ISO 1000 and around 1/1000th of a second shutter. f/4 at 70mm doesn't offer very good isolation against the background so I should've considered going closer to f/3.2 or even f/2.8 for the shorter glass so that I could improve the isolation of my subject.

I had a bit of an equipment blip today while working with the bodies. The power on one of the D3 was a bit flaky and would go out several times. I've seen this before on this body and I'm considering sending it in for service or repair. The battery is fully charged but all of the sudden power will go out on the body and the low-battery icon will blink. I turn off the camera and turn it back on and it works.

I swapped batteries and the problem persisted on the same body, which leads me to believe it's a problem in the contacts between the battery and the body. When I shoot landscape I didn't have a problem. But when I rotated the camera counter-clockwise and shot vertical I had a problem. Maybe I'll try rotating clockwise so the battery is on top and see how that goes...

Last night I reorganized some of the filesystems on my server at home. I have a 650GB RAID-1 mirror on my fileserver and I've used 65GB for pictures. Music, Movies, and TV Shows occupies another 160GB, and my active files chew up around 10GB. On top of that I have the OS and that occupies some amount of real estate. What it all boils down to is: I'm running low on internal storage.

I've used external storage as mirrors for a few years now and it has proven to be reliable. I disconnected my 3 external USB drives from being directly connected to my fileserver so that I could run them through a hub and connect even more external drives. I'm going to allocate more space on the RAID to my imagery and offload TV Shows, Movies, and Music onto an external drive which I'll mirror elsewhere. Lastly, I picked up a 1TB Western Digital USB hard drive for around $139 last night on NewEgg.

Keeping all my photos safe and sound is really important. Hopefully with the hub and the new external hard drive coming I'll free up some space for increasing my image library.

Dave Lovell wrote an article on Maryland's win over Creighton and posted it over on the DC Sports Box along with a photo gallery.

Men's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs Michigan

2008-12-05T22:42:00.002-05:00

A few posts ago I talked about picking up a second body for basketball season. With a lot of support from Julie I moved forward and picked up a used D3 for a pretty penny. I've been really fortunate to have such an understanding wife that encourages my photographic interests. Without her support I wouldn't be where I am today and wouldn't be thinking about where I could be a year from now.

Shooting basketball with a second body is no new experience to me. Last winter I covered the Terps using a Nikon D2H and a D200. I was always torn about how to pair the bodies with the glass because the D2H offered a higher framerate but a lot worse high-ISO performance. Do you go short on the D200 with a 70-200mm lens and get 4fps under the basket for dunks or do you opt for the 9fps the D2H offers but get a lot of grain in your pictures? It was a tough decision.

Fortunately this year I have 2 of the same bodies (D3) and that removes that mental exercise from the table. I shot this evening's game using a 300mm and 70-200mm lens. I carried my 24-70mm lens out to the baseline but didn't attach it. There were some opportunities for some great wide-angle shots but overall the 70-200mm did the job well. It has great reach even on an FX sensor and can get me out to midcourt pretty well. I can also shoot the opposing sideline reasonably well. Lastly, the 70-200mm is great when there is full-court pressure and you want to be wide until the team crosses the timeline.

It didn't take long for me to warm up to the dual-camera shooting mode this evening. There's a lot of bulky equipment to balance and the straps make it difficult. I also use Aqua Tech eyepieces to prevent my forehead from being marred by the hot-shoe mount on the top of the camera. The Aqua Techs stick out from the camera body about 3/4 of an inch and are a great hook for catching straps. Ideally I'd work without straps because then I wouldn't risk any snags as I transition between bodies. But I need the straps for safely transporting the cameras back and forth.

I shot ISO 2500, 1/500th, and f/3.5 for the entire game on both cameras. Last game I shot f/4 and I wanted to see how sharp f/3.5 would look. At f/3.5 I let in a little more light but still had some reasonable sharpness. The bigger difference I noticed was the poor performance of the auto white-balance system. On my first body I manually set the white-balance using a neutral gray card. I didn't bring the gray card with me this evening so I set the second body to auto. The performance was garbage. The whites were way off and everything was a mess.

Fortunately I picked up on this pretty quickly and set a programmed white balance based on the M on the baseline. It's not as accurate as the neutral-gray card but it worked reasonably well.

I used continuous high speed shooting for the entire game but stayed on top of reviewing the photos during timeouts and breakpoints. I really feel good when I'm able to rip through almost all of my photos and delete the bad ones before I leave the court at the end of the game. I realize that I should probably spend more time socializing with the other photographers because that could lead to more work but at the same time I want to be able to get through my post-processing as quickly as possible and deleting the photos on camera is a huge timesaver.

At halftime I offloaded both cards onto the MBP and began the Lightroom import process. I made it back out to the court just in time for the beginning of the second half. This worked out well because after the game I was able to copy over both second-half cards to the hard drive before shuffling off to the Gary Williams press conference.

During the press-conference I got through my first round of picks and had my photos narrowed down to around 100 potentially publishable shots. After getting home I pieced through those and got it down to around 25 that I quickly captioned and published.

It's nice that things are moving along so quickly with my post processing and publishing. Last year when I had to write an article for most of the games it was a large time-suck to get through everything before heading to bed. Many times I went to bed well after my wife and I kept looking forward to the day where I can simply shoot, caption, publish, and head to bed. Happily that time has arrived. How long it will last remains to be seen but for now I'll enjoy it while it is here!

Please go and take a look at Andy Churchill's article on Maryland's win over Michigan on the DC Sports Box.

Women's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs UCLA

2008-11-24T23:43:00.003-05:00

After a bit of sleuthing around of aerial photographs with my Dad on Sunday morning I packed up some glass and headed over to Comcast for an afternoon tilt between the Terps and the visiting UCLA Bruins.

While sitting on the baseline I thought about a comment Mike Busada made on Friday night: "You never seen Canons out here anymore. It's f***in' awesome, man!" I laughed when Mike made that comment on Friday evening but this afternoon it really sunk in. Nikon has really turned the market around. Last year I was definitely in the minority with my Nikon equipment and the 1D Mark III was all the rage by everyone. I constantly was enticed to "switch to Canon now before I invested too heavily in Nikon gear." I resisted for mostly financial reasons but I was very tempted at the time after seeing the high ISO capabilities on the 1D line.

In retrospect that would've been a huge mistake. Nowadays Nikon dominates the sideline and the D3 is essentially the de-facto standard. At the football game I took note of the photographers and what brand they shot - I counted 3 shooting with Canon gear and 14 with Nikon gear (D700 and D3 mostly, but some D300). Last year it primarily Canon with a spattering of Nikon. In fact, I remember having conversations with Greg Fiume about if he was going to switch to Canon given all the glass and bodies they were kicking out at the time.

It is truly remarkable the turnaround that has occurred in the market. I'm kinda surprised for not having taken notice until Mike pointed it out but now that I'm looking for the trend it's really in your face. I'm so glad I stuck with Nikon gear!

In my last women's basketball post I stated that I was going to take a stab at shooting single frame from the baseline for at least 1 full half. I decided to have a go at it in the first half and boy was it difficult at times! Shooting single frame allows you to time your shots for the exact moment. The downside is that you have to be very skilled to hit that exact moment! In perimeter shooting plays it's not too difficult to time a players release, but when they drive or penetrate it becomes a lot more difficult.

During the game I was so tempted to flip back to continuous high speed so I could rip 9FPS while KT drove the lane or Marissa backed in for an in-the-lane shot. But I resisted and stuck to my plan of 1 frame at a time. The nice part of this shooting strategy is that it didn't yield many photos to post process! Nearly every shot was a keeper and I only had around 30 or so frames to import by halftime!

While shooting 1 frame at a time I thought a little bit about how I would approach this learning exercise with 2 bodies. Would I shoot 1 frame at a time on both a long lens and a short lens, or would I switch to CHS on the short lens so I could get the dribble penetration shots? The truth is I don't know how I would approach it...

I also wondered how other photographers that use strobes would approach this. If Greg's strobes were down would he shoot CHS or would he switch to single shots and rely on his timing to get the right shots? I'll have to ask a few people the next time there's a Maryland event.

A week or so ago I blogged about the importance of keeping an eye open for things going on off the court. This afternoon such an opportunity came up when Greivis Vasquez showed up and signed a bunch of autographs for a middle school girls basketball team that attended the game. I noticed him walking along the sideline and saw him head up into the stands and towards the invited guests. A few minutes later I noticed him sitting down with them while they all practically climbed on top of one another to get his autograph and talk with him. With a 20 point lead and 6 minutes remaining in regulation I decided to run back to the media room to grab my 14-24mm ultra-wide lens and SB-800 speedlight.

I raced back out and up into the stands where I said hello to Greivis and asked the girls if they wanted a picture with Vasquez. They all jumped up nearly simultaneously and formed a circle around the iconic Team Captain for the Terps.

Without a light meter I was basically shooting blind there in the stands. I set the ISO to 1000, WB to flash, and slowed the shutter down to around 1/400th with an aperture of f/5. The power correction was set to something ridiculous like -2.0 but I fired anyway. The shot came out really dark so I quickly stepped up the correction to -0.3 and took another shot. The second one came out much better although the colors were still slightly off in the end.

I handed a business cards to one of the players who frantically whisked it away to their coach sitting in another section. A few hours after the game I received an email from the coach who didn't seem to believe the players who told them that a professional photographer took their photo with Greivis. I laughed and replied to him with the photo and said that I hoped he had enjoyed the game. He responded today that he and the team had a great time at Maryland and that the photo would add to their memories. I was happy I could capture it for them.

At the football game on Saturday a similar situation arose when Testudo boosted a 6 year fan out of the stands and brought him down onto the field. I quickly spun around and snapped a few frames and then later found the mom and dad and gave them my business card. After a few emails back and forth it turns out that the 6 year old took the photo to school the next day to show all his friends and his teacher.

Photography is a great skill. I'm so fortunate to be learning about it and have Julie that encourages it in me. I can't wait to see what the next things are that I'll shoot.

Football: Maryland Terrapins vs Florida State

2008-11-24T23:07:00.002-05:00

Friday night I was up pretty late post processing basketball photos and publishing them out to the various sites where I post photos for safe keeping once they are all touched up and ready to be viewed. Saturday I laid in bed watching Discovery Channel, Nat Geo, The Learning Channel, and Animal Planet while my wife Julie worked her second of three jobs up at my company's office. Yes, I have a good life - I'm laying in bed while my wife is up at my office working on a project making some extra scratch.

After a decent recovery I emerged from the house around 4pm to head out to REI to purchase some reinforcements for the cold. This past week it's been in the middle 30s during the day and dropping down into the 20s at night. With gametime scheduled for 7:45pm I knew it was going to be a cold one, and if there's one thing that outdoor sports photography has taught me it's this: be prepared for the weather.

If you're focused on your wetness, your coldness, or your sleepiness you're not going to focus on the play on the field. Purchasing $50 worth of goretex pants and jackets or a $30 windproof hat is worth it in the long haul and will allow you to be prepared for the eventual shoot where the weather just doesn't play nice. Often times those soaker games can lead to the best shots where you capture clumps of dirt flying up in the air or a player wringing out a jersey.

My purchases at REI this afternoon included some small sized goretex gloves along with a wind-proof hat and some portable air-activated heat packs for both my feet and my gloves. Kirsten Olsen introduced me to a sweet pair of gloves last year that I've sworn by ever since - they are essentially a glove with the fingers cut off at your last knuckle. However, they also come with a protective flap that is like a mitten in that it slips over your 4 fingers. The thumb comes with a flap as well. What's nice about this glove is that it leaves your pointer finger and thumb exposed giving you plenty of dexterity to work the dials on your camera.

It's really important that a photographer have good sensitivity on their pointer-finger because the shutter-release/auto-focus button is very sensitive. You want to partially depress the shutter to activate the AF system but you don't necessarily want to trip the shutter. You need a very soft touch and wrapping your hands in lots of protective gear, while certainly insulates you from the cold, reduces your ability to properly apply the AF system.

When I went to REI I put a lot of time into selecting the right pair of gloves. I intentionally bought gloves that are too small for me because I wanted my finger to be tight against the neoprene so that I have the best sensitivity possible. I also wanted to make sure that they would fit under my existing photography gloves!

Prior to the game I tailgated for a few hours with my family. We've had a standing tailgate for several years now and it seems like every year we encounter a freezing cold night game that forces us to bring out the blankets and quadruple wrap ourselves for warmth. Tonight was no exception from the trend and both Andrew and Haydee and I all brought pocket warmers and toe warmers. I was very impressed with how well the toe warmers functioned - my toes were never cold during the evening!

My strategy during the tailgate was to ingest as much food and drink as possible so that during the game my digesting process would create a lot of heat to keep me warm! It was pretty bad - I was gorching myself at the trough of chicken wings, chicken breasts, bratwurst, and friend chicken from Popeyes. On top of that I tore down a couple of Coca Colas. By gametime I was set to go!

I arrived early on the field so that I could catch the seniors. I walked out onto the field and double checked with Greg to see if other photographers could shoot the seniors. After an approving nod I positioned myself around the midfield mark and waited for the first players to emerge. After a few snaps I noticed that Coach Friedgen was shaking the hands and hugging the players before they ran out to midfield. With everyone else snapping the typical family shot of the seniors I raced up the field to grab the shots of Ralph and his senior class. It was a bit of a tear-jerker seeing Ralph hug and swell up while each senior gave him an enormous hug and thanked him for believing in them for the past 4 or 5 years. I felt pretty fortunate to be in that spot catching those moments. Of course, those photos will probably never see the light of day and ever be published because I don't know how much Ralph would appreciate that sort of thing. Who knows though - you never know who might call one day looking for an archived photo of Coach Friedgen and a senior. I still pull out my old shots of Scott McBrien being hugged by his grandfather after winning the MVP in a bowl game several years back.

After the senior ceremony but before the game I dropped my 400mm off in the closed part of the endzone and traveled up into student section with my 24-70mm lens. I stood perched up at the top above all the black'ed out students and awaited the fireworks that would welcome the team to the field. I wanted to shoot wide so I could capture the fireworks display. I shot at a pretty decent ISO (maybe 1600?) at f/3.2. Prior to the display I tried to anticipate how high the fireworks would rise. I was really off in retrospect! None the less, I'm glad I shot landscape so that I could capture as much of the stadium as possible.

While running around with my double-gloves and wind-proof hat I became really hot! I was so hot after climbing up to the top of the student section that I had to shed my gloves and hand warmers and cool down. I guess all that chicken and soda must've done the trick! However, after the game began and I was back on the field the temperatures settled in and I was glad to have both layers of gloves.

I decided to shoot the game at f/4 and ISO 2500. From time to time I had to drop down to f/3.5 or f/3.2 because the Terps wore black. However, when FSU was in the foreground I had plenty of reflected light at f/4 and ISO 2500.

I traveled to the visiting side of the field and was very surprised by how little light there was in comparison to Maryland's side of the field. The Athletics Department installed some additional lighting in Tyser Tower this season and the increase in light behind the Maryland bench is really noticeable. It was easily a full stop if not more!

I was surprised to notice a couple of photographers shooting at ISO 6400 during the game. They were all using a D3 and shooting through 400mm glass. I also noticed that they all shoot for newspapers - I'm not sure how much of a role that plays in their decision to crank the sensitivity up to ISO 6400.

After a long game I packed it in and took my last walk up the long steps of Byrd Stadium for awhile. This game was the end of the home schedule for Maryland and marked the conclusion of my first season of shooting Terrapin football. It was tremendously enjoyable and I learned a lot during the process. I wish the Terps the best of luck in their match against BC and look forward to the bowl season hoping that Maryland will have the opportunity to tack on another win in late December or early January.

Men's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs Vermont

2008-11-22T02:48:00.004-05:00

Wow, what a game. I realize that many people on the baseline and in the reporters booth are supposed to maintain an indifferent perspective on the events unfolding on the court but tonight all I could say is wow! Both Maryland and Vermont played with their hearts out on the hardwood and it was extremely exciting to be so close to such a hard fought match between the two teams.

Maryland and Vermont were well suited for one another and both teams had to put all they had on the court this evening to earn the W. Maryland came up with it in the end but Vermont put up a formidable battle. As a photographer such a matchup is a great opportunity to capture some great moments of competition.

The space was pretty tight this evening on the baseline but spots for both DC Sports Box and Inside the Shell were allocated on the baseline.

Mike Busada stepped in for Dave Lovell and shot the game this evening for the DC Sports Box. I enjoy working with Mike on assignments - he works full-time in the photography field and has a lot of valuable insight he's willing to offer. In the past I'd look to Mike to offer technical advice on matters like exposure. Nowadays, with 250 games under my belt, exposure is not so much of a concern any more. I'm now trying focus on dynamics like capturing the mood and moment of the game.

How do you characterize that? Is it a shot of a fan with veins protruding from their neck while cheering on their home team? Is it the home coach calling a play or giving a stern look towards the referees? Is it the team captain amping up the crowd with an on-court emotional display like a fist-pump or a celebratory scream?

I feel like at this point I'm competent enough with the mechanics of photography to capture enough in-game shots to accurately portray the story of the game. I want to focus now on displaying the emotion or "bite" in the game. What was it that makes the Vermont game memorable versus the 20 other games that the Terps will play this season? To do that I realize I need the advice of photographers more experienced than myself. To me it seems like proper exposure settings are simply a pre-requisite into this higher level class.

As is always the case, my struggle is to find someone willing to teach and offer me advice. Certainly Mike is a great photographer but his primary focus is in subject matters different from sports. And the people I sit next to are people that look at my product as a potential competitor to their own offerings. How can I learn the subtle art of emotional sports photography when the lessons are so highly protected by the practitioners of the art? That's what I wrestle with...

In the mean time I continue walk down this learning process realizing that my path is not straight and is not the most efficient approach towards becoming a great sports photographer. However, I accept the inefficiencies because I'm aware of the free market and realize that my potential competitors have little to gain in offering my insight into their tradecraft.

As is always the case I continue to show up to games and do my best to convey both the flow and emotion of the event. It looks more and more likely that if I'm going to learn the art of sports photography I'm going to have to bump and bounce my way through it. While it's certainly suboptimal I can accept it and I have the perseverance to see it through - after all I've shot 250+ games now at UM.

Women's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs James Madison

2008-11-20T22:58:00.002-05:00

This evening I was awarded with a plastic credential from UM with my name on it. I'm very proud of that achievement. It was very rewarding to see my name and photo on a plastic credential produced by Maryland. I've shot over 250 games at the University and written hundreds of articles for the DC Sports Box. Receiving that piece of plastic, as silly as that sounds, really meant a lot.

Tonight I introduced a new photographer from our company to Maryland. Kim Lynch shot her first Maryland event this evening and I was happy to walk step her through the rules and procedures. We both sat baseline while she shot for the DC Sports Box and I shot for Inside the Shell magazine.

In the second half I decided to diverge from my normal high-speed shooting process. I switched to single frame exposure and I changed my aperture from f/2.8 to f/3.5. That required an increase in ISO 3200 but on a D3 the increased noise is negligible.

I attempted the single-shot approach last year when shooting my D200 and I decided to try it out again this year. When I look at Greg Fiume's photos I think to myself that the most difficult aspect of his shots is his timing. Whereas I (and everyone else) can rip through 9 FPS of shots during a drive Greg gets a single shot to fire his flash. It takes a lot of skill to time the shot perfectly.

For the second half I went to single-shot shooting mode and relied on my own timing to get my shots. To my surprise I didn't do too poorly. My timing is a lot better than last year, and of course that's no surprise considering I've shot a lot of games since then. None-the-less I was still surprised how many decent shots I got using single-exposure shooting mode. I was very pleased with a few shots I got of Marissa Coleman driving to the net, including the one I featured at the top of this page.

I haven't decided how much I'm going to pursue the single-shot shooting mode approach to sports photography. Installing strobes in the ceiling of Comcast is simply not an option due to prohibitive costs. But, there is value in shooting single-shot mode even if you don't fire strobes. The value comes from your ability as a photographer to time the moment and pick the exact split-second moment you want to capture and show to the world. If you rip through 9 frames per second all you're doing is sitting in a privileged spot with an expensive capture device and then picking the best shot from the collection. If you can time it right, get the focus sharp, and get that perfect shot ... well ... that's pretty good.

So even though I have no intentions of strobing the arena I still am thinking about shooting single-frame so that I improve my own photography skill. We'll see how risky that proves. Will I fall back to a 9FPS rip on a big play? I don't know. Seems like the best approach is to try out the single-shot approach on women's games. If I can make it through an entire women's game using single-shot maybe I'll take a stab at shooting the second half of a men's game single-shot.

Men's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs Youngstown State

2008-11-20T22:43:00.003-05:00

I was pretty late to this evenings game and arrived in the media room with 2 minutes before tipoff. I had barely enough time to take my laptop out and get it powered before I had to race out to the court to find my spot on the hardwood.

There were quite a few more photographers and TV people on the baseline this evening than there were last week. The early-season games seem to be hit and miss with space on the sideline: Maryland leaves open a bunch of spots for the TV folks and sometimes they show and sometimes they don't. Tonight a bunch of TV folks showed up and that crunched space a lot.

I took a spot on the close end of the court for the first half because I arrived late and didn't scope out a space on the shooting end the Terps use in the first half. By the time I made it out there all the spots were taken. It was ok though - I had plenty of shooting opportunities from the far side. I simply pulled out my 400mm lens and shot long for the majority of the first half.

Just as halftime commenced I marked my spot on the shooting end of the court for the Terps for the second half. I grabbed a spot towards the 3 point line. Fortunately nobody moved my gear and by the time I made it back out to the court after halftime everything was in it's place.

I like basketball games a lot because I have time at various points to review pictures and delete the bad ones. By the time I make it towards the end of the game I usually have gone through the first batch of my photos and am working on a refined data set. In other events I'm reviewing 600+ photos afterwards, but in basketball by the time I get home I usually have it down to around 100 photos, of which 40 are publishable.

It's kinda funny to think about how a couple of years ago when I shot my first games I brought my little Nikon bag and placed it on the back of the basketball rim while shooting. I didn't even know where the media room, much less how everything worked. It's good knowing where to go, where to put your stuff, and when you can review your photos.

I started uploading my photos to the Inside the Shell website. We're using a piece of Joomla software named Phoca. Phoca is a gallery viewer and it is quite awful. My wife Julie teases me and says that I never think that any software is good. She's right - I have really high standards before I say a certain software package is good. But seriously - Phoca is ... well ... not good. To post a gallery I have to go through about 10 steps that involve repeating the fact that this gallery should be called "2008-11-18: Youngstown State". Doing anything in software should involve the minimal amount of steps possible to ensure that it is done right. Offering the user lots of choices and forcing them to repeat themselves about things like gallery names (e.g. "2008-11-18: Youngstown State") inevitably leads to mistakes because humans are imperfect.

I don't plan on trying to improve the gallery situation because it's not my problem. I have plenty of work on my plate and trying to take on revamping the gallery infrastructure for Inside the Shell is pretty low on my priority list at the moment. None-the-less, it's been a valuable experience to learn how to post images up to Phoca. Even knowing what NOT to do is a good lesson and helps you avoid making the same mistakes.

Women's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs Delaware State

2008-11-17T22:33:00.002-05:00

On Sunday I headed back to the hardwood for a women's basketball game between the Lady Terps and Delaware State.

Women's Basketball is where sports photography began for me a few years back and it remains one of my most enjoyed events to shoot. Access is very convenient and there is plenty of room on the baseline to shoot and try new things. I don't have to worry about bumping into many people with my photo gear and if I want to move down to the other side of the court I can without a problem.

This afternoon I didn't try out any new techniques other than using my 300mm lens. I've used the 300mm lens in men's basketball for some scrimmages and for a couple of games but I really wanted to give it a shot in women's basketball to see how it performed. In women's basketball the rules are slightly different and that changes the tempo of the game. The ladies shoot with 30 seconds on the shot clock rather than 35 and they don't have a 10 second back court rule. As a result you can get a team that likes to double team in the backcourt to force turnovers and that changes how you shoot the game.

In men's hoops you grab your long glass as soon as the play under your basket is over because the offensive team needs to get out of the backcourt quickly and past the midcourt line. In women's hoops half the clock could be burned in the backcourt so you don't want to jump on the 300mm as quickly. However, shooting a player between yourself and midcourt on a 300mm produces a wonderful image if you can catch them in focus properly!

There aren't any universal do's and dont's in sports photography in so far as what body and lens to use so I was looking forward to my first women's game of the season to see how useful the 300mm lens was. It came as no surprise to me that I went to the 300mm for most of my shots, including shots in the front court. I sat out along the 3 point line and shot under the basket at the far baseline and 3 point line. That distance was just perfect for a 300mm lens but it would've been too far for 200mm and too close for 400mm.

The 300mm lens has really expanded the variety of shots I publish from my basketball games. In the past I relied on my 70-200mm for penetration shots while I used my 17-55mm DX lens for my under-the-basket shots. With the FX sensor I'm enjoying using my 300mm glass for across-midcourt shots as well as shots on the near side of the court. When I switched to the 70-200mm it was with the thought process of "I guess I need some layup shots".

After the game I headed up to the rafters to take a look at the basket through my 300mm lens. Greg was right in his comments about the difficulty of the shot - there are definite challenges from up there. When looking down at the glossy floor the lights from above create a noticeable reflection on the court. However, if I shot using the 400mm lens I would be close enough to just capture the faces and fingers of the players as they went up for the basket.

I have some more tricks up my sleeve that I'm working on with this shoot. I don't want to spoil anything by posting it online and I need to talk with some people to verify some assumptions. I'm crossing my fingers though that I can pull this off. If it works it could be some really cool shots!

Women's Basketball: GW Colonials vs UMBC Retrievers

2008-11-17T21:54:00.002-05:00

After the Maryland Field Hockey Game I high-tailed it home to scoop up an awaiting Julie and race off to the campus of George Washington for an afternoon matchup against regional challenger UMBC. The Lady Retrievers were the first on the regular season schedule for the Lady Colonials and it promised to be an interesting shoot.

Marc Irlandez, a GWU alum, agreed to cover most of the 2008-2009 season for both the women's and men's teams. He lives down near the GWU campus so the travel time for him is quite reasonable. In comparison it took Julie and I approximately 45 minutes to travel from College Park MD up around the northern side of the beltway, down the GW Memorial Parkway, and then into Washington DC before we arrived at the Smith Center. Fortunately with Julie in the car I was able to bail out and shoot while she drove around looking for a parking spot. In the end she ended up parked in a No Parking spot just outside the stadium while she waited for me. I don't know how many other wives would hang out in a car for an hour while their husband shot a women's basketball game so I consider myself extremely lucky.

It is very challenging to find decent photographers to work with that are skilled and reliable. Most people that are skilled want to shoot the high profile NBA, NFL, or NHL games. Very few want to sit down at a collegiate women's basketball game and rip off a thousand frames. As a result we have limited resources to work with when lining up coverage for certain teams and games.

Accordingly, my plan this afternoon was to capture enough action photos for a gallery while also capturing isolation shots of as many players as possible. This posed a real challenge because I promised my wife waiting in the car that I would leave the arena no later than 3pm.

Having a single camera body made this a real challenge. I stuck with the 300mm lens for the most part so that I could focus on isolation shots but I switched up to my 70-200mm "go anywhere" lens for some action shots. I also used the 24-70mm lens under the basket for a handful of wide shots that showed the arena and the players.

The only issue I had during the afternoon was the varying color temperature of the overhead bulbs. I've read in the past (but cannot find the link) about variations in color temperature in certain bulbs as the intensity in them oscillates in relation to the 60Hz electrical current. The idea behind the article was that as power enters the bulb the bulb begins to emit light at a certain temperature. As more power enters the bulb the temperature changes. Eventually the bulb powers off and there's no light emitted. This happens 60 times a second because that's how electricity in this country oscillates.

If you shot at a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second or slower you would have received light from all the different temperatures from the bulb and every shot would have a consistent color in it. But if you shot faster than 1/60th you'd only get a small segment of those colors and the faster you shot the narrower the sampling your camera would have. If you had 1 bulb producing all your light you might be able to compensate but with N bulbs overhead each oscillating at slightly different schedules it makes it nearly impossible to correct automatically.

The Volleyball and Wrestling teams at UM play in the Comcast Pavilion and I've experienced this problem first hand. You can fire 4 shots at the net using a fixed WB setting and come up with completely different tints on your shots. Unfortunately the arena where GW plays basketball suffers from the same issue.

Most of my isolation photos of players from my GWU will have to be touched up with manual WB adjustments. In Volleyball you often have the white stripe of the net you can use as a reference point. In the case of basketball the Colonials where a white jersey but the imperfections in the fabric make adjustment difficult at times.

Ahh, if only we just had strobes...

Field Hockey: Maryland Terrapins vs Albany

2008-11-17T21:28:00.002-05:00

Saturday morning the Terps field hockey team kicked off their quest for a 2008 championship trophy by playing in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament on their home field in College Park. I attended the game, as did Yuchen, and we got some good shots of the team.

When I awoke on Saturday morning I took one look out the window and remarked "this is going to be a difficult game." The weather was highly volatile - lots of wind and low clouds. The ground was moist from periodic rains earlier in the morning but the sun also broke through the clouds from time to time.

I never let the camera control the exposure for me. I always use manual exposure settings and use the camera meter as a hint for where my shutter should reside. Most of the time I keep my aperture locked at f/2.8, f/3.5, f/4, or the occasional f/5.6 while I set the ISO at a sensitivity sufficient to give me 1/500th or faster at the minimum aperture I'm willing to use. On a cloudy day I might need ISO 800 for 1/500th on a f/5.6 exposure so I'll keep the ISO at 800. I can open up the aperture to f/4, f/3.5 or even f/2.8 and handle the added light by increasing the shutter to 1/2000th, 1/4000th or even faster.

When the weather is variable your success is tied to your instincts and your cameras built-in meter. If it's cloudy and my subjects are properly exposed at 1/500th, f/4, ISO 640 but then the sun shoots through for a few seconds the meter may not pick up on it properly. In that case it's up to you the photographer to recognize the change in the amount of light and to increase your shutter speed to accommodate the additional light. Eventually the meter catches up but at the point the play may be over.

So the bottom line is: in variable weather you have to pay religious attention to your exposure settings or else you risk over or under exposing your subjects. And you can't exactly ask for a do-over in sports photography. You either get the shot or you don't.

I took my standard "sun over my shoulders" shots this afternoon in the first half, although a minority of my shots were in direct sunlight. Most of my shots took place under cloudy conditions. I managed to grab a few frames when the sun broke through but those shots were few and far in between.

At halftime I sorted through my 300 or so exposures from the first half and narrowed it down to around 80 photos I'd be willing to import into Lightroom. In the second half I looked for Yuchen and noticed he grabbed the "sun over my shoulder" spot on the far end of the field. As a result I decided to stick down near the scoreboard and try my hand at some halo shots.

Shooting halo shots of the players can be fun and is a nice change of pace. You look for a spot where you are shooting directly into the sun and you meter the players face. This often overexposes the background (which can be ok) while creating a bright halo of light around the players hair and extremities. It looks really cool when done right.

Field Hockey halo shots are especially fun because of the wet nature of the field. The operations crew pumps an enormous amount of water out onto the field to keep it safe for the players and the water droplets throw off a ton of light when you shoot into the sun. Additionally, water drips off the sticks of the players and the light piercing those droplets create an awesome effect.

As the Terps raced up the field I kept looking for the halo shots. Unfortunately the sun didn't cooperate as much as I would've liked and I was only offered a few chances to capture my water-droplet-frozen-in-mid-air halo shot. I love the effect though and next season I'm going to shoot into the sun more often!

I also decided to shoot the game at f/4 and f/4.5. Most of the other games I covered this year I shot at f/2.8. I've been told "you paid for the f/2.8 glass so why not use it". There's some validity to that statement but the sharpness at f/2.8 is less than if you shot at higher apertures. Each lens and camera body varies in where it's sharpest but you can generally say that the narrower the aperture the sharper the image.

There was a huge difference in the sharpness of my photos today. The f/4 aperture really worked well and my subjects were well isolated because I shot on a 400mm lens.

Today's game most likely marks the end of my coverage of Terrapin Field Hockey for the next 9 months or so. I'm shooting the women's basketball game on Sunday afternoon while Yuchen covers the Field Hockey game for the DC Sports Box, and I won't be able to travel to Louisville to cover the Terps when they compete for NCAA gold. It's been a good season and like last year I've learned a lot from the experience. From a cloudy lens during one game to shooting seniors at 14mm to my goalie-mask-speedlight pose it's been a very enjoyable and memorable season. I wish the Terps good luck in the Final Four in Louisville and a safe offseason until Fall 2009.

Men's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs Bucknell

2008-11-17T20:39:00.002-05:00

Friday evening rolled around and the Terps opened their 2008-2009 regular season with competition against the visiting team of Bucknell from Pennsylvania.

I've been to the Comcast Center a few times this season for various media day events, scrimmages, and exhibition games. However, tonight was pretty exciting because it's the official start of the season where records start to tally up and the win column gets a lot of attention.

A lot of familiar faces were on hand on the baseline and it was nice to see everyone again. I had my laptop with me in the car but I chose not to take it inside during the game. Instead I decided to just work with camera gear and prune down my photos on camera.

In the past I brought my laptop inside Comcast with me and would review photos and prune out the bad shots during the post-game press conference. This year I'm shooting for Inside the Shell and I don't have any writing responsibilities so that changes the equation somewhat. When writing for the DC Sports Box the post-game press conference was a perfect time to wade through my photos in Aperture and tag the bad ones for removal. By the time the press conference ended I had both offloaded my imagery from the night while at the same time pruning my out of focus shots. After a quick stop-off in the locker room to get some player quotes I'd end up back in the media room where I'd pack up my things and leave. At that point all the traffic had left the arena and the roads were open for me to head home, making my commute time about 5 minutes from Comcast Center to my home over in College Heights Estates.

I'll have to play it by ear for the first couple of games and see how things go in so far as sticking around or leaving after the game. If I leave immediately I'll be caught up in traffic and I'll miss the post-game press conference. However, by leaving early I might actually make it out before the masses and get home before the rest of my family! Hmmm...

Settings for tonight were the standard ISO 2500 with f/2.8 aperture and 1/500th shutter speed. I used a custom WB that I set a few weeks ago during a scrimmage and that has worked really well. Nothing too unusual happened during the event tonight in so far as equipment problems - everything functioned properly and went smoothly.

I've been shooting more and more with the 300mm in basketball and I really love how close you can get to the players using that lens. The 200mm simply doesn't isolate the players as much and the 300mm really gets you up close and personal. I've actually contemplated pulling the 400mm out for some shots of players on the far side of the court. Last season I used the 400mm on a D200 with a DX sensor and had a remarkably difficult time tracking my subjects. The few shots I did manage to capture were great because they were really up close and the background was all blurred out due to the long focal length. With a D3 and an FX sensor I'm curious how manageable the 400mm will be.

After the game I thought about going up in the rafters with my 300mm and taking some test shots looking down at the basket. The unfortunate fact about basketball is that the players look up towards the rim and lift their arms up while shooting. Lots of times their faces are blocked by upward reaching arms as the player shoots or goes in for a layup. By placing a camera above looking down you could get some interesting shots where the players are looking towards the camera.

I asked Greg about it and he said I could accompany him up to the rafters after the next game to see what it looks like. He cautioned me though and said that he had tried it before and there's a bunch of limitations that make the shot difficult. None-the-less I'm looking forward to seeing the angle and trying to figure out a way to get the shot.

On a surprising note I was told by some friends and family that Gary Williams remarked on some booing that occurred during the opening 5 minutes of the game. I must admit that when I'm on the baseline I tend to get wrapped up in the mechanics of photography and sometimes things happen and I'm unaware of their existence. I'm looking at the bench for reactions, the visiting coach for what he's doing, and Gary Williams for his scowling looks onto the court. I'm watching the players on the court to see who's going to drive the lane for a finger-roll layup, or which guards are going to dive onto the court for a loose ball. I'm looking at the refs for the technical foul call, or where Testudo is walking around. In short, I'm trying my best to be aware of as much of whats going on as possible so that I can capture something special.

Things slip past often. I rarely know the score because the scoreboard isn't that interesting (although knowing when the home team is about to take the lead for the first time is interesting). Tonight I missed the booing and I missed Gary's apparent reaction to it when it happened. During the post-game press conference I was standing no more than 10 feet away from Coach Williams while he addressed the crowd and I missed his comments on the event (he apparently referenced UCLA only winning by 1 but not being booed). I wasn't paying attention to what he was saying because I was focused on watching his lips eyes, and facial expressions looking for the right time to fire the shutter.

In my last post I talked about paying less attention to exposure settings and more attention to being in the right spot to get the best shots. As we head into the winter basketball season I'm reminded of the lessons learned from last season and will do a better job in remembering that my ears are a valuable tool for finding those "special moments" that make a great photograph. As photographers we tend to look to our eyes for those cues but our ears can be as effective...

Volleyball: Maryland Terrapins vs Florida State

2008-11-09T21:59:00.002-05:00

After a quick run home to offload and post-process men's basketball pictures I headed back to the Pavilion for the senior ceremony of the volleyball squad.

James Lang was on assignment to shoot the ceremony while Dave Lovell and I also photographed the event for the DC Sports Box. I noticed Dave on the court with a short lens and a flash so I opted to stand back on the side and use my 300mm lens to get some profile shots of the players while they posed for Dave and James.

Naturally my shots were not as crisp and sharp as James and Daves because I shot at f/2.8 and ISO 4000 while they were able to rely on the light from the flash to offer them shots up around f/7.1 and probably ISO 640. Under those conditions you can make the subjects pop with the light from your camera while I'm forced to use the hodge-podge overhead bulbs of varying color and brightness.

I noticed that the elevated spot on the far end of the court was not occupied for this evening's game so I moved in to claim it for myself in the opening set. Normally videographers or team statisticians are perched from that prime spot and photographers are not permitted atop. I've had my eye on the spot all season because it's high enough where you can somewhat catch the players leaping up over the net to spike.

I say somewhat because not all players can get that high. Most of the time the top line of the net crosses their face in half while their hand makes it above the stripe. But on occasion you'll catch an attack where the player makes it high enough to get over the white stripe.

Focus from that position is a real challenge. My AF system kept locking on the mesh of the net rather than the players beyond the net. It really was a challenge and very few of my shots from that position came out well. The few that did were really good but the reliability was just not there.

I decided to stick with the 300mm and shoot from a couple of different spots around the Pavilion. I headed up to the top row of the bleachers as far back as I could go. I positioned myself such that the right handed players would spike towards me so that I could get a full shot of their faces and bodies. In comparison if I had shot from the opposite side of the court the players would continue to spike with their right hands and would block their torsos and faces.

I've found that I no longer spend time thinking about proper exposure when I shoot sports. I now look for the good spots to shoot from and I try to pay attention to where the players will strike from. If it's basketball I want to be on the opposite side of the court as where the players strike. So if they drive right (because they are right handed) I want to be on the left hand side of the court (from their perspective).

I also look at the angles that a lot of other photographers use and consider incorporating them into my own portfolio. It's a combination of learning by example and trying my own things. It works pretty well for the most part except for the criticism some people give you for this approach. They'll say you're "copying" but in reality there are only so many places you can shoot from in certain events and just being in the same spot doesn't guarantee the same shot. There are different focal lengths, apertures, and moments that are going to produce entirely different photos. A shot at f/4 with 1/250th at 300mm in volleyball of a player serving will look entirely different than a shot at f/2.8 with 1/500th at 200mm in volleyball of a player bumping a return to a serve. The two images may be shot from the same location but how the photographer captured the scene will be entirely different.

Anyhow, after I shot from back and up high I decided to try to go low and from the backcourt. I had a difficult time from that spot because the players on the close end of the court blocked the Terps on the opposite side of the court. I wanted to catch some good bump shots from the backline but there were just too many Seminoles and Terps standing in between myself and the backline on the opposite side of the floor.

The third spot I attempted was from midcourt along the side. I've worked from there before with the 70-200mm lens but I wanted to give a go at using the 300mm. It was just too much reach for that position so I ended up going back down to the 70-200mm lens. However, I was still blocked for a lot of shots by other players and I decided to move around some more.

Eventually I settled in on a somewhat decent location behind the scorers table while using a 300mm lens. I was able to capture some decent shots of serves and after climbing up high on the stands I got some interesting angles on players in the backcourt bumping. On a 300mm lens you can get in pretty close and I liked that isolation a lot.

With volleyball officially over for the season the only remaining Olympic sports on the agenda are soccer and field hockey. Both teams will compete in the NCAA tournament and some of the games will most likely be played at the University of Maryland. It should be fun!

Men's Basketball: Maryland Terrapins vs Northwood

2008-11-09T21:37:00.003-05:00

Ahhh men's basketball... Julie's favorite sport...

Maryland opened their season this afternoon with an exhibition game against the Northwood Seahawks. I've been to a handful of scrimmages this year as well as both media days for men's and women's basketball so I've been inside Comcast several times prior to the Terps taking the court for the first time this afternoon. None the less it's always exciting to see the Terps in their actual uniforms and Gary dressed in his regular suit and tie.

Accommodations for the game were unusual because the game was exhibition. Normally Maryland places cards on the baseline with each organization's name that has been awarded a photographer's seat. This evening the baseline was absent of any such identifiers, although the assignment sheet just outside the media room identified spots and locations.

The DC Sports Box took the #1 seat under the home team basket. Different people look at this spot with different perspectives. On one hand you're close to most of the action but on the other hand you have to shoot directly up to get players dunking or going up for rebounds. As a result you often have a difficult time catching the players faces. But, you get some great shots on dribble penetrations by guards and forwards striking in from out beyond the free throw line or the arc.

Some people like the spot out beyond the 3 point line. I've shot from there and you certainly get a different perspective that is equally great. You can catch defensive players leaping out to block a shot by a perimeter shooter. Or you can capture a guard driving baseline from the opposite side while they struggle to remain inbounds. In all due honesty I think the most appealing aspect of the outer most spot on the baseline is that the referee doesn't block your shots as much! When you are right under the basket the baseline referee seems to constantly be in front of you.

I chose to go up high for the opening tipoff and see how a 14mm shot on an FX sensor would look from where the TVs are located. It was decent but nothing stunning. If this were Duke or North Carolina or some other team that would pack Comcast to the rafters the shot might've come out pretty well. But since it was an exhibition game against a team that just added a basketball team a year ago not too many people showed up and the stands were empty.

I also believe that shooting from the 200 section is too high for the shot. For Friday night's game against Bucknell I'm going to try and shoot from lower down and see what I can capture. I'm trying to get as much of the arena in the frame as possible but I want the stands to be all over the frame. When shooting from the 200 section I was mostly shooting down and the stands on the opposite side of the arena were dark and hardly noticeable.

After going wide I went down to the court and shot a few frames on my 70-200mm f/2.8 VR lens from the wing spot. I literally only shot a few frames because the whistle blew after 1 or 2 plays and I was able to race back to the media room to pick up my 300mm f/2.8 VR lens.

I've been wondering how that lens would perform at a real basketball game and after tonight's game I have to say I'm very impressed. The 300mm f/2.8 lens on an FX sensor does a great job isolated players on the opposite side of the court. The reach is great for basketball and the long focal point narrows the depth of field well enough to isolate the players while blurring the background.

Last year I went back and forth between a 400mm f/2.8 lens on a DX sensor (yikes!) and a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens on a DX sensor. On the 400mm lens (equivalent to 600mm on an FX sensor) I was way too tight and I only got a handful of shots. The few that I got were great but it was really difficult to focus and properly frame the players. It was just too much reach.

But 200mm was too short and I couldn't isolate my players against the background. 300mm is perfect on the FX sensor and I'm really happy with it's performance. I shot nearly all of the first half using the 300mm glass and I even wrapped up the closing 5 minutes with the lens in the second half (I wanted to shoot the defense). The 70-200mm is an ideal lens for shooting basketball under your current basket because it can easily reach the players out on the perimeter and it can be pulled back wide enough to capture the players dunking or driving towards the net. I recommend it and a 300mm lens for good basketball coverage.

I was also very happy with the performance of my D3 at ISO 2500. Last year I capped myself at 1600 due to noise on the D200 sensor but now that I'm on a D3 I can go up as high as 6500 without offensive noise. Keeping myself locked at ISO 2500 and 1/500 shutter speed all night I didn't ever think to myself "I wish there was more light in here."

During the game I looked up to the rafters towards the strobes and thought about a spot for a remote. I'd like to try to place a remote with a really powerful lens (e.g. maybe 400mm or 400mm with a 1.4 TC) up in the rafters parallel to the baseline focused down on the rim. I bet you can take some great shots from the position. My only problem is that I only have 1 body so I can't try it out.

I've been thinking about picking up a used D3 since prices are down due to the economic pullback. I've been really busy at work lately and have a ton of jobs lined up for awhile so I think I can afford it. Then again you never know in an economy like this and a new president set to move into the whitehouse in 3 months.

Men's Soccer: Maryland Terrapins vs UNC

2008-11-09T21:23:00.002-05:00

Friday morning Andrew and I got up and headed back up to the DC area. We arrived back in College Park around 1:30pm and that gave me plenty of time to unpack, clean up around the house, and take care of some yardwork that has been screaming for attention.

My wife and I have roughly 15 oak trees on our property and Fall Foliage, while certainly colorful and appealing, creates a lot of leaves to rake and blow. I haven't worked them at all this year and having arrived back early from my trip to Virginia Tech I decided to make the most of the nice weather and rake all the leaves to the curb.

I debated which photo assignment to take on Friday evening: men's soccer or women's basketball. Basketball is certainly a welcome assignment any time but the game was exhibition while the soccer game was an ACC matchup, senior night, and the end of the regular season for a team that is ranked No. 5 in the country. I decided to go with men's soccer even though I really wanted to sit on the hardwood in Comcast.

In retrospect I made the correct decision in sticking with the men's soccer assignment. Senior night is an important event for a team and an ACC matchup between No. 5 and No. 21 in the country is no small potatoes either.

A couple of photographers were present for the game, including the Diamondback photographer who shot the Virginia Tech game the night before and drove back to College Park after the game. I asked her how she fared on the trip and she told me she stopped a couple of times and slept for an hour at gas stations and rest stops. Hats off for the dedication to covering the team - it's a pretty tall order to put 540 miles on your car in 10 hours of driving to cover 3 hours of gametime all on a student's hourly rate of probably $10/hr!

The Terps played admirably during the contest against Carolina and I was happy with most of my shots. The colors are slightly off in some of the photos and the shadows on the players are sharp but there isn't a whole lot I can do in Ludwig. If I increase the ISO to fully illuminate the shadows on the players faces I blow highlights in other areas of the frame. Or if I turn up the blacks too much the photo looks artificial. The lighting in there is just poor - I really wish Maryland would invest in 2 additional lights in either endzone (or in the center of the field).

Football: Maryland Terrapins vs Virginia Tech

2008-11-09T21:08:00.002-05:00

On Thursday evening I had the opportunity to shoot the Maryland Terrapins vs Virginia Tech matchup down in Blacksburg VA. This game was nationally televised on ESPN and featured two teams ranked in the top 25 in the country so it promised to be exciting.

I drove down to Blacksburg during the day on Thursday and arrived at my hotel in Roanoke in the middle to late afternoon. After checking in and grabbing some food and drink I hopped back onto I-81 and headed south to Blacksburg. The traffic from Roanoke was stop and go and that surprised me considering I left around 4:45pm for a 7:30pm game.

I arrived at the stadium around 7:00pm and headed down to the field to take some test shots. Fortunately it was warm for this time of year (early November) so I didn't have to carry around a winter coat. However, I did bring a light jacket to use on top of a couple of layers of shirts and a sweatshirt.

A handful of photographers were present from the DC area and I said hello to them. The few I bumped into were surprised I made the drive down to Blacksburg for the game. I didn't offer any explanation other than "we received the credential so I came."

The lighting in Lane Stadium is very good. I got away with ISO 1000 (and sometimes 800) with 1/500th shutter speed at f/2.8 for most of the evening. The Terps wore their white uniforms while Virginia Tech was in their traditional burgundy garb. That made the exposures pretty easy to balance - it's difficult when one team wears black and one team wears white.

My shots for the evening came out fairly well but were nothing worth noting. I compared it to other imagery I saw from other shooters and I don't feel like I missed any key plays.

Towards the end of the game I started to get a hunger headache. Sitting in traffic, running up and down the sidelines, and breathing in all the smoke from the fireworks took it's toll on me and by the time I wound up in the press conference afterwards I was pounding bottles of water trying to rehydrate and re-energize myself. It helped a little, and the oatmeal raisin cookie my brother bought and left for me in the car went a LONG way!

The real behind-the-scenes story for me was the drive back to Roanoke. I believe the game concluded around 10:45pm or so. The press-conference for Ralph Friedgen was very short and afterwards I hunted down a golf cart over the course of 10 minutes to take me out to the media lot. When I reached my car and put all my glass and body away I called Andrew to see where I could pick him up. My cell phone recorded the call as being made at 11:15pm.

By the time we made it back to the hotel parking lot in Roanoke the timestamp on our parking pass read 1:15am. It took us 2 hours from when I started my car to when we actually made it back to the hotel.

The traffic heading out of Blacksburg was terrible and I-81 north was packed. I was exhausted, dehydrated, and really wanted to go to sleep badly but had to tack on another 2 hours after wrapping up the game. Some of the photographers actually headed back to DC that night, including a student that had class the next morning at 10am. I don't know how they did it - I barely (and I mean BARELY) made it back to Roanoke in one piece because I was so tired!

I shot around 700 frames during the game and came out with around 35 or 40 I'll send to my photo editor for publishing. I waited to post process until the next day in the car but I managed to offload overnight when I got back to my room.

Field Hockey: Maryland Terrapins vs VCU

2008-10-31T14:48:00.002-04:00

On a cold Thursday evening the Terps locked up their regular season and showed respect to their senior class. I had the privilege of photographing the senior class with their family, friends, and coaches both before and after the game.

Most senior shoots involves a pre-game ceremony where each player is highlighted and presented with flowers, a plague, or a jersey behind glass. There are a series of standard photos that you're expected to capture from such an event and they're pretty ordinary in nature. Capture each player with their parents and then at the end get a group shot of the players, coaches, and family members.

I planned that shoot at f/7.1 with a 1/8th powered SB-800 flash on a 14-24mm lens at around 14mm. I thought about using the 24-70mm and shooting at 24mm but that seemed too narrow and I'd have to back away from the players too much. Shooting wider allows me to get closer for the group and family shots and since the lens is an ultra-wide I didn't have to deal with much distortion at all.

It was nice working with the CLS and not bumping into the 1/250th second flash sync limitation. With an SB-800 you can sync well above 1/250th so it's quite easy to dial in your aperture (f/7.1) for the effect you're looking for, set your ISO to something sane (e.g. 400 or 640), and then adjust your shutter speed and flash power accordingly. I could've gone straight TTL, locked the shutter at 1/500th and let CLS perform the power setting.

I chose to set the flash output power manually because I'm trying to learn more about flash photography. It seems like letting TTL and CLS take care of all the flash settings is like letting your camera meter control exposure (e.g. Aperture or Shutter priority mode). Sure you'll most likely get a decent overall exposure but you won't learn a whole lot.

Prior to the pre-game photos I took several test shots on the sideline with the help of Ali Morawski. She and Sandy Worth were good test subjects for a variety of exposure and flash settings and I was able to lock in a few different flash scenarios using them as my test subjects.

The previous evening I gave a lot of though to what kind of artistic twists I could apply to a post-game senior shot. During this spring's women's LAX season I had a lot of fun shooting the seniors after the game and I wanted to set something up for the field hockey seniors. I really liked what Patrick Smith did for Liz Snyder of the Centennials and I wanted to go for something similar.

I planned to drop the 5 seniors in the goal and to flash them with 2 SB-800s from down low. By shooting at a narrow aperture (e.g. f/16) I planned to isolate them in darkness and a goal. I thought it would create a cool shot but I couldn't figure out what to do about concealing the flashes from the camera lens.

When you shoot with flash you have to be wary of the light from the speedlights coming right back towards the lens and creating either a halo or a really bright white spot right in the middle of your frame. I needed something that would block the light from coming back towards the camera but I also needed that something to allow an infrared signal from my camera to reach the speedlights.

A goalie mask would be perfect!

So before the game I hunted down the equipment manager and asked if he had any old masks I could borrow. Sure enough he had one and after promising to take good care of it and bring it back after the game he let me use it for the shoot. The mask was perfect because the front allowed the IR signal to reach the speedlights and the top of the mask concealed the light from the speedlights.

I took a few test shots before the game and the f/16 exposures of just the helmet came out really well. I was stoked for the post-game photos but leary of my ability to dial in the correct exposure settings in such a short amount of time.

Sure enough I didn't get it quite perfect. After the game several seniors wanted their photo taken with celebratory banners and I wanted to shoot around f/5.6 rather than f/16. They raced over to the goal after I set up the speedlights and I didn't have time to shrink the aperture down to f/16. As a result my shots didn't come out as well as I had liked but they were good enough.

I'm enjoying playing with artificial light. I introduced Jackie and Yuchen to the practice of dragging the shutter and Yuchen elected to use the technique for a pre-game photo of the team in a huddle. His shot (#3) is up on the DC Sports Box gallery page and it looks pretty good. I started practicing dragging the shutter this summer when I shot a few nightlife crowds at some bars in the Columbia MD area.

By dragging the shutter you set your camera to "rear curtain sync" and set a long exposure (e.g. 1/2th a second). When the shutter opens you move the body around and the flash firing right before the shutter closing locks the subject and makes them tack sharp. It's a great isolation technique in low light scenarios where you are required to use flash (e.g. in a bar). By spinning the camera you can also draw attention to the center of the frame, further creating focus on your subject.

The game was a lot of fun to shoot because it was senior night and I was able to play with flash. Flash photography can be a challenge but also very fun if you're willing to experiment and play with the light. CLS is a great system if you can set it up properly and apply it well.

Men's Basketball: Red vs Black Scrimmage

2008-10-29T21:13:00.002-04:00

Another scrimmage for the men's basketball team brought me out to the Comcast Center this afternoon. The guys I'm working with also asked if I could bring out the lights again and get an interesting shot of Greivis Vasquez for a cover article they're working on. I wish I had a lightbox or an Alien Bees strobe but I honestly don't do enough flash photography to justify the cost.

Lightboxes, softboxes, strobes, and reflectors are really great tools for serious photographers that shoot a decent amount of portraiture. But they're pretty pricey... An AlienBees B800 strobe will cost you $280 new, the stand will run you $90, two PocketWizards Plus IIs will cost you $360, and the Vagabond II portable power pack for the B800 sets you back $300. All told you're looking at just over $1000 to launch yourself into professional lighting.

Or you can go the speedlight route. An SB-800 can be had used for about $225 on CraigsList and uses a built-in infrared transceiver to communicate with the master unit on the top of the camera. The SB-800s also support the Creative Lighting System (CLS), which allows you to synchronize above 1/250th of a second. That allows you to open up the aperture wider and shoot faster shutter speeds with flash.

When shooting a group photo for the DC Sports Box our photographer, Mike Busada, had to use a 4X neutral density filter to bring down the ambient light to a level where he could shoot us outdoors at f/7.1 under bright sun. He had a really difficult time focusing his camera using the built-in AF system while applying a 4X ND filter. Had he used SB-800s and the CLS he could've sync'ed at a higher shutter speed and avoided the ND filter.

The downside to using SB-800s over true lightboxes is that you don't get nearly the same level of diffusion. You can create stunning effects using a wide diffusion field on a strobe. In that sense you could honestly say that speedlights are no replacement for strobes. But, you could also argue that speedlights may be "good enough" for what you need to do if you're on a budget.

As I mentioned before the subject we wanted to capture was Greivis Vasquez. We weren't granted access to him until after the scrimmage and that probably wasn't the best time to catch him for a photo. He was tired after running up and down the court for 40 minutes and the team was leaned into by Coach Williams after the scrimmage. As a result the subject wasn't too happy and that came out in the shoot. He didn't want to pose the way we were hoping he'd pose and there wasn't any chance of a smile. Oh well...

I decided to switch over my WB preset this afternoon to the Comcast Center. I previously had it adjusted for Ludwig Field's lighting, but since soccer is winding down and basketball is quickly coming upon us I decided it was time for the transition. I believe there is a way to store WB presets but I haven't read the manual about it. I also don't know how much use I would have for such a feature since I can always reset the WB preset in the Spring when lacrosse takes over.

I learned a little bit about bracketing for exposure this afternoon, albeit completely accidentally. Somehow I managed to set a +2 exposure bracketing strategy and that impacted the number of frames I could shoot continuously. Rather than the normal 9 FPS my D3 gets I could only grab 2 at a time. Likewise I noticed that the exposure changed. I double checked my settings to see if maybe I had flipped to Aperture or Shutter priority but I was still on Manual at 1/500th and ISO 3200 (f/2.8).

I noticed the BKT displayed on the top display on the camera but I didn't know how to change it because I never do anything with bracketing. I poured through ever setting in the shooting and utility menus without luck. It wasn't until I got home and read my D3 manual that I realized that I could adjust the exposure bracketing by holding down BKT and using the spinner on the camera. A few quick adjustments and I was back to firing off 9FPS.

I'm anxiously looking forward to tomorrow evening's Field Hockey Senior Night photos. Greg Fiume asked me if I would be willing to photograph the seniors, their parents, and the coaching staff while he worked the women's soccer match. I was happy to take the assignment because I enjoy working with the Field Hockey coaching staff and the players have been very kind to me on the field (I don't think it's personal - I think they're just happy to have the coverage!) None-the-less tomorrow I get to shoot some more flash and that will be fun.

Lately I've been playing with light a lot for the mens and womens media days for basketball and today for the shot of Greivis Vasquez. Tomorrow I'll be firing the lights at the seniors. Maybe one day I'll give up the f/2.8 glass and go the strobist route... Nah probably not!