One Game at a Time

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. :)

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.

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 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.

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...

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.

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 ofmen's basketballand also wrote up a couple ofgymnastics events for the DC Sports Box. She's also reported on a couple ofwrestling 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!