Saturday, March 29, 2008
Dave Lovell recently joined the DC Sports Box and has volunteered to take on some Maryland shoots. I was really happy to hear that because it meant I had some backup on days where there were multiple games going on simultaneously. Today was one of those days...
Dave had an event that didn't end until around 2:30pm so I decided to take Game of the Maryland Terrapins and Virginia Tech Hokies in softball. I enjoy shooting at the softball stadium because the field is small, the crowd is friendly, and the players are loud and boisterous. It also helps that the stadium isn't very tall because the sun stays up longer and lights up more of the field longer.
Today's game was pretty fun and I enjoyed taking the pictures. It was sunny and fairly warm (mid 50s) and the logistics of the shoot went pretty well. I'm really careful these days after cracking my UV filter over at the baseball stadium. Today was no different.
Towards the end of the game Dave showed up and we got a chance to shoot together and talk. I'm glad we had some overlap because we got a chance to talk about shooting at Maryland as well as doing some Nationals games later on this Spring and Summer. Dave hasn't shot much as a credentialed photographer, so he's in the same boat I was about a year ago. I was more than happy to give him some pointers about what to do and what not to do.
It was pretty interesting to talk with him because he has many of the same fears I had last year: I don't want to screw up the game, I don't want to get us banned from the arena, I don't want to do a bad job, etc... I had a tough time mentally in learning the ropes and asked a lot of strangers a lot of questions. So I was glad that I was able to talk with him and tell him about the ground rules they have at the various facilities. Hopefully he'll be able to learn from what I picked up over the last year.
We're going to do a single article for the Virginia Tech series and post 3 galleries. Since we're only through 2 of the games I can't link you over to the DC Sports Box article yet. But when it's up I'll come back around and post. In the meantime you can look at my Flickr account for photos of the Maryland vs Virginia Tech Softball Game 1.
