Tuesday, October 28, 2008
This afternoon the Lady Terps held their media day for 2008 and I attended. Women's basketball at the University of Maryland is the first sport I shot roughly 2 years ago and I've had a fondness for Comcast ever since I took my first steps onto the hardwood.
A lot has changed since then but the excitement of being a part of Maryland Athletics remains constant.
A few weeks ago the men had held their media event and I managed to capture a decent shot of Coach Gary Williams at midcourt. For this event I wanted to go for something slightly different but consistent with the first shoot. I elected to ask Coach Brenda Frese to stand in front of the bold ACC logo at the free throw line.
I didn't have any Pocket Wizards to help in the setup for the shot and instead had to rely on the Nikon CLS. It uses infrared beams to transmit flash signals to remotes and it works really well when you have line-of-sight on your side. In the middle of a basketball court that worked out just fine.
The only oddity I experienced during the shoot was that my remotes fired whenever another photographer fired their strobes in the ceiling. I was on Channel 1, Group A and they fired. I didn't think that Pocket Wizards could trigger SB-800s using CLS over infrared. Maybe my SB-800s were firing because they detected the strobe. It was odd whatever it was...
I met some nice photographers from a couple of different companies, including Richard from the Washington Times (I didn't catch his last name). I arrived first at the event and he arrived shortly thereafter. He stood in as a model for some lighting tests and I did the same for him. He took a really cool silhouette shot of 3 players on the baseline that were side-lit. He stood on the opposite end of the court with a 400mm lens on a DX sensor so he was really up close and personal. I took a look at the shot on his LCD and it really came out nicely!
The best shots I captured from today involved some fun action shots of the various players under the basket. I asked Sam to send any players that had some time down to underneath my basket so I could get a few shots of them shooting layups, jumpshots, and doing other fun stuff. Before each one left I had them pose for a serious shot with the net and the basket in the background. Those shots came out really well and I'm going to make a mental note to take those shots next year with the men. I bet I can get some really good ones!
Seth was present and taking notes, interviewing players, and conducting other reporter business. We chatted about upcoming games and he asked if I could shoot the men's scrimmage tomorrow. He also asked what games I could cover this Fall for women's hoops as well as men's hoops. He assured me that credentials were not an issue and that's certainly a welcome change.
