Sunday, November 9, 2008
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).
