One Game at a Time

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.