One Game at a Time

Friday afternoon I drove over to the practice fields on campus and shot the Football team practicing at 4:25pm. The light was perfect because it was somewhat late in the day. I had several different angles I could work with and that opened up a lot of options for me.

I've been playing around with shooting into the light and today I used that technique a lot. However, I like to keep a balanced gallery so I took some traditional shots with the sun over my shoulders.

My equipment for today was my D3 with a 400mm f/2.8 lens. I've been shooting f/2.8 exclusively this week since Tuesday and I've been very happy with it's performance. In the past I've shot with a narrower aperture (f/4 or even f/5.6 at times). My motivation for shooting narrow was to increase sharpness. However, I've found that I can increase sharpness in post-processing to good enough level. The out-of-focus background is more apparent to the viewers of my photos than a slightly sharper subject. Lightroom is amazing.

My lead-in photo for this blog is Junior wide receiver Adrian Cannon (7). I have several shots of him reaching out to make a play and he's quite remarkable. Inevitably my best shots from the practice involve him in some way or another. The shot I featured for this blog post is an example of him reaching out to make a catch. My only regret is that a coaching assistant is camera right and ruined what could have been a perfect shot. Oh well...

Chris Blunck's slideshow from today's Maryland football practice is viewable on Flickr.