One Game at a Time

This morning sparked the beginning of 2-a-days for the Terrapin football squad. I attended the morning practice at 9:15am and it was brutal.

Meteorologically the wind often drops to zero over night for a variety of reasons not covered in this blog. Morning can be a very difficult time to exercise because the humidity is very high and there isn't very much relief from wind. I'm sure the football program knows this and wants to take advantage of it as a way to improve the skills of the team.

So Saturday morning I showed up to capture the first 5 periods of the practice. Even though I've shot practices at 4pm during the previous week I think that this morning's practice was the hottest. The air was stagnant and almost tangible due to it's humidity. The water girls were the saviors delivering cooling to the players.

It is amazing to me that men with such large physiques, augmented with protective pads, helments, and jerseys, could function in the Saturday morning heat ... much less perform. I drew a heavy sweat just running up and down the field to capture photos. I was very humbled.

The practice went much like the rest of the practices this week in that it was heavy drills that lasted 5 minutes before the players moved on to a separate location to practice. I ran around looking to capture as many different lighting angles and perspectives as possible. My late afternoon shoots this week and my early morning shoot has given me a more intimate relationship with my meter. I appreciate the complexities of exposure under harsh lighting conditions. And I understand how the meter can guide you but cannot be used to tell you how to expose. It's been a very illuminating (pardon the pun) experience.