One Game at a Time

On Friday Mike Busada gave me a ring and in a really disjointed (but excited) message mentioned a helicopter, a lacrosse game, and Annapolis. I quickly returned the phone call to get more details.

It turns out that Mike's son used to play for St. Mary's (a high school in Annapolis that has a strong lacrosse program) and Mike still keeps in contact with somebody currently affiliated with the team (a coach or perhaps another father). This contact has a brother in law named Jerry who has a helicopter, and wanted to know if Mike could shoot some aerial shots of the St. Mary's game this evening against regional rival Loyola. Mike couldn't do it due to a wedding commitment so he gave me a call.

"Of course I want to do it!" I told him. "Just let me ask Julie first..." I put Mike on hold and called Julie. No luck - nobody home. After several calls I finally got a hold of my wife and she gave the green light for an exciting aerial photographic shoot. I was so excited!

I had to meet the helicopter pilot at Lee Airport in Edgewater MD. I knew exactly where the airport is because my employer (Eric Newton) lives just a mile or so from the end of the runway. I headed down there and met up with Jerry and he gave me a tour of the helicopter and walked me through some "do's" and "don'ts". One of the things he really focused on was: "DON'T drop anything." He also said I would have to wear the strap on my camera. I didn't think that would be a big deal but I obliged.

Jerry wasn't familiar with Annapolis so we reviewed a street map he brought along. I'm very familiar with Annapolis having worked at Zenoss for a year and a half now and having flown into BWI about a million times over my life. I told him we'd have no problem finding the school.

Prior to walking out onto the grassy ramp I went through a mental checklist of lenses and cameras to bring. I accidentally left my D3 battery on my charger last night but I had 2 spares from my D2H. I neglected to realize that the plastic clip that locks the battery in place changed slightly between the D2H and the D3. Fortunately the battery kind of sticks in the camera though.

I unloaded my backpack of it's regular 2 laptop compliment from my day job and transformed it into my go-back for a shoot. 70-200, check. 14-24, check. D200, check. 17-55 DX, check. 24-70 check. Extra memory cards, check. Battery, lens caps and hoods, check. D3 on my shoulder, check. All set.

As we orbited around the field at St. Mary's high school I changed my first lens at around 500 feet. I swapped my 24-70 for a 70-200 while Jerry orbited us. I forgot to mention - I had no door on my side of the helicopter. I was pretty uncomfortable changing lenses while the helicopter was in a slight bank doing 40-50 knots and no door next to me. I think there was only one other time in my life where I was more focused than I was up in that cockpit.

It will be interesting to see how this experience alters my sense of fear regarding my equipment. You can drop a lens 2 feet, or even drop it in the water. All that'll happen is that you may need to buy a new lens. But if you drop it out of a helicopter over a suburban area where everyone is watching you orbit 2 things will definitely happen: the pilot will probably lose his license, and you'll probably never be asked back up into a helicopter again. And oh ya, the lens might kill someone if it lands on or near them.

The flight was a great experience and I'm thankful that Mike gave me the opportunity to take advantage of it. If the chance arises again I'll definitely jump on it!

After notarizing our refinance application I headed over to the women's lacrosse game. I was looking forward to seeing how the D3 would perform in the Field Hockey and Lacrosse Complex. The lighting in there is the best outdoor lighting on campus but I figured that putting the D3 through a true outdoor low light test (even if it was the best lighting on campus) would be an interesting experiment.

I started off at low ISOs (1600) and gradually worked my way up until I was shooting around 3600 or 4000. The noise looks great on the photos and you can hardly tell that I shot at such high ISOs. Even better I didn't have to lighten in Aperture at all!

They charged admission for the game tonight and I was able to sneak in next to my friend who works in the Athletic department. He was on his way there to help someone and we were chatting while we walked in. I need to get on Al to get me a season credential for the LAX and baseball games.

I had fun shooting the Lacrosse game and I took a lot of notes on my voice recorder. I practically filled the thing up recording notes on how the different goals played out. Terps scored 17 goals and took something like 42 shots during the game.

I finished post processing my photos and published my story over on the DC Sports Box. Please go take a read about the Maryland Terrapin women's lacrosse team and how they defeated Richmond 17-9.

At the conclusion of last night I had photographed and post processed photos from 3 baseball games, 2 water polo matches, and 1 men's basketball game. I also wrote up the article for the men's basketball game as well as 1 of the water polo matches. I planned to condense my baseball photos from the series into 1 article and that worked out well.

Today was ridiculously warm (62 degrees) and bright sunshine. I planned on waking up early, going to work, skipping lunch, and leaving early to shoot the men's lacrosse game this afternoon but that didn't happen. I'm so tired from working on photos and writing that I didn't manage to crawl out of bed until 8am today. I headed to work, did my thing, and then left at 2:30pm to get to Maryland by 3.

I arrived and walked into Ludwig Field without any problem from the CSC staff. I'm not sure if they were collecting tickets or not but I just walked in and everything was fine. There were a lot of photographers present, including Greg, Yuchen, Bill Vaughn (Terrapin Times), and some wire guys. There were also some photographers I didn't recognize.

I locked up the 400 and 70-200 lenses to my usual D2H and D200 and started shooting. The light was so great. I had my knee pads on and I was able to get really low and shoot the players at the knee level. I bet it must've looked funny to see me in my work attire (corduroys and a turtle neck, along with knee pads, laying flat on the ground taking photos). I had such a good time though - the weather was great, the subjects were lively, and the photographers were all very pleasant and happy.

I didn't get to my photos until late tonight after going through my article backlog but managed to post them to Flickr, DC Sports Box, and my media server. You can read about Maryland's 13-5 defeat of Providence and see photos over at the DC Sports Box.