One Game at a Time

Al offered me the final home game at RFK stadium for the Washington Nationals this Sunday. I welcomed the opportunity to shoot a day game.

Any game is fun, but day games are especially exciting because of the amount of light you have to work with. Today I did a lot of experimenting and I think my shots are getting better. In previous games I stayed at f2.8 and let the shutter speed ride all the way up to 1/8000 of a second. Unfortunately that resulted in soft images and a lot of out of focus shots as well.

With all the light that was around for today's noon game I decided to close down the aperture to f5.6 or above for as much as possible. I wanted to see how much of a difference it made in my shots. The results were pretty good: I had very few out-of-focus shots. With the smaller aperture I had a wider depth of field, and that allowed me to cover a lot more interactions between players.

There were a ton of photographers present for today's game, and I was pretty impressed that Al was able to get the DC Sports Box credentials. Maybe it's because we've covered the Nats a lot this year. Maybe it's because they're a relatively new team. I dunno... I was just happy that we were offered the opportunity to shoot and write up the game.

Getting to the game was a bit of a surprise. According to iCal the game was supposed to start at 1:30pm. This morning I post-processed a bunch of wedding photos from yesterday and when I wrapped that up around 11:15 I decided to confirm the game's start time. To my surprise the time was now set for 12:05pm. That wasn't nearly enough time to get out to the New Carrollton metro stop and into DC!

I thought about hopping on the metro at the Cheverly stop. As I was debating the merit of that approach I thought: why not just drive there? RFK is right along 295, and that's just a little bit beyond Cheverly. And with parking at Metro stations being $3.50, and a ride being $2 I was looking at around $8 for the inconvenience and slowness of riding the metro.

Parking at the stadium was only $15, and $7 is definitely worth it to me. I didn't have to wait for the stupid train, get bumped around while on the train, worm my way through the carousels with my camera equipment. I simply parked and walked to the media office. If we cover additional events at RFK I'm going to request a parking spot since driving to the stadium is just so easy.

I recognized a few photographers from a Wizards event and from other baseball events. I also saw Greg Fiume up on the roof of RFK shooting with his 400mm lens and his wide angle lens. I didn't see Greg down on the field at all tho, and that was pretty surprising. I hope he got some good shots from up there - it's pretty high up!

I got a lot of great shots from different locations in the stadium. I went back up to the 500 level in the outfield and took some shots of the batters as they ran to first and slid into second. With the 400mm and the 1.5x crop factor you can get in really close.

I also got some great shots from the stands behind 1st base. That position is nice because you're at a slight elevation and that gives you a much better view of slides than when you're on the field. When you're down in the well on the field you're below ground about 3 - 5 feet and your camera is literally about a foot off the ground. It's pretty hard to focus and your shots at 2nd don't look very good. Shooting from the stands offers some great angles you can play.

The only downside to shooting in the stands is dealing with the fans. In some cases they want to talk with you, or they want to look through your lens. In other cases they're just rude and get in the way. Ironically I've noticed that children tend to be the most considerate. This is in stark comparison to what it's like when you walk around the aisles at the stadium.

When you walk around in the aisles kids are always trying to get in front of you. But when you're sitting down in the stands with a lens they'll stop dead in the tracks on the steps and ask you if it's ok to go in front of the lens. On the other hand, the parents don't really give a crap. They'll just walk in front of you, take a few minutes to talk with someone, and then move along on their way.

I was surprised to see a lot of photographers covering the game from the 3rd base dugout position. They were shooting pretty heavily into the sunlight. I shot 75% of the game from the 1st base line and the sun was coming from behind me. It offered great colors on the players. Towards the end of the game I went to the 3rd base well just to get some different shots and the colors were way way off.

This week I don't have too many events to cover, so hopefully I'll wrap things up on Shock. I've already started using shock to generate my gallery XML and it's working pretty well. I've identified 2 or 3 different areas I can improve and I'll be making those changes tomorrow.

Thursday night's game between the Nats and the Phillies was pretty empty from a photographer standpoint. 2 of the regular photographers attended the Mystics game and that freed up a lot of space!

At RFK there are 4 on-field positions from which you can shoot. 2 of the on-field positions are beyond the dugouts. That's where the TV camera crew camps and shoots. It starts at roughly the 1st and 3rd bases and goes out maybe 100 feet or so.

The other 2 on-field positions are between home plate and the dugouts. Those spots are "prime" locations - you can good looks at the pitcher and you also get great looks at the batter. When somebody scores you also get great looks of the player returning to his dugout and high fiving his teammates.

The 2 prime spots have size limitations. One allows for 3 photographers and the other only has space for 1 photographer. During the 2 games I've shot so far those spots were hard to come by. But tonight they opened up after the 3rd inning because 2 photographers were at a different sporting event. I jumped on them as soon as I saw one open up and I didn't see anyone else go after it!

I shot the game tonight using ISO400, 640, and 800 and manual mode. I still find myself making adjustments to my shutter speed based on which subject I'm shooting and it was very perplexing. I'd have to make adjustments after all the sunlight was gone and the only lighting was the stadium lights. I noticed that that pitcher is ridiculously bright while home plate is a lot darker.

This sucks because you have to use around 1/1250th shutter speed to freeze the ball when it's being hit by the batter. There's barely enough light out at the pitcher's mound for that speed but there really is insufficient light at home plate for that speed shutter. I thought this was kind of strange and thought I might be imagining things so I asked Greg about it.

Greg confirmed what I had suspected and commented "there's a good 3/4's stop more light on the mound than at home plate". So it turns out I wasn't imagining things after all!

I've been trying my best to shoot everything in Manual mode so that I can learn to better judge the light. I've noticed that my camera's meter doesn't seem to react very quickly to changes in lighting, and when I use Aperture priority mode I tend to under or overexpose. Using manual mode I've had a lot of success and one area in particular has recently opened up...

When I shoot a batter swinging I need 1/500th or faster. But when I'm covering a player stealing a base I can go down to 1/320th and sometimes even slower. This significantly lightens my pictures. If it's too much light I can step down my aperture a quarter or a half stop and get a slightly sharper image on my D200. Alternatively, I can reduce my ISO to 400 in order to create a better picture.

Tonight I experimented with this technique a lot and it was pretty successful. My shots of the infield are brighter than before and I consider that a good success. It's more work to keep an eye on the camera's "suggested" meter and then make my own adjustments to speeds, but it seems well worth it.

One problem I've noticed is that I'll use my 70-200 to cover the batter and I'll have the shutter up around 1/500th. My ISO will be 800 or 1000, and my f-stop is 2.8. I take a few shots. I put the camera down and switch to the other body with the 400mm lens and take a few shots as the player goes to 2nd. Then I pick up my first body again and prepare for the batter to steal 3rd. My settings are still ISO 1000, f2.8, 1/500th of a second. Since I don't need that kind of sensitivity for a runner I drop the ISO to 400 and adjust the shutter speed accordingly. This takes time.

My D200 and the D2H have a presets capability, and this may help me with these transitions. I may look into setting up a preset for batters, pitchers, and infield and store those in the camera. That might make it easier to go back and forth between configurations quickly.

I also took some time tonight to try to shoot from different locations. Al sent out an email today to all photographers specifying guidelines for covering events in the Fall. One recommendation he made in the guidelines is to be creative and to look for unique vantage points that are not commonly used but could offer compelling photographs. He's trying to separate us from the rest of the crowd and I agree with this approach.

I've always thought that the candid photos of the players offer a view of the game that is seldom seen. Lots of organizations look for the slam dunk photo, but equally compelling can be the corresponding reactions on the player's and coaches faces after the slam dunk. The picture of Brandi Chastine removing her jersey is an example of such a reaction.

I looked for some interesting spots and I found a couple tonight. In the upper deck to the right of the foul ball poll in right field is a fun position if you have a 400mm lens. You can frame all of home plate (including the circle of grass around home plate), and you have unobstructed views of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd base.

When you shoot from the on-field positions you're constantly blocked by other people on the field. If you're in the prime locations you're blocked by batters that are on-deck warming up. If you're in the outside spots you're blocked by the 1st base or 3rd base coaches. Or you're blocked by the 1st base and 3rd base umpires as they run into the infield to call a player safe or out. Or the shortstop blocks your view of the play at 2nd.

Shooting from the outfield you're looking from above and beyond the action and you can see everything. I only spent 1 inning up there but I got several decent shots. It really surprised me how well some of the photos came out. When I looked at them on my D2H I thought they were going to look crappy.

It was also a good spot to shoot batters because you actually are in front of them. When you're on the field the batter is standing perpendicular to you if you're in the prime spots, and maybe at a 45 degree angle if you're shooting from outside. But when you're in the outfield he's at a 15 degree angle from you and you can get some great shots.

Al complimented my outfield photos but suggested I try it during day games. He said that you can get really beautiful shots from out there at f4. The next time I cover a game I'm definitely going to head up there.

I also shot from the handicapped sections behind 3rd base. During last night's game I shot from the 1st base handicapped section and those shots came out pretty well. Shooting from behind 3rd offered shots of players coming off the field. The drawback is that you lose the in-line shot from 3rd base to home, so you miss the players high fiving on their way to home plate. But you get them coming back to the dugout from home plate so I guess it's ok.

During the game there were times where I spent a lot of time using one particular lens. When I was in the outfield I stayed on the 400 the entire time. When I was on-field I used the 400 for some close ups of the pitcher and batters but I used the 70-200 for a lot of in-field coverage of steals. I decided to swap bodies several times so that I could use the D2H's 8fps mode to shoot as much as possible.

The D200 works great but it's pretty slow when you're shooting baseball and you want to get a picture of a player hitting the ball. The D2H does a great job of that. I'm still a little sloppy on swapping bodies because I'm fearful of breaking something. But I see a lot of other photographers doing it while on the field so I figure it's a safe thing to do.

So as the week winds down I was able to cover 2 games and that was pretty good. Next week looks to be a fun week: the Baysox are in town, and I've gotten permission to shoot some Maryland Football practices for the MGN. Unfortunately I can't post the pictures from the football practice, but I do get to get out there and shoot on the field.

This week was looking pretty busy when I checked my sports calendars in iCal on Sunday evening. The Baysox were in town, the Nats were at home for 2 series, and the Mystics played on Tuesday and Thursday evening. It appeared as though there were going to be lots of chances for me to use my 400mm lens this week!

Over the weekend Al offered me the choice of the Phillies series or the Mets series. I chose the Phillies since it was during the week and I didn't know how my weekend was going to shape up. Julie's close friend's husband turned 30 this week and was having a large celebration at a pub downtown on Friday night. And on Saturday I didn't know if I was going to be working at the Farm or not.. So I chose the Phillies.

I let Al know that I couldn't shoot the first game of the series due to another birthday commitment and Al responded that he would prefer to put a single photographer on an individual series. He also said he would prefer to assign a photographer to a series that can make the first game. Anything can happen and lead to you not attending the subsequent games, and in that case the DC Sports Box wouldn't have any photos of the series. It makes sense but it was very disappointing: my 2 commitments were on the opening nights of the series. And, one of the commitments was on a night the Mystics played!

So it looked like my week of ridiculousness was going to fizzle. Fortunately for me things turned around an Al managed to get a credential for Anthony (a DC Sports Box photographer and writer) for the first game and he put me on the second and third game of the series. I was very excited when I heard the news!

I was also looking forward to seeing Greg Fiume again. Greg and I are close in age (I believe he's 5 years older than me), but Greg's been shooting since 1992. I like going to events where Greg shoots because I watch what he's shooting and his technique.

The more I shoot the more I appreciate the value of experience. My first shots of Maryland outdoor sports (baseball and softball) were soft and primarily focused on the pitcher. They were soft because I didn't realize the problems at 200mm/f2.8 on my D200. But they focused on the pitcher because that's the only action I saw. Watching other more experienced photographers and doing more and more shoots I've realized that there's lots of action going on during games thats difficult to notice.

In baseball it's a pitcher making a fist and screaming in victory after striking out the last batter on the opposing team. Or it's a batter knuckle-bumping the first base coach after a great hit. Or it's the batter's response to a questionable call by the umpire. These are things I never noticed before. Now that I've been shooting baseball all spring and summer I've started to pick up on them and have tried to capture them. Greg does a great job of this in his photos - whenever I look at them I see parts of the game I totally missed.

I was a bit nervous about this shoot because it was my first MLB game at night and I didn't want to disappoint Al. I've covered the Mystics for the Sports Box and a daytime Nationals game, but never a night time outdoor game. I was nervous about this because the lighting at Maryland's baseball stadium is pretty awful and as a result my photos were pretty dark (or noisy but bright).

To my surprise the lighting at RFK was exceptionally good. I started off on ISO 400 and f2.8 and 1/500th of a second shutter speed and the exposure looked good. I decided to give Auto white balance a shot to see how well it worked. Auto white balance worked surprisingly well. That was a nice thing to learn: I've fought with white balance so much during the summer because most of my games are in the early evening when the sun sets and the lighting transitions from the sun to the stadium lights. I think I'll be using Auto white balance anytime there is changing light conditions.

I was also surprised that ISO 400 was sensitive enough for the stadium lights. Several of my shots were dark and I ended up increasing my ISO to 640, 800, and even 1000 at different points in the game.

I also decided to carry around both bodies at the same time. I did this at the Baysox game and managed the complexity pretty well. It was awkward at first but I managed to get used to it. I was pretty nervous about carrying both bodies around at the Nationals game given the tight areas in which we work. Getting in and out of the photo booths is very narrow and walking around with 200mm lens and a 400mm lens requires some balance and a lot of carefulness!

Using both bodies raised the question of: which lens do I use on which body. I decided to go with the 400mm on the D2H and the 70-200mm lens on the D200. Since I was using the 70-200 on the D200 I stepped down to f4 when possible to improve sharpness, or I tried to limit myself to 135mm at f2.8. I thought about switching my bodies and taking some test shots on the D2H on the 70-200mm lens at f2.8 and 200mm but decided against it. I wasn't there to experiment with lens and body combinations - I was there to cover a game for Al.

The game was pretty uneventful for the most part. Greg wasn't there unfortunately, but some other photographers I've met before were present. It's nice to start to recognize some of the photographers and to interact with them. They're a pretty tight group of people that seem to all work together to cover the games in the DC area (albeit for different organizations). It'd be nice if I got to know them better...

I was also able to get a spot at the "grown ups" table in the media room. This is basically one of those plastic tables you get from Costco. During the games 6 photographers crowd around this table with their laptops, card readers, power transformers, and wifi cards. In my last Nationals game I sat in the "kids" area (where the TV and radio reporters sit and interview the managers and players after the game), and it was not a very good place to work.

Since I've started to recognize some of the photographers I decided to ask them if there was a free spot at the table. They said that the KPT Photo guy wasn't coming tonight so I could take his spot. It makes a world of difference putting your laptop on a table and working vs on your lap in a crowded environment.

The shoot went pretty well given that it was my first MLB night time game and I was working with 2 bodies in the stadium for the first time. The pictures aren't great, but they're not too bad either. I'm looking forward to tomorrow night's game and improving my shots.