One Game at a Time

It's another Tuesday evening and the Terrapins Mens Soccer team played another night game at Ludwig Field.

So far I've covered 8 or 9 soccer games, all of which were at night except for an exhibition game and the game last Sunday. The night games at Ludwig are pretty difficult to shoot. The lighting is horrible!

My writeup about the game can be read over on the DC Sports Box.

This past weekend I traveled to NC and took pictures of the field hockey players. I shot "into the sun" for part of the game and I did some experimentation with the EV correction. I thought that my setting the EV to a negative value it would make my foreground images brighter while making the backgrounds darker. It didn't work well at all. If you check out my images from that shoot you'll find the last few that I posted are extremely dark.

Playing around with EV got me thinking about light at Ludwig. Yuchen only brings his 70-200mm lens while covering soccer games, and I've been primarily using my 400mm lens. I've used the 70-200 on the D2H a little bit, but for the most part I've relied on the 400mm lens with the D200.

I think I might be going about covering night games at Ludwig the wrong way. With the 400mm my subjects have to be VERY far away in order to get a shot that is properly focused. If they're too close I don't get them and the ball in the frame. They have to be around midfield for me to get a good shot. Any closer and it's getting tight.

The trouble with that is that if they're at midfield I'm shooting them with shadows on their faces because they're at a 90 degree angle to the light. Or, if they're in the offensive zone in the box I'm way too close to them. If they back up to the far side they are illuminated by the lights on the other side of the field and their faces are in shadow.

So basically if they're in the offensive zone at night my 400mm is too much zoom for the lighting conditions. With 400mm they have to be on the far side of the field, and if they're over there the lights behind me aren't lighting up their faces. I think that's why Yuchen only brings his 70-200mm lens.

If the player is at midfield they're equally lit by the stadium lights but even this is inadequate for proper exposure. It's good for your magnification factor, but it's bad from a lighting standpoint.

Even if the player is along the sidelines but at midfield you have a bad lighting situation. If the player is at midfield and looking up the field towards you one half of their face will be well lit (the side facing the lights near you) and the other side of their face will be in the shadows because the lights on the far end of the field don't reach them.

I think that a 70-200mm lens on a dark soccer field might perform better than a 400mm or 300mm prime. There's another soccer game on Friday evening and if I attend I'm going to try to use the 70-200mm on my D200.

It was great weather for the shoot... It's still unseasonably warm and it was around 72 degrees with pretty strong southwesterly winds. Since the winds came from the SW they brought warm air and it felt really nice. I wore my knee pads and they were extremely comfortable. The knee pads have been difficult during hot games because I sweat in them. But last night they were great.

The stands were pretty empty. Only about 1000 people attended. A few Georgetown people were present, and one of the sports information directors approached me during half time. He asked if I was covering the entire game. I nodded and he asked if he could use some of my photos for the Georgetown website. I said "Sure!" and we exchanged business cards.

I think that's the 2nd time that someone from the opponent's team has approached me and asked for photos. That reinforces my belief that a way for us to market the DC Sports Box is to talk with the opponents of teams that play local teams and offer our photos to them. If they're from really out of town they might enjoy the photos since it might be prohibitively expensive for them to send a photographer.

Still no news to report on our credential request to Maryland. Our requests have now been ignored 3 times. I think we're going to make the request to someone else to see if they actually respond to us.

The field hockey and soccer teams are wrapping up their seasons. This Friday's field hockey game is the last home game of the season. Hopefully the Terps will make it to the NCAA championships. If so we'll try and cover them. You have to make the credential request to the NCAA, but Al says that the NCAA has been friendly towards us in the past. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

The men's soccer team is also wrapping things up over the next few weeks. The women have 3 more home games, but I'll be out of town for the last one. Volleyball still has 6 games left and I'm happy to hear that. Next to Field Hockey I'm really enjoying Volleyball. Maybe it's because the games are short.. Or maybe it's because the court is small relative to soccer and that makes it a little easier to cover!

On Friday night there are 3 Maryland games. Field Hockey starts at 7pm. I'll be there for the entire game, and then I have to decide about whether I should go to the men's soccer game or to Volleyball. I've been looking at our server logfiles on DC Sports Box and Volleyball gets a lot of interest from people. And I enjoy covering Volleyball more than I enjoy covering Soccer.

But, there are only 2 more home games for men's soccer and I'll be away for one of them. If I bail on soccer on Friday night that's it for our coverage of men's soccer this season. I'm proud of my coverage of men's soccer so far... But I think that when I get into just covering Volleyball in a few weeks I'll be wishing there was some men's soccer to report on. Tough call to make...

Sorry about the quality of the photos. They were mostly taken with the 400mm on the D200 and they are way dark. I shot them at 1/500th to stop the motion but that was a bit too little light to properly expose...

I worked pretty hard on Saturday night to go through all of my field hockey photos and write my article for the DC Sports Box. I didn't go to bed until around 1am but I was happy I finished all my work on Saturday evening.

On Sunday there was a day home game between the men's soccer team from Maryland and the far-far out of town Cal State Northridge Matadors. This was the only men's soccer game this season that took place during the day, except for an exhibition game against Montreal. I was looking forward to shooting it!

It was another gorgeous day to get out and shoot. It's been unusually warm lately, and today it was around 80 degrees with decent humidity and a bright sun. Plenty of light to work with... My article is here.

I saw Yuchen and Greg at the game, as well as another photograph that Greg works with. I seem to recall Greg mentioning that he is the Capitals photographer. I've seen him at some Verizon Center events, as well as at Nationals games. I've only spoken about 5 words to him though so I don't even know his name.

Greg and Yuchen were on the far end of the field so I didn't speak with them during the first half. I know that Greg and his partner were there to shoot as much material as possible for the soccer book, and I understand Greg's presence at the far end of the field. I'm not sure I understand why Yuchen selected that position though.

I suppose he's following the "shoot where your team is shooting". I'm not sure how I feel about that approach. So far that's what I've done: I always follow my team and positioned myself to capture them scoring, shooting, or attacking. But lately I've been rethinking that approach especially when you're faced with difficult or poor lighting conditions.

The field hockey game is really what did it for me. The Terps weren't in the offensive zone at all, and the lighting shooting them in the offensive zone was really bad. If I had stayed in that position I had a low probability of getting my celebration shot after a goal, and even if I got my shot it probably wouldn't have come out very well because of the light.

When I changed my position it meant I was shooting more defensive players. But I shot a ton of them, and the lighting was great. So do you give up on field position in order to get better light? Or does field position always trump light? I don't know...

During the soccer game I decided to let the sunlight win and I stayed in my position the entire game. That meant that I shot the Terrapin defense during the first half and the offense during the second half. Not too bad of a tradeoff. The only downside is that if the Terps score in the first half and are scoreless in the second you lose your celebration shot (or you have to crop it pretty badly).

It's definitely something I'm going to think about and ask a few other photographers. I really don't know what they'll say...

I still have a difficult time seeing the LCD in broad daylight when the sun is over my shoulders. I think everyone has this problem though and it's not equipment or vision related. Maybe I'll look for one of those old photo viewers they used to sell us back in elementary school that allowed you to put a positive in it and hold it up to the sunlight to see the photo. Maybe I could get a big one and put it on some kind of necklace. Then I can cut off the end of it and have a protected little peeping tube I can use to look at my LCD.

My meter told me to shoot at 1/8000 on ISO200 with f2.8. I didn't believe it though and I decided to go with 1/6400th. After some review during a penalty kick I realized that even 1/6400th was too fast and I slowed down to 1/5000th. I didn't blow any highlights and the lighting looked good.

There was a lot of action on the field this afternoon, including a fight towards the end of the game. The police ended up arriving and walking onto the field. It made for a memorable shot (not a good memory, but a memory none the less).

I didn't get a chance to talk with Greg at all. That's unfortunate because I always enjoy hearing what events he's attended recently.

The game went into double overtime and Yuchen was really aching and tired from being in NC yesterday. I'm conditioned to a 6 hour driving because my wife and I own property in NC and frequently travel 6 hours to stay in our summer house over long weekends. But Yuchen said he doesn't like to drive and was very tired. He was really hoping for the Terps to pull away so that the game didn't go into overtime.

I was glad the game went into overtime because it meant more shooting opportunities for us!

This week we're going to approach Maryland again and request media credentials. I've covered 25 games so far this Fall, and that's way more than any other media outlet has achieved. I realize that one Terrapin Times or WTOPNews.com article reaches far more than our humble DCSportsBox.com website, but there's something to be said for commitment and effort. I'm hoping Maryland sees it that way as well, but given what has happened to us so far I'm not holding my breath.

The next soccer men's game is Tuesday night and on Monday we'll put in our credential request. The last time we submitted our request we weren't denied or accepted: we were just ignored. I'm actually expecting the same thing to happen this time: we'll hear nothing. But one can hope!

In my previous post I mentioned that the Royals and Majestics played side-by-side on adjoining fields on Saturday evening. This was extremely convenient for me because I floated back and forth between the two games.

I mostly focused on capturing some men's soccer photos, but I managed to get a few decent shots of the Majestics taking on the Rough Riders. To my surprise many of the shots are in focus and not too bad. I was surprised by this because from a percentage basis I spent only about 10% of my time shooting the Majestics, but I came out with a lot of good shots!

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about focus during my shoots, and I think it would really help if I had another photographer present to compare notes with. It would be great to have someone I could watch from start to finish: from set-up and setting selection time all the way through to post processing and publication.

I'd like to see how many shots they take, when they take them, and what they do with the shots after the take them. Do they review them on their LCD or do they wait until half time and after the game to review? Or do they review them every few minutes and make minor adjustments to white balance, autofocus settings, etc?

Likewise, I'd like to see what kind of results they get when they take their photos off of their cards. I'd say that roughly 50% of my shots are out of focus (OOF), but I have no idea if that's normal or not. If I knew that 50% OOF shots is normal I could move onto to improving other aspects of my photography. But, if it's only normal to have 10% OOF shots then that suggests that I need to continue to focus (pardon the pun) on my autofocus skills.

I'm hopeful that Al's going to be able to help me in this aspect. If I can follow him (or another one of his photographers) to one game I can get a sense of where my weaknesses stand as they relate to photography in general. It could be the case that what I perceive as a weakness is simply an unavoidable aspect of sports photography. Or it could be that there really is a better way. Unfortunately it would take me a long time to figure it out on my own, so I'm hoping I can observe someone else and get some hints.

Overall the shoot for this game went off pretty well. I didn't manage to get very many candid shots of the players before the game and during half time but I believe that's because I was really focusing more on the Royals. It might be better though that I didn't get the candid shots. Maybe I need to focus more on the action shots. I'm very much on the fence though and thinking that a balance between action shots and candid shots makes for an overall better photographic experience. 100% action shots get boring all the time, and 100% candid shots are also boring all the time.

I wish that the Majestics were using my photos on their website. I've tried to contact the site maintainer, but I can't seem to get much response to my offerings of photos. I suppose that the site author is busy doing other things and probably doesn't devote too much attention to maintaining and improving the site. That's unfortunate because I've covered quite a few games and have captured quite a few pictures that the players would probably be interested in having. Maybe during the last game I'll cut a few CDs and bring them to the game and hand them out to the coaches and players. Just because a single website author doesn't have the time to post my pictures doesn't mean that the players aren't interested in them.

Moving forward I'm not sure what my next photographic assignment will be. I'm away this week at my house in North Carolina and as a result I'm away from the action of the DC Sports market. Al mentioned that if I was in town he would've offered me an assignment this week at Verizon Center. I hope that he'll have something for me next week, and I'm also hopeful that there will be some interesting assignments coming from Jake at the Blade. Overall I'm quite happy with how the summer has been going tho. I'm covering more games than I did in the Spring and I'm getting a lot of exposure to different sports and different environments. Although I'm looking forward to the Fall and the return of the Maryland Terrapins I'm also looking ahead to what other events I'll be able to cover for the DC Sports Box.

I've also been giving more thought to setting up a separate domain just for my photography. Right now I'm using some hideous PHP software named Gallery to manage the photos for my family and for my sports events. With all of the sports shooting I've been doing I'm shifting the balance of my gallery from family oriented photos to sports shots. I'd like to keep my existing Gallery site dedicated to just family related photos (along with photos of friends) and set up a new site that focuses exclusively on athletics and sports shooting. I'm trying to come up with a good domain name but I'm so far shooting blanks. If you have any ideas please leave them in the comments. Who'm I kidding - noboby leaves me any comments!

Friday evening's shoot at Kettler was a lot of fun because it was a completely new environment and there were a lot of other media outlets present to cover the event. But, it was indoors and crowded. During the event I was thinking about how nice it is to cover outdoor field event where there is plenty of space to move around and the backgrounds are often very far away.

I decided to attend the Royals and Majestics game on Saturday night even though they took place south of Manassas and I live way up in College Park MD. It was easily 60 miles from my house to the soccer complex, and it took a long time to get there. But Julie came with me and so I had company during the car ride. It was also a very nice drive through Virginia with lots of backroads. Having satellite radio also helps.

The Royals game and the Majestics game occurred simultaneously on side-by-side fields, and that was really nice from a photography standpoint. In previous matches the Majestics play first and then the Royals play afterwards. Watching 180 minutes of soccer (plus 30 minutes of half time, plus 15-30 minutes of in-between-games time) can be quite grueling, especially when it comes at the end of a day that was filled with covering other events. As a result I was pleased that both games were running concurrently and right next to each other so that I could float between the two games.

I wanted to focus on the Royals because in prior shoots they play after the Majestics in poor lighting conditions. My experience covering men's soccer is less than women's soccer, so I wanted to spend most of my time in front of the Royals for practice and also so that I had a wider variety of photos to post. I've also had a few email conversations with Mo (the general manager of the Royals), and he's expressed a lot of interest in the photos. On the other hand I haven't heard any word from the Majestics GM (not even sure who he/she is). Accordingly I wanted to have a lot of photos to send to the guy who's showing an interest in me covering their games.

Lighting for the event was good, but not great. There were some high cirrus clouds that didn't make it perfectly sunny but also didn't make it perfectly cloudy. I thought about playing around with the white balance but decided not to and to just use the sun preset.

I also shot the game at 100 ISO. I'm going to adjust this at a subsequent game because I received a comment from Al that my photos look "soft". I've noticed this as well. When I adjust the image enhancement in my D200 to "More Vivid" it doesn't seem to make things much better. I wonder if going up to 640 ISO or even 800 would make the pictures sharper.

This is where shooting alongside another photographer would really help me out. Just knowing what settings they used and then being able to compare my shots to theirs afterwards would be immensely valuable. I miss that from covering Maryland events. I used to be alongside a lot of photographers who would share what settings they're using. Hopefully I'll be able to tag along with Al on some events and get some ideas of some new settings to use.

I also made some adjustments to my AF system during the shoot. In previous shoots I've been using either spot or CW with 11 focal points on continuous mode, and I've had mixed results. In spot mode even tho I set the focal point to be highest possible focal point a lot of times it appears as tho the camera locks on the blades of grass on the field. This doesn't make much sense to me why the camera would do that but that seems to be whats happening. Lots of times faces are out of focus while the soccer ball (with all it's highly-contrasting lines) is in focus.

I changed my CW AF options to use 8 focal points rather than 11 and that seemed to help things a bit. I noticed that I had noticeably fewer out of focus shots. It wasn't a dramatic improvement but it was a little better. I'm going to do some reading about "closest subject" and the AF system to see what I can find out about better settings.

I moved around on the field quite a lot during the shoot and got a bunch of shots from various spots on the field. It was difficult to find spots where there wasn't an offensive tent in the background or some other annoyance. There was one spot tho that was pretty decent and most of my best-of shots came from this spot. It was located to the left of the Royals goalie looking up the field (rather than from the side). It's more difficult to focus from this position, but there's also a lot more action (most players kick using their right leg) and there was a better background (just trees).

There are only 2 more Royals that I will be able to attend this summer. It's been fun covering their games and my shots have improved since I started shooting them back in May.

Saturday was a great day for shooting. I had a great time covering the DC Soapbox Derby for Al at the DC Sports Box, and I also had a good time with Andrew at the Bowie Baseball games.

Andrew was very helpful in getting the names for various players that I shot. During the event I was very skeptical that he was recording enough information about the games, the players, and the shots I was taking. But afterwards when I had to assemble the names for the photos I sent to Jake at the Blade it was sufficient information. Jake was very happy to have a full list of names for the photos, and to my surprise he said he wanted to use all 10 photos that I sent to him. It would really surprise me if he ran all 10 photos. Maybe he just wanted all the names so that he could decide later this week.

On Sunday I took the day off. On most weekends I'm playing catchup on work for customers that I missed during the week because another customer had a crisis, or I'm working on the books and invoices for my software company, or I'm out in the yard pruning, or I'm at an inlaws house celebrating some momentous event. But this Sunday I had an open day, which was quite nice. In the evening my wife and I headed up the Germantown MD to watch the NOVA Majestics take on the Washington Freedom.

The shoot was a lot of fun because the Freedom is a really good time. Also, their dark blue uniforms expose really nicely under the vibrant colors of an afternoon sun. The Majestics wear a somewhat washed out yellow uniform with green text. It looks decent in the late afternoon sun, but it's definitely not as remarkable as the red uniforms of the Renegades and the blue uniforms of the Freedom.

There were 3 other photographers present at this shoot. Larry was of course there covering the match for his website, and there were 2 other individuals there as well. One of them is the photographer for the Freedom (Shane Canfield), and the other photographer looked to be from a newspaper in Washington DC. It may have been the Post Gazette.


It was helpful having some other photographers present. I'm very much still in the osmosis phase of learning, where most of my behavior is emulation of photographers that are better than me. When other "better" photographers are not around, it makes me think for myself, but I also don't progress and improve as quickly. With other photographers around I was able to observe their shooting positions as well as their shot selection.

A big problem I had during this game was the gnats. They were everywhere. The Freedom have a wonderful field out in the middle of a very large farm, and the bugs are everywhere! I was constantly swatting them away and it was a huge annoyance. I'm adding "bug spray" to my go-bag for the next time that I attend a Freedom event.

I played around with some white balance settings during the game, and overall I like the sunlight WB setting the best. I was flipping between "shade" and "sun", and overall the "sun" photos came out the best. I'm going to keep that in mind for the next game and just go with "sun".

Unfortunately I didn't manage to get as many "great" photos during the game as I would have liked. During the home Majestics games I walk around the sidelines like crazy. I realize that I'm probably breaking a USL rule about where photographers can stand, but my sense from the coaches is that they don't really care. They like the photos I'm sending them so that's what's important to me.

But the Freedom seems to be in a slightly different notch in the competition totum pole. They seem more formal, and with there being more photographers present I thought it best to not follow the play action as closely as I do at the home Majestics games. As a result I didn't get very many inbound passes looking at the players. That's unfortunate because those are some of my favorite shots. And the field in Germantown is great from a background standpoint - no school busses screwing up my shots!

Focus was a real challenge for me during this shoot. The sun was setting behind one set of stands, and as a result the set of stands on the far side of the field were brightly illuminated. Likewise, they had lots of shadows and lots of straight lines. The AF chased down the bleachers like crazy during the shoot. I kept getting back-focus as the AF system locked on the empty bleachers and left the players out of focus. Of all of my throwaways I'd estimate that 75% of them were simply out-of-focus (but properly exposed). That's encouraging, because a lot of my throwaways in the past were due to improper exposure as well as out-of-focus subjects. I played around with the AF settings during the game to see if I could use a better system but didn't have much luck. At one of the next games I'm going to ask another photographer what settings they use, and I'm going to read up on my own AF system in the D200. There's got to be a better way to focus. Maybe the "focus on closest subject" mode is the best?

I took far too many pictures today at this game. Almost 1200. That's ridiculous. The problem I had was that there was so much action from the Freedom that I was constantly trying to capture the moment. I managed to get over 90 "keepers" (a new record), so that's at least good. But I would like to get down around the 200-250 range per game max. It took me a few hours to post-process all that data. Ridiculous!

On another note, Al at the DC Sports Box was happy with my coverage of the DC Soapbox Derby. He posted my writeup and photos here. Go click over there and check them out! I've had a few photos published in the Bowie Blade, but this is my first web publishing and I'm pretty excited about it. I'm going to try to maintain the momentum with Al because I'm hopeful he'll offer me some more assignments.

Lastly, I still haven't made any progress on my Flash gallery software. Hopefully in a week I'll have some more time to work on it. But for now I'm pushing hard for my customers to get their software out the door (to give to THEIR customers), and that doesn't leave much time for my personal ambitions (well, outside of photography at least). I'm working on fixing that tho, and hopefully in the next 2 weeks I'll have SOMETHING I can publish (even if it's crap that will be updated).

Here it is Friday evening and I'm just now having time to do my writeup of the last of last weekend's games! I've been really busy this week with my dayjob. I'm a software engineer and I work for a small company, so I wear several hats: programmer, accountant, and customer relations manager for the 2 clients I work for. The timesharing is difficult, but rewarding. Photography "fits in" where I have time, and fortunately I'm in the DC Metro area so there are a lot of shooting opportunities for sports shooters.

The last game that I shot on Saturday featured the NOVA Royals vs the Ocean City Barrons. The Barrons are rated 1st place in the league or division, and were a very physical and aggressive team. The match took place immediately following the Majestics vs Renegades games, and thus the lighting continued to be superb for the first part of the game. As the game progressed and the sun set the quality of the shots steadily degraded. This resulted from my transition from ISO 100 down to ISO 3200. It's sad walking down that ladder...

Prior to the game Mo offered me a polo shirt from the team in exchange for me agreeing to take a team photo. He also asked me to get several pictures of the players with their new jerseys. This may have something to do with sponsorship, but I was happy to honor the request. Unfortunately my gear really presented challenges. My shortest lens is a 50mm/1.8, and that's simply not good enough for a team-photo. Despite my repeated "get closer!" requests I just could not fit all of the players into the frame, even after backing up into the first row of the bleachers! If ever there's been a case for a shorter lens this was it! I kept thinking: "If I only had a 17-55 I'd have a great shot right now." Obtaining such a short-range zoom lens is on my "short-list" right now, and I'm giving a lot of consideration to the 17-35/2.8 and 17-55/2.8 DX lens. If you have any comments on either I'd love to hear them!

I was very happy to move out onto the field during the player introductions. I've seen Greg (from Maryland) do so, and I've always marveled at the shots he's managed to take. As usual, my first go-around at taking these types of shots failed miserably. In all of the shots I was too far away from my subjects and out of focus. I've noticed that this tends to happen with me: whenever I shoot a new sport for the first time my shots stink! But then on subsequent shoots I get better and better. I think my problem with this particular instance was that I hesitated to get close to the players. As a result my subjects were distant and my ability to manual focus my 50/1.8 was reduced.

I had a good time shooting the event, but I was a bit fearful from time to time. The Barrons were a very aggressive team, and on one than more occasion they managed to draw blood from the Royals without a Yellow Card being raised. This riled the Royals and the head coach almost got into a fistfight with the Barrons coach. I realize that there are etiquette rules about shooting injured players, but what rules exist for capturing fights between players and coaches? I thought about that as I watched the steady escalation of exchanges between the two coaches and wondered when the inevitable altercation would take place. Again, if anyone actually reads this blog and has some insight into what's appropriate and inappropriate I'd like to hear it.

On another note, I'm very happy to report that my drive to "shake up the hornets nest" during the summer has been moderately successful. In my posts this Spring I was concerned about the Summer drought with respect to shooting opportunities. Most of my shots this Spring focused on the Maryland Terrapins, and with the students heading home for the summer my opportunities quickly dwindled. I contacted several different teams and media outlets volunteering my time to cover their events, and for the most part I was unsuccessful. Although I contacted the Maryland Pride, Maryland Exiles, Washington Freedom, Bowie Baysox, and NOVA Majestics only 2 organizations responded positively. Of those 2 only one panned out. Hats off to Mo from the NOVA Majestics for taking a chance on me shooting his events for free. Unfortunately I haven't heard back from the other organizations.

However, I've been capitalizing on the sports editor from the Bowie Blade (Jake Linger). When I first contacted him I volunteered my team and he was hesitant to offer me an assignment. However, after shooting the Southern Maryland Youth Lacrosse Association Tournament he offered to hire me for summer assignments. I've been hugely successful because of Jake: he exposes me to events, and I gain a tremendous amount of experience covering those events. I don't care about the money, I'm just happy to have exposure to events, and I'm excited every time I have the opportunity to cover a new sport. I'm very grateful to Jake for giving me a chance when all of the other sports organizations I've contacted haven't even bothered to respond.

I'm also very appreciated of the opportunity that Mo has offered me in shooting the Majestics and Royals games. When shooting these games I've worn two hats: one as a photographer and one as a fan. My wife and I are benefactors of the University of Maryland Athletics Department through the Terrapin Club and Maryland Gridiron Network, but we haven't donated money to any local sports teams. In attending the NOVA games I've been very impressed and inspired by the athleticism and dedication of the players. It has definitely made me think about donating some money to the organization given how much heart the players put into the game.

My success with Jake from the Blade has been good, and it's starting to trickle into other areas. I contacted Al Santos from the DC Sports Box last night and asked him a question about the lens equipment he used to shoot a guard from the Mystics. I also offered a link to this blog. In his response to my question about his lens he offered some suggestions on the shots I've compiled. He also offered me an assignment for the weekend: the Soapbox Racing Derby on Capitol Hill. I'm sure that the pictures I've assembled on this blog have something to do with Al offering me a volunteer assignment, and I'm thankful to Jake and Mo for giving me a chance to shoot events and post my pictures.

As we roll into another weekend I'm looking forward to the events I'll be covering. Tomorrow morning I'm planning on covering the Soapbox Racing Derby for Al, and at noon I'm covering a baseball game in Bowie for Jake. On Sunday evening I'll be traveling to Germantown MD where I'll cover the Majestics vs Washington Freedom game courtesy of Mo. I'm sure I'll have a lot of photos to sift through next week, and this blog will be quite active!

On an unrelated note... My 2 backup EN-EL3E batteries arrived this week from adorama.com. I paid about $75 for the two, and I haven't looked back at all. I'm so impressed with their performance, and I'm happy to have 2 backups in my go-bag. Hopefully I'll no longer need that power inverter in my car and I won't have to worry about running out of batteries!