One Game at a Time

I attended a Maryland Gridiron Network event on Saturday morning. The football team had a practice and MGN members were invited to attend. Following the practice was a lunch in the Gossett Team House. On the way back to our car in parking lot 1 I noticed the scoreboard at Ludwig Field was illuminated and balloons were being delivered. Clearly an event was scheduled this afternoon.

I checked out the UMTerps website and discovered the women's soccer team entertained Penn this afternoon in a Spring schedule. The weather was threatening but I decided to make a go of it and I headed home to grab my pack. I made it back to Ludwig just before faceoff at 3pm.

There weren't any CSC guards and only a sprinkling of fans. No other photographers or reporters were present. I unpacked my gear and rigged up the D200 with the 400mm lens and used the D2H with my 70-200. I bought a lock and used it to attach my bag to a flagpole. I also locked up the contents of the Think Tank bag using their combo lock. It felt good to know that all my spare equipment was safely tucked away.

The game itself was pretty fun to shoot. I enjoy outdoor games because of the abundance of light. It was also fun shooting a soccer team again. I haven't shot them since late October or early November. It was surreal shooting soccer in Spring. I kept thinking about Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years rather than Memorial Day and the Fourth of July.

I used my recorder to keep track of the game's progress. I failed to take a picture of the scoreboard because the UM staff turned it off almost immediately after the game concluded. I was really happy that I took close notes on my recorder because Maryland didn't post a box score. They didn't even post an article either, so I recreated everything from memory.

When I got home I posted my photos and wrote up an article for the DC Sports Box. Please read about Maryland's spring women's soccer games and view my photographs over at the DC Sports Box.

On Sunday the Maryland women's soccer team played Virginia Tech. This was an important game for the Terps because their in-conference record up to this point has been 0-5. If the Terps can't get on the winning ways they'll be denied entrance to the ACC Tournament.

Unfortunately the ladies fell to 0-6 tonight. As usual there was only 1 other photographer present and that was Yuchen. It's frustrating to be denied credentialed entrance to these events and see that nobody else is covering them. I understand the need to keep the official credentials limited to legitimate media outlets, but at the same time it's difficult to see the wisdom in denying a credential request to an organization that has attended and reported on every single home game when the Terps are 0-6 in the ACC.

The game was another 6pm game and I managed to get some good shots before it got too dark. I took all of my good shots on the 400mm lens before switching over to the 70-200mm lens when night fell. I've found that I'm not struggling with focus or the mechanics of shooting very much anymore. I'm now looking at framing my shots, reducing the number of exposures, and trying to get quality shots.

I spoke with the father of one of the players for awhile this evening during half time. He told me that he purchased a Canon Rebel XTI with a 70-300mm variable aperture lens so that he could take pictures of his daughter playing. He said that he doesn't make it to very many games since he's from out of town, but that when he is there he wanted to take pictures because "there aren't many other ones out there". I gave him my card and said I attend as many game as possible and would be happy to send him any photo he is interested in.

As usual the CSC staff were present and the kind lady that works one of the media areas motioned me past the gate. I took her up on the offer and placed my laptop and Think Tank bag in the restricted space. But I then went back outside the gate to shoot during the game. Hopefully one day I can shoot from inside that gate...

The guys that guard the entrance to the stadium are aware of my plight and every time I show up with a ticket they say: "still not credentialed yet?" I nod my head and they say: "well stick with it. They'll come around..."

Once night fell it was difficult to shoot and I decided to try to take some shots from different locations. I went up into the bleachers behind the goal and took some shots. They were crappy because the lights on the sidelines created sharp shadows.

I tried shooting from the stands but people kept getting in the way. I went back up on the hill near the lights but the Terps didn't have very much offense...

I managed to get enough shots for my DC Sports Box article though, and I focused more on capturing the motion of the game. I thought that if my shots weren't that great (because there were not very many offensive opportunities) I could at least write in my article about the performance of the midfielders. I wish I had a MP3 recorder I could use to help me in that regard.

A lot of time there will be some kind of scoring opportunity that occurs and I'll take note of it and want to record some information. Most of the time the box score doesn't show this kind of opportunity, and the Maryland write-up doesn't have it either. It would be nice to have a little recorder I could speak into and say "#5 broke away at midfield and passed to #7 who shot from inside the box on the right hand side. Shot went wide left."

I could also use it after games when I try to get quotes from the players or coaches.

We had an MP3 recorder for awhile and I think we gave it to a family member as a gift. I think I'm going to ask for one for Christmas. The basketball players all do interviews after games and if I'm lucky enough to attend any of the games it will be cool to record them.

When I went to the Georgetown media day everyone used MP3 recorders. It seems like they are cheap and easy to use so that should work well.

Still no news on Maryland and credentials. We're going to try to re-submit a request this week and see how it goes. Given our experience I don't have high hopes. But you never know...

This afternoon the Maryland Terrapins played against the UNC Tar Heels under an unusually hot sun.

It's been really hot lately, and there's been no rainfall for a month now. The temperature today peaked out at 90 degrees and it's October 7th. It's pretty crazy! I was sweating like crazy during the shoot today.

I spent all of yesterday doing outdoor activities, starting with a tailgate at 9am that led up to the Maryland football game at noon. Then from noon until around 3pm I watched the game from my season tickets in section 6. Unfortunately for me the sun is blazing down on us for most of the game. During the later games that's a blessing. During the early season it's a curse because it's so hot!

After the game I walked home and brewed a batch of beer with my brother Andrew. The brew took place outdoors. On Friday night I slept for all of about 5 hours, and so by the end of Saturday I was zonked. I headed to bed around 10:30 and didn't get up until 11 today!

I managed to get a nice sunburn across my face and it started showing this morning. I decided to grab my old surf hat from the basement before I went out today for the shoot. It's one of those cowboy style hats that has a somewhat sturdy brim around the entire hat. It's good for blocking out the sun from your face as well as your ears and neck. I figured I'd need it for today's game!

The hat helped immensely. I was concerned that it would interfere with looking through the camera but the short brim that is somewhat maliable worked nicely. I was able to wear the hat "back" on my neck somewhat and was able to look through the eyepiece without problem. I'm going to start wearing the hat to all the daytime events.

There was a ton of light at Maryland this afternoon. An open sun without a hint of clouds in the sky. It was burning hot, and I was sweating profusely into my knee pads. I've been wearing the knee pads since my parents got them for me for my birthday in September and they work very well. The only problem I have with them is that my knee sweat (eww) makes the inside of the knee pads slippery. It's difficult to stay planted when it's slippery in there. I'm sure that's not what you wanted to read...

I took my knee pads off during the women's game last night for just a minute to see if I could manage to be on my knees without the pads. It's crazy how much of a difference they make. In the past I used to spend almost the entire game on my knees without pads. Now I can't even go 5 minutes. If you're shooting sports and you don't have a little chair to sit on I recommend you get some knee pads - they make all the difference in the world!

It was actually pretty challenging to shoot today's game because there was so much light! It was great for exposure purposes, but it was very problematic from a review standpoint. There were several times where I went to my LCD to review some photos and I had a very difficult time judging my exposure and focus. It's hard to believe that having too much light can be a problem, but I guess it can be.

The most difficult part about today's game was the lack of action on the near side of the field. The UNC Tar Heels women's soccer team was the national champions last year, and Maryland hasn't won a single ACC game this year yet. Most of the action took place on the far side of the field in the opening half. As a photographer I try to go where the light is best. When that spot is in line with where the home team is shooting it's great. Today that was the case. Except my home team couldn't generate very much offense!

I had a choice to make: do I head down field to where UNC is attacking the Terrapins and shoot into the sun? Or do I stay in a favorable lighting position and shoot the Terrapin defense and hope that the Terrapin offense manages to make it to my side of the field. I chose to stay in place and I shot mostly Maryland defense today.

If I had a media credential I would have adjusted my position and located myself at mid field. That's where Greg was working today and he took some terrific shots. But until I get that pass I can't get into that section...

I also had a difficult choice to make with respect to which game to cover. The women's soccer team started at 1pm but the Field Hockey team started at 2pm. The women's soccer team is 0-3 in the ACC but was playing the nationally ranked and former national champions UNC Tar Heels. And the heels are an ACC team. That's a pretty important game to cover from a story standpoint!

On the other hand, the field hockey team is having an amazing season. They've won 18 straight games since last year's NCAA tournament championship, and are now 14-0. They broke the ACC attendance record on September 22 when they played Wake Forest, and today they were honoring head coach Meharg for 20 years of coaching the Maryland bench. Her "thank you" session was going to happen prior to the 2pm start. The downside of the field hockey game is that they played Boston University. They're not an ACC team, but they are ranked #14 in the country.

Since the women's soccer game only goes 45 minutes in a half I had a little bit of time to consider what to do: do I bail on the 2nd half of women's soccer so I can get to the entire field hockey game, or do I stick around and cover an ACC vs ACC game where Maryland could potentially upset the former national champs at the cost of missing part of the field hockey game.

Well, since Maryland wasn't playing very well I decided to head down to field hockey. In retrospect it probably wasn't the right thing to do but the field hockey game was a blast. The field is so small and the 400mm lens gives you so much reach. And Maryland's field hockey team puts a lot of action into the game. I wish that I could call .split() on myself and send my clone down to field hockey while I remained at soccer.

I shot the game at 1/8000 of a second for the most part and adjusted my aperture to f3.2 or f3.5 when necessary. A few times I stuck at f2.8 and reduced shutter speed, but that was only when the subjects were at the far end of the field.

The shots came out pretty well, but not as well as Friday night's "golden game." I think that a big part of why they didn't come out too well is because I couldn't review my work and make adjustments. I had a really hard time seeing the LCD and as a result I couldn't check to see if I was focusing properly or over/under exposing.

The women's soccer team is off for a 2 week road trip so I'll mostly be working on men's soccer and some volleyball until they return. Women's basketball is starting up on October 31st, and we're putting in a request for reconsideration of our media credential. I've covered 15+ games in the last 3 weeks of September and first week of October and written up original articles and posted my galleries. Hopefully they'll reconsider...

All week I had been looking forward to Friday evening's women's soccer game between the Maryland Terrapins and Wake Forest.

The women's game was the opener of a double header where the women played first and then the men played at 8pm. I was looking forward to this game because it started at 5pm, and the light towards the end of the day is always great for shooting. It has an orange tint to it and really lights up the players faces with a soft glow.

Daytime shoots are also great, but you can easily overexpose when there is full sun. This is especially true when your subjects wear white uniforms. However, the difference between the two (daytime and late afternoon shoots) is very small and they're both leaps and bounds better than night time events.

For today's event I took up position at my usual soccer location: on the left hand side of the endzone. It's a toss up with respect to which side you choose to sit on during a game (the right hand or the left hand). If you sit the left hand side of the field (the player's strong side, or on the players right as they come towards you) you get some great looks as they players move through the midfield.

You can also get some fantastic looks at the players in the center of the field when the attacker eventually centers the ball. It's tough to get those shots but it is very achievable. On the other hand, if you sit on the right hand side of the endzone (the player's traditionally weak side, or on the players left as they come towards you) you get some decent looks at the attacker before they center. However, lots of times your view of the action on is occluded by the players in the middle of the field.

If you're shooting from the right hand side of the field the players in the center block your view of the oncoming rush from the left hand side. You also are shooting the backs of players heads when the attacker centers the ball.

I bumped into Greg Fiume at the game and had a good time shooting with him. I've remarked in the past about how much more enjoyable a game is when you recognize and know someone at the game. 90 minutes (with a 15 minute half time) is a long time to be silent and shoot, and it's nice when someone is there you can converse with. Maybe I should get Julie into shooting these things with me.

I decided to go with Greg's advice from the last game and shoot as wide open as possible. I used f2.8 for the most part but at times I had to go to f3.5. My shutter speed was usually up around 1/6000th of a second, and I was on ISO200. I'm not sure what the difference is in picture quality between ISO100 and ISO200...

My shots came out really well. I thought that a lot would be out of focus as a result of the f2.8. But they didn't turn out badly at all. In fact I think it was one of my best shoots!

There was a decent crowd present and that always helps improve the quality of your shots. If you shoot someone and the entire background is empty seats it takes away from the quality of the picture. On the other hand, if the stadium is filled it tells the viewer that this game was important (well, important enough to bring people out to watch it!)

My shots during the 1st half were great because of the light, and my shots during the 2nd half were somewhat decent. The colors were pretty washed out tho because I was somewhat shooting into the sunset. The Maryland players had their backs to the sun and this created a shadow across the entire front of their body. There was very little variation in color as a result.

Towards the end of the game Greg asked if I could shoot the fireworks that they were going to ignite when the men came out. I said I would try to do it but I was kind of nervous because I've never shot fireworks before. I've heard from Al that they are pretty difficult to shoot, and so I asked Greg what settings he recommended.

He said that you can shoot fireworks pretty well with 1/500th of a second, ISO 1250, and f2.8. With that information I headed home during the 65 minute period between the end of the women's game and the start of the men's game. I ate a sandwich and offloaded my pictures and started post processing them.

I kept a keen eye on the clock because I wanted to get back in time for the fireworks. But I also wanted to go home to get a drink and eat a sandwich. At this point it was around 7pm and I was starving. I didn't want to have to go until 10:30pm before eating and having a glass of milk, so I headed home.

Home is very close to Maryland. Using line of sight we're about 0.25 miles away from campus. But driving it's about a mile. It's close tho, and I can get home and offload and get back to campus very quickly.

The glass of chocolate milk and my buffalo chicken with chipotle mayo sandwich was delicious. I had such a good time thumbing through the shots from the women's game knowing that I was heading back to campus about 45 minutes later for the men's game and for fireworks. I got through almost all of the photos and was really pleased with how they looked. That gave me encouragement before going to the men's game.

I rushed back to the game and made it into the stadium with a few minutes to spare before the fireworks were set off. You'll have to read about it in my next post!

I was really looking forward to this afternoon's games: Women's Soccer and Field Hockey.

Sports during the day are so much more interesting to photograph due to the abundance of light. When you have a lot of light it gives you a lot of flexibility with how you shoot. You can choose to go up to the highest possible aperture, or you can choose to step down to a smaller aperture.

I showed up early to the women's soccer game this afternoon and paid my $6 entrance fee. Instead of assembling my gear out in the parking lot I opted to take my ThinkTank case into the arena. The CSC guards have been pretty friendly towards me and I didn't think they'd mind if I walked in with a suitcase.

To help make things easier I put on my DC Sports Box credential as well as my Media pass to the Baysox. I figured that it would help me get past the CSC security guards. I'm not sure if it made any difference or not, but I made it past CSC without any hassle. It may be because of the ids hanging around my neck, or it could simply be because I have been polite to them in the past.

At 1pm the sun was up high in the sky, but it was slightly setting behind one of the endzones. Fortunately this endzone was the one that the Terrapins were shooting against. I walked over to it and set up shop. I wasn't too worried about shooting from that location since I shot from there during the last Men's game and a Maryland guy said it was ok.

I assembled and started taking some sample shots. ISO 200, f2.8, and 1/8000th of a second worked. I reduced the f-stop to the highest value that would allow for 1/500 of a second and it appeared to be around f8. Perfect light.

I made sure I adjusted my white balance on both my D200 and my D2H and put my 70-200 lens on my D2H. In my previous posts I've remarked that I love how the D200 and the 400mm lens performs. I wish that it had a higher continuous shooting capability, but 5FPS is good enough for me for field sports.

As the Maryland players headed out to be introduced I noticed a photographer on the field. It was Greg Fiume. Greg's the team photographer for a lot of Maryland sports, and I've also seen him down at RFK during Nationals games. He shoots the Capitals, Redskins, and a couple of other DC teams.

I continued shooting the teams during warmup and introduction, and Greg eventually made his way down to where I was located. I chose a spot that was on the strong side of the field (the attacker's right hand side) where they were looking into the sun. I doubt that Greg came to talk to me, and I instead think it's more likely that Greg ended up choosing the same spot. He walked up and said hello.

Greg and I shot the first half and chit-chatted the entire time. It was good to talk with him. We talked about the Rutgers vs Maryland football game the day before (he traveled and shot it), as well as some techniques. I asked him about the shadow problem I had the other day at field hockey and he said the only thing you can really do is try to adjust your position. Instead of shooting at a 90 degree angle to the sun try to find a spot where the sun is at your back.

Unfortunately that's difficult if you're not credentialed. As a credentialed photographer you have a lot of area you can cover. But as an uncredentialed photographer you can be pretty limited in where you can go. So basically I'm screwed until we have some better credentials. In the meantime I'll do my best to find locations where the sun is behind my back.

He did say that you can get some interesting back-lit shots. If you do it right you can make an aura of sorts appear around the player and it can make for some interesting pictures. He said the trick is to slightly overexpose so that you can still see the players face, but then that leads to your aura/halo. I'm going to give it a shot at Field Hockey.

Greg told me that he invested in a D3 and that made me happy to hear. Greg's pretty conservative with his bodies and instead focuses on lenses. He shoots with a D2H and a D1 and his shots look amazing. It's proof that you don't have to own 12MP $5k bodies to take a great picture. When I heard that he pre-ordered the D3 it made me smile because technically the camera is a masterpiece. Hearing that a great photographer thought it was worth purchasing reinforces my believe that the D3 is an amazing piece of equipment.

He remarked to me that the best settings he can get in Byrd is ISO2000 with 1/400 of a second on f2.8. When he described it he said "2000 at 400 and 2.8" and I said: "actually I think that's pretty good". I thought he was saying 1/2000th of a second at ISO 400 and f2.8. He actually meant ISO2000 with 1/400 of a second! I then replied with: "oh ya. that sucks...."

The women's soccer shoot went extremely well except for post-processing. I was stupid and I didn't use separate folders for women's soccer and field hockey this afternoon. As a result, I lumped both soccer and field hockey into the same directory on my MacBook Pro. During post-processing I separated the two into separate folders, but then I ended up "rm -rf"'ing the soccer folder.

When you "rm -rf" a directory in OSX's terminal you permanently remove the file from the filesystem. If you delete a file via Prevew or via Finder it goes into the Trash by "rm -rf" via the Terminal is the kiss of death for a file. Once you run it you can't get the file back.

I took several amazing pictures this afternoon of the women's soccer team, and while I was looking through them in Preview I thought: "wow this is good stuff." Unfortunately I lost all of that work when I inadvertently "rm -rf'ed" my "toProcess/umcp" folder after posting my field hockey pictures.

I downloaded some undelete software from the web and tried to recover the pictures from the CF card but that didn't get me much (about 72 images out of 1000). I ended up using the Trash Can to undelete the "throw outs" I came across during my first round of post-processing.

As a result, the photos you're seeing here and the photos over on DC Sports Box are my "throw out" pictures. They're crap and suck compared to what I took and held onto. Unfortunately my own stupidity and recklessness has caused me to lose those photos.

So take that as a lesson: if you're going to poke around in Terminal be careful with the "rm -rf" command. And for goodness sake use separate folders for your events so that you post process them in different directories!!!

Over the weekend I spent a lot of time working on "Shock". Shock is the software that I'm writing for the DC Sports Box that's going to help us upload photographic galleries.

We want to be able to provide the best photographic and editorial content in the DC region, and that has implications for both quality and quantity. We only want to deliver the best content possible, but we want to also deliver a lot of content. To us that means more stories, more photos, and higher resolution photos.

This presents an information management problem to us, and fortunately computers are excellent tools at addressing this problem. Since I'm a software engineer by day I'm in a particularly good position to try to help solve this problem for us using my years of development experience. That's where Shock comes in.

When a photographer returns from an assignment he or she will email a .ZIP file containing the images they wish to include in the gallery. Encoded within each .JPG file within the ZIP will be a Caption defined in the IPTC metadata. Shock will automate the process of extracting the images from the .ZIP file, reading the Caption information, and presenting the gallery to the editor for approval for posting. The editor will be able to make tweaks to Captions, set the date of the event, choose a category in the photography taxonomy to dock the gallery, and publish the content up to the website.

I spent a lot of time working on Shock on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and have made a lot of progress. I haven't yet figured out if I want to open source Shock or if I want to keep it as a BlunckSports asset. That's probably a mental exercise that's better to have after the work is created and proves some value.

Late Sunday I remembered that there was a Maryland Women's Soccer game over at Ludwig. I thought about not attending the event given the cold shoulder DC Sports Box has gotten from Maryland lately. But I'm less than a mile away, the weather was beautiful, I love Maryland Athletics, and I just couldn't resist. So after a nice healthy re-warmed Ledo's Pizza dinner I packed up my cameras and headed over to shoot.

On the way I thought about what kind of story or excuse I would have to offer to the gatekeeper when he asked about my lenses and cameras. I wasn't a credentialed photographer for the event, although Patrick Fischer (the media relations person) said that we could attend as fans and shoot the event. And if you're not a credentialed photographer the entry people and CSC staff sometimes give you a hard time about your equipment.

Before I got too deep into thinking about my response to the inevitable question of "Who are you with?" I decided not to think about it. It was too nice of an evening, and having to answer that ridiculous question one more time was going to annoy me. With that I rolled down my window, reclined the driver's seat, turned on my Sirius receiver and smiled at the thought of attending a Maryland Athletic's event.

I approached the ticket counter and paid my $6 for the event and wasn't asked any questions about my equipment by the ticket person. The CSC event staff ticket taker didn't ask me any questions either. I looked around and decided to sit on the western bleachers to take photos of the game for the first half. The sun was setting and I thought it would make for some warm photos.

I looked around and noticed 1 other photographer present. His credential indicated he was from George Mason (the opposing team). There weren't any staff photographers, nor were there any other media representatives present. I shook my head, put on my iPhone ear buds and started shooting the game using my 400mm/f2.8 lens on my D2H.

Prior to shooting I sought out Patrick Fischer to ask him where I could shoot from. He was very direct in his response to me: "Well since you're not with anyone you can't shoot from anywhere other than behind the gates." With that he went back to his laptop without offering much in the way of discussion.

Being able to shoot the event at all was a surprise. I expected to be stopped at the gate with my lens. So I was happy to be able to shoot. But shooting from up in the stands sure isn't the same as shooting from on the field. When you're up in the stands it's difficult to get a really nice perspective. You can get technically decent shots of the players that are in focus, properly focused, and have good saturation.

However, when you're on the field you have an entirely different vantage point that offers an enormous range of framing options. You also have a lot of options with your depth of field. From up high the background of your shots is the field rather than the stands on the far end of the field. The field is relatively close to the center of focus (the player), so you don't get any nice blurring effect. There's virtually no bokeh in any of the photos.

But I guess you have to do what you can... And for now I'm not credentialed at Maryland events.

In the second half I changed positions to the other side of the field because the Sun had completely set. With only stadium lights I figured there wasn't much difference in lighting between the 2 sides of the field. And the seats on the east side of the stadium are right up next to the side line. Shooting from them is as good as shooting from on the field, except that you're shooting into the Sun during day games.

The lighting at Ludwig really presents a lot of challenges. The biggest problem I found was inconsistent lighting across the field. Certain parts of the field were extremely dark and other parts were extremely light. Initially I tried relying on my built-in camera meter as a cue for making adjustments. But I quickly found that the camera couldn't react quickly or accurately enough. I would go from shooting a player in a dark area to shooting a player in a light space and the meter wouldn't catch up correctly. Following the meter's advice I overexposed a lot of images.

In the end I wound up using manual settings with 1/320th second, ISO 1250, and f2.8. The shots at night didn't turn out very well. Hopefully I'll be able to attend another event and take some more photos and see how they turn out.

I also passed out a few cards to parents in the stadium that inquired who I was shooting for. I replied that I was there by myself and offered them whatever photos I took. They seemed happy and hungry for some more media attention for the Maryland Terrapins. If only they knew...