One Game at a Time

This weekend was the last home game for the NOVA Majestics.

I've had a lot of fun shooting the Majestics and the Royals the past 2 1/2 months and I've learned a lot about outdoor sports shooting because of all the games I covered. I've also learned a lot about shooting soccer, and that's been a lot of fun.

A big part of shooting sports is anticipating action. If you understand the rules of the game you can anticipate what the next move will be, and knowing that you can position yourself or adjust your field of view to potentially capture a moment.

As an example, observing the home team kick the soccer ball out of bounds next to the goal means that a corner kick is coming. If you move quickly to be located next to the kicker you can catch some interesting shots where the keeper is in focus but the kicker is out of focus. Or you can get a shot of the kicker with the keeper and the defenders out of focus.

Shooting the Majestics has taught me that field position is important, and by being in the right place at the right time and being observant and anticipating the next move or event you can capture some fantastic moments. There are a few photos that I've taken that show a player inbounding the ball, or a couple of players about to collide, and those seem to draw the most attention.

I've also learned a lot about autofocus systems and metering while shooting outdoors. When I started shooting I didn't understand passive vs active autofocus systems, and now I have a somewhat vague idea of how the Nikon passive autofocus system works. I'm by no means an expert, but I understand that passive focus systems are based fundamentally on how quickly contrast changes when cross-cutting an image. In out of focus images the contrast changes slowly but in the case of in focus images the contrast can change quickly (assuming there is sufficient variation in color in the subject).

I've experienced the problems of autofocus first hand while on the field. Specifically I've had problems with backfocus on bleachers rather than on subjects in the foreground, focus locks on the creases in jerseys rather than in the face, and a lot of focuses on the soccer ball rather than the player. When I moved from center-weighted and spot focus to group focus the number of in-focus shots I took dramatically increased. I highly recommend using group focus for outdoor sports like soccer.

Sharpness has been a problem for me since day 1, and I haven't really improved much in my sharpness during my coverage of the Majestics. I think part of my problem has been focus related: if I'm out of focus I can't be sharp. But even when I'm in focus I'm soft in a lot of my photos. I attribute a lot of that to use centerweighted or spot focus rather than group, but even towards the end of covering the Majestics when I was using group autofocus I was still somewhat soft.

I'm still trying to figure out my softness problem, and if anyone has any advice for somebody shooting with a D200 and a 70-200/2.8 VR lens I'd love to hear it. I typically shoot ISO 400, sun WB, manual mode with 1/2000 and f2.8 or aperture priority mode on f2.8, group autofocus, continuous focus, and 7 focal points.

Enough of my summary of the season... Now onto details about the shoot...

I arrived plenty early for the game and was happy to see Larry. Larry showed me his shiny new D200 and was sharing the story of how he came to purchase the new body. When I met Larry back in May he was shooting with two D1H bodies (one may have been a D1HS if they made such a beast). He wanted some new bodies and decided to plunk down the change for a Fuji in a D200 body and an actual Nikon D200. I was surprised to learn from him that the Fuji had slower frames per second and cost slightly more than the Nikon. I think it has the same image processing engine tho... Even so... I'm kind of confused why Larry went with the Fuji over the Nikon D200.

Arriving early allows you to capture some good moments before the game that involve players getting psyched up for the player introductions and for the match itself. I like getting a mix of in-game shots and candid shots of the players, and before the game is a great time to get some candid shots. During the game you can get some good candid shots after a goal is scored, but often times you're elsewhere on the field and aren't close enough to get a truly great shot. So I now make a point to arrive early for events to get as many candids as possible.

I started shooting the game using my 70-200/2.8 lens and then decided to apply my 2X TC. I haven't used the 2X TC in months, and I really forgot how nice it is to be shooting at 400mm. It's really amazing! You lose 2 f-stops, and that noticeably changes the depth of field and the out-of-focus effect of the background, but being in so close allows you to get some great action shots. Because a soccer field is SO large there's a chance that MOST of the action will occur SOMEWHERE AWAY from where you're standing. So having a 400mm gives you reach into the action that occurs far away.

When looking at my shots at home I noticed that my shots with the 2X TC came out really well and seem to focus better than my shots at 200mm that I crop. It just goes to underscore the difference between pixel-zooming and optical-zooming: if you have a very dense sensor (e.g. 12MP) you can pixel-crop and that produces a "zoom" effect but you'll get out of focus subjects that aren't sharp. But if you are optical you're pictures are clearer and in focus.

Using the 2X TC really got me thinking about acquiring a longer lens. I'm going to have to give some thought to a 300mm lens given the success I had on my 2X TC during my last shoot of the Majestics.

Lastly, I was happy to see that the county finally removed all the buses from the parking lot next to the soccer field. They kept getting into my field of view and they really made for an awful background. However, in place of the buses the county landed a nice gray trailer. So we go from one slightly ugly background to a really awful background. Oh well.. I guess that's what you get when you're not shooting the professionals...

Overall I've been very happy shooting the Majestics. When I first contacted them I didn't know if they'd let me into games, and when they asked if I would attend every home game I was excited to try but hesitant due to the distance from my house (they are about 40 miles away and it takes over an hour to get to their field). However I've had such a great time shooting them and have learned so much about shooting outdoor soccer that I haven't minded the distance at all. In fact, my wife even came out to one or two games to keep me company while on the road!

I'm sad to see this team winding down for the summer, but I'm happy that I took advantage of the opportunity to take some pictures of a small local team and learn a little bit more about photography. And I'm happy that I'll be sending all the photos to the GM of the team so that he/she can distribute them to the players. I think that some of them will really enjoy some of the moments I captured for them, and maybe they'll even print one or two of them...

Al's on vacation, and I like it when Al's on vacation.

When Al's on vacation he can't cover his events, so that gives me an opportunity to remove my lens cap and take a few shots. This afternoon I attended the Mystics vs Comets game at Verizon Center and had a great time. This past weekend Al covered the WNBA game (his article is here) and the Verizon Center was "sold out" for that event. I was looking forward to this afternoon's game because I was hoping there would still be some WNBA fans in town who would decide to come out to today's game.

The game was an unusual one, as it took place in the middle of the day during the week. The media relations staff explained to me that it was because of summer camps. There were certainly a ton of campers in attendance tonight - practically the entire stadium was filled with young children from various parts of the Washington DC Metropolitan region.

My plan was to arrive at the stadium 30 minutes before tipoff, but I actually end up walking out of the metro about 50 minutes before tipoff. I thought I was going to have to find time to kill, but in retrospect that was a good amount of time for Verizon Center. It takes awhile to walk from the Gallery Place/Chinatown metro exit to the Press Entrance (it's literally on the opposite side of the building from the metro entrance). Once you get to the Press Entrance they check your bags and verify you're supposed to be there.

After winding down a long corridor and getting to the media room you're offered a meal (on the house). Today's serving was a breakfast dish provided by Clyde's: eggs, bacon, sausage, and potatoes. It wasn't too bad...

But between walking around the building, getting in through security, and sitting down to have a bite to eat it can actually take quite a bit of time. In the future I'm going to shoot to arrive 45 minutes before a game begins so that I have sufficient time (rather than 30 minutes). I also noticed that the wireless network worked differently this time. Last time it was a WAP that didn't broadcast it's SSID (you had to key in the SSID by hand as well as the WEP passphrase). This time it was a wide open WAP that brought you to a webpage where you keyed in a username and password. Today's setup was much better than last time - those cloaked WAPs are so cheesy. And who's going to steal the signal? I couldn't even get a cell phone signal from the media room for crying out loud...

I headed out to the court and said hello to a few people I recognized from the last game. One guy had an almost identical setup as me: D200 with the MB-D200 battery pack, 70-200/f2.8 VR lens, and an 18-55/2.8 DX lens. I don't have the 18-55/2.8 yet, but I plan on getting one at some point in the future.

I decided to break away from the rest of the photographers and instead shoot from the opposite end of the court. All of the photographers were positioned under the basket that the home team defended during the 1st half. I'm not sure if it's because they wanted to have dibs on their spots for the 2nd half action, or if they chose that end because they could cover coaches and players reactions during the game. Either way, it was completely filled under that basket so I headed down the court to a wide open spot.

I sat out around the 3point line next to an AP photographer who was shooting with a 300/2.8 and a 70-200/2.8 lens. With 70mm being my closest range, and with the 1.5x crop factor on my DX sensor, I really struggle being under the basket. Even out at 3 point range I'm really in too close for a lot of the under the basket shots. I do manage to get a lot of good baseline drives tho.

I read last night about exposure compensation (EV) and I have to say that I still don't understand this beast yet. Seems like it's just an auto-darken or auto-lighten that is applied when you shoot a photo. The D200 manual recommended positive EV when the subjects are darker than the background, and negative EV when the subjects are lighter than the background.

Most of the basketball players on the Mystics are African American, and thus they tend to be "darker" than the background. I decided to apply a +0.3 EV correction thinking I would see their faces a little better. I took a few test shots at 1/400second, 1250ISO, f2.8, and +0.3EV and they looked pretty good. I decided to stick with it during the entire game, and I had pretty good results. My shots are definitely brighter than the last Mystics game I covered, and I didn't have to touch 1600 ISO.

My only complaint about the +0.3EV is that it really made for some bright jerseys. The Mystics wear a white uniform at home, and it's really bright in some of my shots. I guess it's a difficult call - you increase the EV correction to get brighter faces, but that washes out the jerseys.

I've heard a bunch of people talk about noise reduction filters that they apply during post-processing. I really need to look into that and see how well they work (or don't work). If I can shoot at ISO1600 and then reduce the noise through software that might turn out better than shooting at ISO1250 and using a +0.3EV correction.

I kept using the group-weighted autofocus system on the D200 and it worked really well. I noticed that the other D200 shooter was using group-weighted autofocus system, so that's positive reinforcement that I'm on the right track. I'm still getting a lot of soft photos, but in this case I don't think there's much I can do due to the lighting situation. Outdoors I can reduce my f-stop to a higher value and that might improve my sharpness. But in low light I think I'm pretty much stuck with f2.8 for exposure purposes. Not sure how that helps me or hurts me in the long run.

On the other hand, it could be the case that I'm just looking at my pictures under too large of a microscope. Any picture, when zoomed in by 800%, looks like crap (either blurry or over/under saturated). I noticed that my pictures aren't too bad when I look at them on my blog or on DC Sports Box, even tho I think they look like crap when I view them at full resolution on my laptop. It would really help if I could follow someone like Al around during his post processing to see what kind of sharpness his shots have. Then I can determine if this is something I can improve or if this is a limitation of my equipment. I suspect it's something I can improve, but it would be good to have confirmation.

Lastly, I would like to point you over to my new website, BlunckSports. It isn't a whole lot to look at right now, but I'm planning on putting more content up there as I increase my skills. I'll continue posting my story to this blog about what techniques I'm learning, but I plan to be working on BlunckSports, as well as the DC Sports Box in the future. Please give both sites a look and an RSS subscription.

My weekend concluded with a nice shoot of the Washington Freedom in their game against the New York Magic at the Soccer Plex in Germantown MD.

I was looking forward to this shoot because I enjoy shooting soccer a lot. It's outdoors, there's plenty of action, and it's a wide field (which offers lots of different vantage points from which to shoot). Also, afternoon games are always great because the lighting is perfect (compared to indoors).

I've been struggling to figure out why a lot of my outdoor shots are so soft. I did some research on it and couldn't find a whole lot of answers. I thought that I would give a shot at increasing my ISO setting during this event. Normally under outdoors situations I shoot down at around 100 ISO and I thought that if I go up to 800 then maybe I'll get some sharper shots.

Unfortunately that didn't work at all... My shots were just as blurry as before and I was pretty disappointed by that. I thought about talking to another photographer who covers the Freedom games, but he uses a Canon and I thought that maybe he couldn't help me. In retrospect I wish I had struck up a conversation with him and asked him a few questions.

A coworker of mine (Jason) suggested I reduce my F-stop. Ever since Greg Fiume said: "I always shoot f2.8 when I'm on a lens capable of f2.8" I've done the same. At that aperture the depth of field is so shallow, and that makes for great photos. I read that most lenses have their optimum sharpness at f5.6, and Jason's advice corresponded to what I read. I played around with my camera and was able to figure out how to reduce my aperture when in Aperture priority mode. The next time I cover an outdoor sporting event I'm going to shoot 1/2 the game at f5.6 and see if that helps my focus.

During the week I read some more of the Nikon manual for my D200. I find myself re-reading certain sections and after a bunch of events it starts to make more sense. If you're just getting started in shooting I suggest reading the manual but realizing you're not going to know what parts are significant or how to apply the controls to your event. Read it so you know whats in there, and then go out and shoot a bunch of games. Come back and re-read salient parts (e.g. Autofocus settings) after each event and think about what problems you experienced during your event. It's surprising how much I've picked up doing that.

I started off using spot auto-focus, then went to center-weighted, and then the entire-frame auto-focus. But recently I've started using group-weighted with 7 focal spots and it seems to work pretty well. I've noticed that more and more of my shots are properly focused now (significantly more than before)! I still flip around on the autofocus modes every now and then but I seem to have the best results in sports using group autofocus. I haven't played too much with the closest subject vs focal points mode for group focus tho.

I didn't play too much with the white balance setting during this event. It was cloudy for most of the event, but the sun did break through for a few minutes. During that time I flipped the WB over to sunlight and the shots turned out really well. I wonder if I should look into using the auto-WB setting. I don't know tho - I like being able to flip it around as the lighting conditions change (e.g. as the sun is going down and they just turn on the stadium lights).

I let the camera Auto-ISO for a bit. I wasn't too impressed with the setting, but I wasn't disappointed either. I wonder how well that feature works in low light situations. Maybe I'll give it a shot the next time I'm in Verizon Center or Comcast.

Lastly, this was the last home game for the Freedom and that makes me pretty sad. Their season only runs during the first half of the summer and then they're off until next year I believe. Just recently one of their media people responded to one of my email requests and said that I was welcome to attend any home game and shoot. Unfortunately this only happened recently and I was only able to attend 2 home games. I plan on sending my photos to them, and hopefully next year they'll invite me back to cover some more games. And who knows where the Sports Box will be by then... It could be the case that I'll be covering the games in some kind of official capacity (rather than being an informal photographer just shooting for my blog).

I'm covering the Mystics game this week and that should be a lot of fun. The last Mystics game was fun, and I like the idea of us (the DC Sports Box) covering the WNBA games. The media relations person at Verizon double dips between the Capitals and the Mystics. I think it will help our chances of covering more and more Capitals games during the fall if we also cover the Mystics games during the summer. That and it's also fun shooting basketball.

Friday night's shoot of the Bowie Youth Street Hockey event in Bowie was fun, but I was really looking forward to Saturday's event: The Alan Iverson Softball Classic.

The Classic took place out at Bowie Baysox stadium and is a fundraiser. Part of the funds that were raised go to the local community college. Because of this Jake from the Bowie Blade asked me to cover the event. Jake even came out to cover the event from a writing standpoint.

The event was scheduled to start at 7:05pm with the press allowed in at 5pm. I arrived at 6pm and picked up my pass at the media stand. When I mentioned to the Baysox employee that I was with the Blade the person knew right away who I was as well as Jake. Ryan then walked me into the stadium and pointed out where I was supposed to go and shoot from. He also said that Jake was already here and down on the field waiting for me.

I headed down to the field and met up with Jake for the first time. It was kinda weird meeting him for the first time since we've had several dozen emails back and forth and I've been shooting for him all summer but I've never met him in person. On the field Jake and I spoke at length about shooting, media, events, and coverage. He seems pretty hungry for expanding his coverage and asked me if I would be willing to increase my coverage of his events. I said that I didn't know what my time would be like in the Fall in light of my increased involvement with the DC Sports Box.

The event was a lot of waiting for the athletes to arrive. I took a few pictures of the WPGC DJs but I was mostly waiting for Carmelo Anthony and Alan Iverson to arrive. They finally arrived around 7:45pm (just a little bit late!)

When they arrived they walked around the media area and we were able to use flash photography. This was good because my initial shots without flash didn't come out very well. I had to shoot up around 1600 ISO with f2.8 and the white balance and noise made the pictures pretty bad. Going down to ISO 300 with a flash and white balance on flash really made a large difference!

There were quite a lot of media outlets covering the event. The local Fox News, CBS News, and ABC News outlets were there, as were Comcast Sports Net and a few smaller channels (most likely Bowie Statue University or something like that). Fortunately there was enough room that photographers could easily move around the TV cameras, and they weren't using their lights. I was able to move about easily and take lots of good photographs of the athletes when they were doing sound bites and answering questions for the reporters.

I also ran into a photographer I've seen at Maryland events. I didn't catch her name, but she said she works for the PG Gazette. I believe we receive that newspaper at our house, but I usually just throw it away. I'll have to take a look at it next time to see if her shots of the Iverson Classic are in there.

There was also a photographer in attendance who was a pain in the ass. She was pushing all the other photographers around and pushing people out of the way. On a couple of occasions she'd get really close to an athlete and then miss the shot somehow. I'm not sure what her problem was, but she seemed really irritable and bossy. She was working the media relations girl for better shots and to get some of the VIP invitees out of the way of her shots.

She also kept asking other photographers "who's that?" I don't know who many of the athletes are because I don't follow professional sports very closely, but Jake does. And Jake was there to cover the story (I was just there for the eye candy). He knew a lot about the different athletes, most notably their names (which she didn't know)!

Later on I found out that she was a paparazzi photographer and wasn't there for a media outlet. I kept thinking during the event: you're going about this the wrong way! Every person that I talk to in this business has said: be nice to the media relations people. If you're mean or unpleasant to them, or you complain unnecessarily you won't be invited back. And if you aren't invited back you can't take photos! So be nice and you'll get invited back. She definitely wasn't being nice, and I doubt she'll be at another ESPN event!

Shooting opportunities during the game itself were pretty limited due to the poor light and my position on the field. I really need that 300/2.8 or a 400/2.8 to cover baseball. But, on the other hand, I really don't enjoy baseball too much so it might not be a bad thing that I don't have a long lens. But I got a few action shots of Iverson running between 2nd and 3rd base.

The real action occurred after the game when the athletes stood around on the field and signed authographs for the DJs and the fans. There were a ton of shooting opportunities (with flash!) on the field, and by far those turned out to be my best shots. Interestingly enough, the paparazzi photographer left during the middle of the game and completely missed out on the on-field shots after the game.

Overall I fired about 400 actuations and ended up with around 20 photos I sent to the Blade. I actually have a ton other "keepers" that I'll probably post back up on my server tho. It was a very good shoot, and really showed me what a difference flash makes.

I really would like an SB-800. They allow you to just shoot and shoot and shoot and not even think about the flash recharging. If I had one of these I'd really do well in situations like this. It's definitely going on my list of gear I'd like to acquire. Fortunately they're not too expensive ($350?).

I also learned a lot about my minimum focal length on my 70-200 lens. It's 2.5 meters, and I've never had a problem with it before because I've always shot players on the field. In this event I was covering people close up and on several occasions I was too close (less than 2.5 meters) and I couldn't focus. I had to back up, focus, and then zoom in.

Although this sounds like a problem it really isn't too bad. With the 70-200 lens I can be pretty far away from my subject and still get a great shot. With a lens with a shorter focal length (e.g. a 17-55mm lens) I would have to be directly in front of the subject when shooting. It would certainly help to have a 17-55mm but in this situation it didn't seem crucial.

It's been 12 days since my last post, and I've been itching to get back behind the glass.

With the Fourth of July, work, some server outages, and some work on our house going on it's been difficult to find the time to work, much less to shoot. I've also been spending a lot of time thinking about the DC Sports Box and how I can help make it successful.

I finally wrote some gallery software using Flash and had a helluva time working with it. I've been writing software for over 10 years now, and each programming language has a different flavor to it. Over time you tend to get a sense for what was important to the language designers when they developed the language.

Flash is most definitely a language written by graphic artists and website developers. When writing Flash you comingle ActionScript and layout components, and Flash takes care of a lot of the hidden details of wiring the two things together. There are reserved variable names you have to use when working with some of the Flash components. It's very tricky, implicit, and definitely geared towards the "go out and buy our IDE and click through it to make things work" rather than "go and write your Flex, ActionScript, and explicitly link the two together.

There's also a total disregard for separation of concerns between programming logic and visual layout (something that Java has really embraced in the past 5 years) - you have to be both an ActionScript and Flex "programmer" as well as somebody that knows how to lay components out on a page in an aestheticly pleasing way. Blech! I'd rather take care of the coding and let a graphic artist who is severals orders of magnitude better than me take care of laying down tokens (data) that I produce from my code in different areas on the screen.

Anyhow... Back to photography... I've been having a lot of email conversations with Al about the DC Sports Box and how we can make it a success. I'm very happy to hear that the organization is truly in it's infancy, having only been "live" for just over 2 months now. It's exciting to become involved with an effort that is so young and new because at this stage everyone is hungry, excited, and anxious to push things along. In contrast, if you go to an established organization that has been successfully getting credentials to every event for decades I imagine it's pretty stagnant and uninteresting. I'd much rather build something rather than attach myself to an existing organization, and that's why I'm looking forward to the DC Sports Box. It's going to be a lot of fun to build it up and see where it goes.

The gallery software I'm writing is the first step in this process. I'm pretty close to a point where I'm comfortable with distributed the software. As a result, I've registered a new domain for myself named http://www.bluncksports.com/. Please cruise over there and take a look at some of the games I've covered. I'd appreciate any feedback on the software or on the photos. I'm of course joking and speaking to myself (I have very few readers: my wife, and my brother. Hi Julie, and Hi Andrew).

A problem that Al is having is managing the growing organization and coordinating resources for events. He's having trouble keeping track of events and photographer/writer assignments. He's also having trouble staying on top of requesting credentials pretty far in advance of an event. Fortunately I think I can help him with this by setting up a WebDAV server. Al uses iCal and that software has the ability to publish calendar information, as well as subscribe to calendar feeds (similar to RSS). Using a WebDAV server Al (or any other person in our organization) can maintain calendars for various sport agencies and publish them to the server. As they make changes (including assignments notes), those changes will be published automatically. Once the files are published up on the server other people can subscribe to them. It's not as good as synchronized calendars, but the master-slave model will work in this case.

So the calendar is the first step that I'm really pushing to help makes things better at the DC Sports Box. I'm also planning on pushing out a Trac server so that we have a Wiki we can use to collaborate on notes and planning for the company.

In summary... things are moving forward with the Sports Box in quite a positive way. We had our first all-hands meeting this week that I was a part of, and it was a very good one. Everyone got together at Mike Busada's studio at the corner of 50 and 495, and we shared pizza and wings while comparing ideas on the Sports Box. Afterwards we took some photos in Mike's studio for our badges and for the website.

That's the news from the Sports Box. I'm still shooting for Jake at the Bowie Blade, and this evening I covered a Youth Street Hockey event. I wasn't looking forward to this event after shooting the basketball game inside of Bowie High School several weeks ago. I was anticipating very poor lighting and having to dial up the ISO to north of 1600. When I arrived I was pleased to see that the facility was pretty recently refurbished and bright lights were installed.

I took a few test shots with my 50/1.8 prime lens and although I can't meter with it my inspection of the photos revealed that there was ample light at 400 ISO and 1/50th of a second. I increased the ISO to 1250 and was able to shoot at f1.8 at about 1/200th of a second without any noticeable problems. Given those settings I went to my 70-200/2.8 for increased range. I had to reduce the speed to about 1/100th of a second but the shots were still reasonable.

Tomorrow I'll be covering the Alan Iverson Softball Classic out at Baysox Stadium. I'm looking forward to that event because it sounds like it will be really busy. Plus it will be outdoors and I love shooting in the evening when the sun is throwing lots of deep reds and oranges on my subjects. The photos just look so good in that light!

It was a tough choice for Saturday night's activities. I have a pass to shoot the Washington Freedom, and they have a game tomorrow night at the same time. And, I've only covered 1 Freedom game. I'd like very much to shoot a couple more of them before their season ends. I also have a pass to cover the Majestics and Royals, both of which are playing tomorrow evening.

If I had my way I'd spread the games out over the entire day and cover them all. But I guess I don't control the schedules yet. This upcoming week I'll be covering a Mystics game on Wednesday evening, and the following week I'll be covering part of the Legg Mason Tennis Classic. So hopefully things will be picking up again after the July 4th break. And who knows, maybe I'll get a few more visits!