daines'n around

I've embraced the joys of reading for fun again, and just in time for school to start too. I'm enthralled by Rand's The Fountainhead at this point. I only came to my computer to type out a few ideas, and thought I'd jot down some thoughts about photographing the sporting event on Saturday.

It is incredibly hot in southern California, which I would take over a hurricane any other day. I saw the news this afternoon, of hundreds of thousands of people fleeing their homes and was thankful that there is none of this anticipation for earthquakes, brush-fires, riots, and flooding. I guess California is a spontaneous place; and I like it that way.

The sun's rays are almost unbearable. The UV index is ten everyday; great for tanners, horrible for people who just want to walk around. Equally as horrible is the fact that Cal State Northridge has no air conditioning in their 'Matadome' (home of the matadors.) I was on assignment Saturday to photograph the Women's Volleyball tournament versus UNLV.

I was actually grateful at one point that my camera has a nice rubberized grip built into the body, because it was easily 100 degrees up in the rafters of the stadium.

Photographing volleyball had to be one of the most challenging assignments that I have had yet. I've become accustomed to getting as close as possible to my subject and using wide angles to involve the viewer in the situation. You can only get so close in sports.

My editor told me to go up high, so I resisted my desire to get close to the players, and heeded his advice. He seemed to have experience photographing volleyball games. I climbed over a few locked gates and no one seemed to pay me mind at all.

The Daily News photographer was on the other end of the rafters with his $10,000 and up equipment all given to him by his newspaper, and me with my lens I saved all summer for. Oh, I guess I never mentioned that. I'm a camera geek I guess. I got a Canon 70-200 F/4.0L and a 17-40mm F/4L and I'm very pleased with both. The focus is MUCH faster than any other lens I've owned previously. I don't think I could use a slower auto focus lens again.

After sweating through the hours of tournament play, hundreds of mediocre photos, and a lot of try and fail experiments; I've learned a bit more about how I want to photograph sporting events, and how I will do them in the future.

Angles are very important. I've also realized that I dislike taking vertical photos, which I need to remedy quickly. Sometimes they are necessary.

StaticAntics has some larger versions of shots that I didn't submit to the paper.