"A Doherty spike just slips by the outstretched arms of Colorado Springs Christian's Summer Greager (7) and Lauren Santarelli (10) in the third game of girls volleyball action at Doherty High School in Colorado Springs Saturday, Sept. 6, 2008. The Lions from CSCS fell to the Spartans 25-17, 25-23, 25-19." Photo by Justin Edmonds, The Gazette
Today was just one of those days where nothing really goes right and you can't really do anything about it. I had two assignments today: prep volleyball and a standalone feature for metro.
In an effort to finish my day earlier than expected I wanted to try and find a feature before my volleyball assignment. Last night I searched the internet for things going on in the city that the paper wasn't already covering. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that the nature center at the park less than a mile from my place was having their annual honey harvest for kids. I thought this would be perfect; you can't really beat people in funny looking hats and little kids in awe of what they are doing for a easy feture pickup.
I wasn't so happy when I got out of bed early to attend the event only to realize that it wasn't anything more than some kids looking at bees inside a plexiglass box. I made all of three images before getting out of there.
On my way to the office I noticed a dozen police officers standing next to their motorcycles' outside of a center that houses an hotel, parking garage and two banks. I made a U-turn, parked in the library lot above the officers and got out to see what was going on. Again....nothing. They just stood there for a good 25 minutes while I waited for something to happen. I at least was hoping that they would all leave in unison so that I could get a slow shutter pan of all of them. I called the office and nothing turned up on the scanner so I just left. McCain and his hockey mom of a VP were in town and they were just the motorcade waiting for the event at the airport to finish. Whatever!
I made a quick stop by the office to grab the strobes and a 400 before going to Doherty for volleyball. Kirk wasn't on the desk today because he was shooting that old guy running for president so I couldn't use his D3.
I arrived with 50ish minutes before the varsity match and began setting up my strobes on the ends of the stands. I put both of them up but it was an absolute headache because I couldn't get my pocket wizards to fire consistently. One would fire but the other wouldn't...so I moved. I tried different channels. I moved the PW's. I stood in different places. Same thing. Repeat. Same thing. Ahhhhhhh. I was so frustrated.
After dealing with that mess for the first game and a half I finally decided to scrap the idea. I got out my trusty Canon, bumped that sucker to 3200 ISO at 1/640 and pounded away on the shutter trying to make up for the time I spent dealing with the strobes that weren't. I made some safe frames just to cover my ass but by the time I was done with that the game was over. I made a bunch of 'pedestrian' images and nothing more. I couldn't have been more disappointed in both the gear and myself. I wanted to shine on my first sports assignment and that just didn't happen.
I didn't have too much time to sulk though because I still had to find a feature. I drove around a completely different way back towards the office hoping that I would see something new and interesting but it wasn't there. The sun was shining and it was warm so I wanted to show that in the image. I wanted people outside enjoying the warm weather because it has been pretty chilly the past week since I arrived. If anyone would be outside I knew that college kids would so I drove over to DU's bitter rival CC to find something.
FINALLY something caught my eye. A group of guys were "tossin some disc" and they were soon joined by a larger group that joined in and they started a pickup game of Ultimate. I was shooting backlit with some really nice sunlight and a backdrop of some tall, lush, dense trees that made the background go dark.
I got a few funny looks (from some hot girls at that) as I laid completely on the ground in slightly damp grass so I get a more of a unique perspective. I made some decent images, got their names and headed back to the office.
Tomorrow is another day but it comes with pressure as I already know that my 7am assignment is running A1. I'm looking forward to redeeming myself come dawn. Night.
-JCE
No comments:
Post a Comment