I'm Coming Around on Volleyball

When I first started shooting volleyball, I thought it was one of the most difficult sports to shoot. And, while it is still not an easy sport to shoot, I am enjoying covering it a lot more. I guess covering Wylie, the number one Class 3A team in state helps. Though, the way they've just been mowing over the teams they've played so far has made it tough to get some really great stuff since the matches get done so quick. Hopefully now, with the playoffs starting some of the matches will be a little more exciting, and I'll have had enough practice to get decent shots.

Playoff Week 1, Game 3, day 3

With so many of our area teams in the playoffs I spend a lot of time driving around the state. Last year I drove about 2,500 miles in the six weeks of the high school football playoffs. This year I had a game in town on Thursday, Friday I made a 300+ mile roundtrip to Arlington, then on Saturday I went to Midland for Wylie playing their playoff game against Lubbock Estacado. Yet another day of a 300+ mile round trip to cover the game. The good thing was the game wasn't until 7pm so I was able to sleep in after getting in at 4am.

The first round of the playoffs often will result in some pretty anti-climactic games. This was one of them. Despite the team playing without their starting quarterback who was out with a knee injury. Wylie just pounded Estacado. The first half made for some pretty nice photos. The second half the team was pretty much put on cruise control and coasted to an easy win. I guess it was a good thing and made the game end early which helped as far as getting my photos in on deadline.

More football...

This week was another busy week. I shot two games, one on Thursday, on Friday. Thursday's game was one of those old school games, but at least I didn't have to travel far, since the game was in town. A lot of running and maybe four passes the whole game. Sweetwater played Midland Greenwood, both teams played a Wing T offense and I don't think Sweetwater had thrown a pass in three games. The good part about this is I could shoot the whole game without deadline worries despite earlier deadlines.

The bad part about shooting teams like this is much of the option offense is based on deception. Including who gets the ball. I'm so used to shooting spread offenses, it's tough to adjust. The other problem is a lot of the runs are up the middle. The old adage of three yards and a cloud of dust still ring pretty true... sans the dust since most of the games I shoot now are played on artificial turf. The action photos I got were nothing too spectacular, but I was able to pull out some nice jube stuff, luckily the photos was secondary.

Friday's game was in Stephenville again, where I shot last week's Abilene High game. This week it was a 2A playoff game between Merkel and Brady. Brady isn't in our coverage are but it seems I've shot them as much as any time I've covered this year. It was the third time I've shot them. Shooting in Stephenville has it's good and bad parts. The press box has a lighting fast internet connection, which allows me to send full rez photos and not compress the heck out of them. The one big problem with the stadium is the lights. This place is lit worse than most small high school stadiums. Even at 6400 ISO on my D3, I had to shoot at 320/f2.8 and still needed to lighten the pix up.

The game, like the last couple I've covered lately, started out pretty slow, but got better near the end of the second quarter. Brady started throwing the ball at the end of the half, which was nice since I had next to nothing and needed to send photos to our sister paper in San Angelo, who had an earlier deadline.

By the time I got my photos edited and sent it was nearly halfway through the third quarter. I was able to make a few more shots for the rest of the quarter and the start of the fourth. It was looking more and more like Merkel wasn't going to make a comeback. I focused on Merkel since it wouldn't have mattered if I got photos of Brady since it was past San Angelo's deadline. There was a lot of dejection, I decided to keep my eye on the quarterback who was the catalyst of the team as well as its leader.

Despite the awful light and really cold conditions - it's finally starting to get cold in Texas - I was able to make a few decent images. The good part was the game again was over fairly early, since I was heading south for more playoffs, but not football this time. More on that in the next post.