Keeping track at the track

There is so much action going on at a track meet it can be overwhelming.

I was fortunate to be offered the opportunity to shoot the NCAA Division II Outdoor Track and Field meet in Charlotte, N.C., by Jamie Schwaberow of NCAA Photos last weekend. It was bloody hot, and the work space was (to put it politely) a bit small for the job, but the volunteers, meet officials and athletes were top notch.

The problem with covering a track meet is two-fold.

One, there's so much going on at one time it wouldn't help if you were triplets. High jump, pole vault and discus are competing as the 100-meters hurdlers are screaming down the track. Everywhere you look, it's running, jumping and pictures galore--but where do you start? And what are you missing over THERE while you're over HERE?

Two, because of all the pandelerium, it's very tempting to wimp out and make the "easy" pictures so you can try to get to every event. Hurdles--snap! High jump--click! Discus--duck! (Only once, fortunately, and it wasn't really that close. But I don't turn my back on those folks, or the javelin throwers...for obvious reasons.)

A word of advice on taking the easy way out: DON'T.

Sounds pretty trite, doesn't it? But it can be done.

How? First off, tell yourself "I will miss pictures...and I won't cry."

Once that's out of the way, you can move on to planning. Get to the track early, before the competition starts. Scout the locations of the different events, and compare them to the handy schedule you should have close at hand. Is the long jump pit close to the high jump? Is the pole vault close to the 4x200 meter handoff zone? Remember that high jump, pole vault and most of the other field events have several flights (groups) that get at least 3 attempts before winnowing down to the eight- or nine-member championship flight. High jump and pole vault can go on (seemingly) forever, with the elite comeptitiors waiting until very late in the event to make their first jumps, so you have opportunities to float in ad out of these events between the running events.

A few key items to remember: background, angles, peak action and emotion. Pictures live and die on their backgrounds no matter what you're shooting. Track is an especially difficult sport in which to find clean backgrounds, but keep moving and looking until you find the best possible angle for every event. Climb up in the stands, lay down on the ground, switch up lenses and and shoot wide open, but work it until it's as good as it can get. And while clean is good, don't be afraid to make a background work for you. I saw the background of the picture at the top of this post while walking behind the javelin takeoff lane, and sat and worked it for almost 30 minutes until everything came together. I specifically framed the steeplechase photo below to include the scoreboard with "Johnson C. Smith."

Peak action is pretty self-explanatory.

Emotion is the lifeblood of sports photography. A pole vaulter clearing a bar is...well, not something I could ever do, but still, it could be happening anywhere, anytime. Give me a pole vaulter screaming on the way down after clearing 19 feet any day of the week. Or maybe two N.C. Central runners (at left) sharing a quiet moment before one of them absolutely dusts the field in the 400 meter.

Finally, don't be scared to take chances and give yourself extra opportunities to make a picture you couldn't make otherwise. I carried a 20D with a 20mm lens around as a remote body that I moved all over the track as I cycled between events. I put it under the netting for the discus (a place I would never be allowed to shoot), on the foul line for the javelin, in a turn for the distance races, and next to a hurdle, just to name a few spots. The shot at left was next to the water hazard of the 300 meter steeplechase, another spot I couldn't be. Of the 10 or 12 different locations, I made maybe 5 pictures--but they were 5 pictures that I wouldn't have made otherwise.

In closing, plan ahead, accept that you'll miss some frames, and...don't freak.

One-light wonder

It's amazing what you can do with one off-camera strobe and a little help from your friends.

The assignment from sports editor Tim Candon was a portrait of Cary High School tennis phenom Justin Radloff. Conveniently enough, uber-portrait-shooter Jeff Camarati (he of the no web page) and I had been discussing just this very type of shot the week before.

Unfortunately, my crutch Jeff wasn't available to do it for me help out, so I headed off to the courts to fend for myself.

Fortunately, Justin is a great guy who was more than willing to get into the shoot after he finished trouncing Tim in a fast game (sorry, no pictures of that -- I promised Tim I wouldn't embarass him). So with a single SB-80 on a stand to camera left, we spent about 20 minutes having Tim throw tennis balls as I convinced Justin to break every rule of good tennis form in pursuit of the perfect picture. And if I do say so myself, I think we did a pretty good job.

For the mechanics, I metered the ambient exposure and underexposed by about two stops to bring the sky and clouds down and make Justin "pop." I'm lying on the ground (one of the top 10 techniques they don't teach you in photo-j school) and pointing a prefocused 15mm at Justin. When I yelled "go," Tim would toss a ball in the air, Justin would jump and I would pull the trigger while praying that he didn't sprain an ankle...

As always, many thanks to David Hobby at Strobist for his invaluable inspiration on off-camera lighting techniques.

And now, back to our regularly-scheduled job description

I love high school sports.

Great opportunities, amazing access, and the players are (usually) happy to see you.

Here are two shots from the Apex women's soccer team's 5-0 win New Bern in the NCHSAA semifinals Wednesday night. Mix in a humane start time of 7 pm and some ridiculous backlight (flying sweat looks really good when it's backlit) and you really can't lose.

For you technical types: shot with a Canon 1DM2, 400mm, ISO 400, around 1/1000 at f/2.8.

The June issue of Tar Heel Monthly magazine is here. Big ups to UNC pitcher and fifth-year senior Matt Danford for going with the flow and getting into the cover shoot. The young'uns on the staff gave him an "All-American Grandpa" shirt (a not-so-subtle dig at his "advanced" age), and we bribed convinced him it would be a great prop for the shoot.

I'm standing on a small ladder, and Danford is lit by a single Alien Bee monolight with a 10-degree grid. Shot in the infield grass to give a clean background. We tried about 20 frames of him tearing open his jersey to reveal the shirt underneath. Shot with a Canon 1DM2 and 17-40 lens.

I showed him the whole shoot on the back of the camera, and he seemed pleased, which is a good thing. As a general rule of thumb, never irritate a man who can throw things at you at 90+ miles per hour...

As mentioned in an earlier post, many thanks to Jeff Camarati for his assistance, the loan of his Alien Bee 1600 unit and his never-ending willingness to answer my stupid lighting questions.

Picture of the Day-Watching, Waiting

Some photographers don't enjoy shooting golf. I do, but I think the best pictures come from the quiet moments lurking just off of the putting green or tee box. Here, Green Hope high school golfer Kyle Sonnday waits for his turn to tee off on the third hole during a recent tournament.

Golf shooters live and die by the backgrounds in their images. Go check out Getty Images photographer Scott Halleran's work to see it done right. Here, I'm standing ankle deep in what I hoped wasn't poison ivy to clean up the mess of carts and houses behind Mr. Sonnday, and shooting backlit to even out the exposure. Shot with a Canon 1DM2 and a 300mm lens.

Pitcher Perfect

It's a bad pun. Get used to it.

Mix two high school softball pitchers, a coach who wasn't warned I was coming and a five-minute window, and what do you get?

If you're me, you plagarize a shoot from earlier in the week, and you down't feel bad at all when you do it.

Lighting guru and best bud Jeff Camarati (I'd link to him, but he's too lazy between web pages right at the moment) helped me set up the Matt Danford photo at UNC's Boshamer Stadium two days earlier, so I borrowed the technique of a single strobe, high off-camera to the left, at full power to knock down the background as much as I could. Of course, an Alien Bee 1600 punched out a lot more light than an SB-80, so the results aren't quite as striking, but that's life as a newspaper photographer.

Fortunately, freshman Darby Pearce (left) and junior Beth Ann Kleekamp were great sports who were easy to work with, willing to let me interrupt their pre-game preparations, and they didn't laugh when I laid down in the dirt to get just the right angle for the shot.

And I hope I had nothing to do with the fact they lost 3-2 in 12 innings...

Picture of the Day-RailHawks Earn First Win

After three games, and in a pouring rainstorm, the Carolina RailHawks finally notched the franchise's first win. Carolina's Philip Long, above, celebrates after scoring the RailHawks' first goal in the 2-0 inter-league win over Chivas USA at SAS Soccer Park.

(See a slideshow of images from the game.)

Considering the fact that my rain gear was at home, I was soaked and I was shooting with a (borrowed) (Nikon) 400, I'll call it a win.

(Thanks, Jeff. I'll make sure to dry it out before I give it back...)