It’s been a long while since I’ve shot sports photos.
When I worked at the Algona Upper Des Moines newspaper and we were covering six different high schools, there was at least one or two games every season that our sports editor would ask for me to get photos of two of our area teams playing, so we’d have them for photos for the sports pages – for that week and file photos for weeks to come.
You learn a lot about the speed of different sports, on what screams to you as a great shot on your small camera screen the night of an event, when you get back to the office and blow it up on a much larger screen, you can find “oh, dang, it’s a little blurrier than it looks at that smaller size.”
The other thing that’s hard to ignore when you’re photographing sports of any local teams, however, is having a connection with the schools for that contest. Every point the teams score, every rousing volley – that’s something you find yourself cheering for (inwardly). When you’re only there for one team, that gets even more infectious.
Last Tuesday was my chance to grab sports photos in more than four years, when Mount Vernon volleyball competed at Williamsburg in a regional final. Margaret was on a needed vacation and our sports reporter Trent Bowman was unable to get to the game. Being a regional final, I knew we needed photos, either way the game went.
I now know I took way too many photos. I was nervous that the shots I was sure looked good on a three-inch screen would show more blur or fuzziness, and show my own rustiness in sports photography.
I probably had what we needed somewhere in the first 200 shots I took, as well as that ticket punched team photo after the match was over. There were a lot of shots where I was a second too slow on the shutter for the play I was shooting, the ball either being too high from the players or in the subsequent next shutter release, heading back to the opponents as the play had finished.
But there were also the shots when I looked at them that went “that’s telling me a story of this game” or getting different styles of shots than what we had in previous papers this season.
And it was also a riveting game to be a spectator.
That’s what’s making me happy this week. Getting a chance to watch some amazing high school athletes advance to state competition for another year.