shooting in the rain...

Sports photography...my passion in photography.   I don't get to do it as much as I used to.  At one time, I figured I would be one of those guys who "just shot sports".  I was good enough at one time, the phiadelphia wings gave me a press pass, the only pure freelancer to get one.  One of these days I'll get around to posting some of my wings shots, it's all on film and in storage.

In the past 4 years, I haven't been able to shoot as much college sports at Wilmington.  Up until may I had a day job and basically was only on campus during class time.  One in a blue moon I would be able to catch a basketball or volleyball game.  Lacrosse and Soccer are played off campus and was usually played when I was working.  I made it a goal this year to make it out to Kirkwood and shoot some games.





4 o'clock rolls around and I find my way out to Kirkwood Soccer Complex.   It's basically a giant field with several soccer and field on it.  I make my way out to the astroturf field, where the soccer teams play.  I love astroturf fields!  I love them because of those little rubber balls that make up the field.  When something hits them, they fly up in a little stream.  When your shooting at 1/8000th of a second you get some really cool effect some time.

Anyway I did my standard shoot setup.  Set the camera to aperture priority, lock it at 2.8 on my 70-200mm lens and shot away.  Here's a little of what I got.



Wilmington University Men's Soccer - Images by Dominic Hanna

My only complaint is that I wish I had a 300mm lens, too bad they're only a few grand.  I ended up doing a lot of cropping of images.  Also the skies darkened so much I eventually had to push it to 1600 ISO, and I was getting way too much noise in the photos.

My other issue was the rain,  I don't shoot in the rain that often.  That last time I did was 2000 and fortunately it stopped be fore my shoot.  I figured it was going to be a light rain, so in planning I took a small plastic bag and wrapped it around my lens with a few rubber bands.  It worked for a while, then at halftime they skies opened and decided to call it a day.   I know another photographer would of stayed, but I don't have to money to replace my gear if it got damaged and I wasn't ready to test an insurance claim.

Well this was shoot 1 of maybe 3.  The last Hottest Girls of Delaware show is Friday.  After that I'm an the road to Pittsburgh for a impromptu roadtrip.  I have an idea I want to try in Pitt, and I go into detail about that later.

-peace