A new experience

This evening I shot my first Arena football game, and it was interesting. The whole arena football thing hasn't really caught my interest until today. It is a much faster, higher scoring version of football as most of us know it. I won't post any of the shots that the paper will be using, but I have a few that I liked to put up here tonight. I also have a couple from yesterday to post here. Some of the photos are missing complete caption info as I failed to copy all of the original files that had the caption info added on.


These first three are from a youth track meet held in Odessa on Friday.

Image © Odessa American


A young girl practices for the long jump with her father.


Justin Smith placed second in Discus in the young men's division at the Dr. Daniel Cepero Memorial Track Meet with a throw of 90 feet Friday evening at Rafliff Stadium in Odessa. Image © Odessa American.

This one is from an assignment where an intern reporter asked for some "mugs". Cindeka and I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to try an environmental portrait. I think it turned out ok, but I need to work on my lighting.

These two sisters (the religous kind) are leaving Odessa. Their order, the Daughters of Charity, have had at least one member in the city since 1982.


For the football game tonight, I had to shoot 3200 ISO just to get a fast enough shutter speed to catch the action, I have never really had to use this high an ISO for anything professional yet. The lighting was typical arena fare, or maybe even worse. The local team, the Roughnecks is actually very good though, and scored within the first minute of play. I decided to go with black and white for these shots since they are not your typical football shots, and also because I felt they lent themselves to that medium. They are pretty much self explanatory, but I will add a few comments after each.



For once, arena lighting worked out in my favor. A spot light actually illuminated something important instead of causing flare in my lens.

Again, the spotlight created a dramatic image. I will try to reshoot this one however, or look for something better that has some of the same elements. I do think it is a good try however.

For some reason, I thought this was a neat visual. These small little cheerleaders standing in front of the crowd had such amazing potential. While I think I captured a little of that, this image could be reshot or rethought to make a better final product.
I really think that the arena football team could be a great source for a photo essay. I got a couple that could work in an essay from just the hour I was there (I couldn't stay long because of deadline). I may pitch the idea to Mark on Monday, and I'll post any progress on it here.