This Sunday afternoon, I did something entirely out of my comfort zone, in just about every aspect: I photographed my first sports game. Admittedly, I’m not the sportiest girl. During my entire 5th grade basketball career, I didn’t score a single basket. But, I was determined as a photojournalist to capture the essence of the game – even if I didn’t know exactly what was happening during plays.
I was nervous as I entered the Matthaei Center to attend the Wayne State University women’s basketball game. Right away I began thinking back to what I learned in class. I knew I needed to turn my shutter speed up, 1/500 was the lowest I would be able to shoot to really get these ladies in focus. Despite the glaring lights, my shots were turning out dark, so I bumped my ISO up to the highest setting. In hindsight, this wasn’t my best idea as just about every one of my photos were super noisy, but the photos were at least properly exposed.
Once I set my camera to the proper setting, I began scoping where I could shoot. I tried to “circle the wagon” and get a wide variety of angles, however, I was held back by where I was allowed to shoot and where security would blocked my access. None-the-less, I climbed bleachers and ran around the doors to get to the other side of the court during timeouts. I definitely circled the wagon, maybe a bit too much. I ended up with over 600 shots.
Overall, I learned quite a bit during the experience, and was able to at least pull a few good shots which I think captured the essence of the tense, well-matched game. The WSU Warriors would ultimately beat the Lawrence Tech Blue Devils 82-72.
City Chick(in) Detroit 