As I begin to wrap up my time at the University of Iowa, one of my goals is to fill in the gaps in my sports portfolio by shooting the few remaining sports I haven’t shot yet. Fortunately, I’ve been able to shoot almost everything the University competes in, with one notable exception—gymnastics. Well, that hole got finally got filled after I lucked into a women’s gymnastics assignment.
As for the sport, what to say? It’s great—high action but in discrete moments, easily allowing you to reposition and set up new compositions. And you know where the competitors are going to be—no need to go chasing any action. Nothing is going to beat Football or, of course, Field Hockey in “favorite sports to shoot” list, but this was a fun assignment—hopefully it wasn’t my last exposure to this sport.
hawkeyes
Roundball Shortfall
Had the chance to get back to sports photography last night when I shot the Iowa-Michigan State game. Unfortunately, things didn’t go exactly as the Hawkeyes planned and after a gritty first half , the game got away from Iowa early in the second and they wound up on the losing end. Still, I got what we needed for the paper (always the first goal) and, if nothing else, Tyler Cook (Iowa’s #25) is always a fun player to photograph.
Field Hockey—Tasmanian Devil
Since Iowa isn’t known for being a field hockey state—the sport isn’t played at the high school level here—the University of Iowa team has go far afield to find players. As a result, a number of the players are from overseas—a couple of continental Europeans but mostly Brits, Aussies, and Kiwis. One of the team’s standout internationals, is a sophomore from Tasmania by the name of Maddy Murphy—I was lucky enough to shoot her first hat-trick as she single-handedly took down no. 6 Penn State on a fall evening.
Game Day: Iowa v. University of Northern Iowa
Little bit different of a game day entry today—rather than covering tailgate, actually managed to find my way to the field. The UNI game is the first of two that I’ll be covering from the sidelines this year, which will make it four in total for my collegiate (er, law school) career. Probably would have liked to have done more but then again, getting a chance to shoot four Division I college football games while going to law school is still pretty cool. And, if I’m being honest, I’m not sure I really need to be shooting more than two games a year anyway. Sure, it’s fun, but it’s also somewhat repetitive. Yes, you do get better at it the more you do it, but the range of potentially interesting photos is also far smaller. If I’m being honest, I’ve found that I enjoy shooting tailgate more than the actual game. Anyway, this post is a week late, so on to the photos:
Soccer Sunday
Another year of shooting for the Daily Iowan has kicked off and I started my final year for this paper by shooting Iowa Soccer's third home game of the season. For a game played on such a miserable day—93 degrees and close to 100% humidity—I'm relatively happy with the shots I got.
Biggest lesson learned though was to test out your 20–year old camelbak more than 5 minutes before you leave to shoot an event—otherwise that leak you didn't know about means you'll be shooting for about three hours without any water.
Suboptimal.
Daily Iowan Slideshow
