Football season is here! Both "European" and "American."
OK, well, soccer has been playing all summer, but I just don't really ever cover it. I did however go to a women's soccer friendly between rivals USA and China at the new
Toyota Park in Bridgeview, IL last week. Toyota Park is the new home to the
Chicago Fire in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. It's a pretty nice facility that's easy to get to. I don't ever do any Fire games, so who knows when the next time I'll go out there again. Anyways, the game itself was all right. China jumped out to an early 1-0 lead, but gave up four straight goals to end it and lost 4-1.
As for the the other football, college football gets into full gear this weekend, and the NFL regular season starts next week, but our high school warriors have been going at it for a couple of weeks now. For the second year in a row, I will be covering a local high school football team for Prep Sports Online, which is a company that designs and maintains athletics websites for high schools across the country. Last year I covered Downers Grove North for them. This year, I will be covering the Naperville North Huskies.
High school football is funny in that it's easier to shoot because the action moves a lot slower than college and pro. Tackling is usually really poor, so you can good shots of running backs with defenders in their wake, and passes tend to hang in the air so instead of having to just guess where the ball is going to go and follow a receiver, you can sometimes just chase the ball in the air to get the shot. On the other hand, high school football is tough because they usually play at night, and high school field lighting BLOWS. Not only is it dark - you have to shoot at f/2.8 and almost always at
ISO 1600 (noise-err-iffic!) just to get acceptable shutter speeds - but the light is not very even across the field. Some parts of the field are darker than others, and the colors also tend to shift. Because of that, post processing can be a bitch. Luckily the new Canon cameras are pretty good at high ISO (if you expose properly), as well as accurate color reproduction, so it's not too bad. Anyways, here are a few shots from the most recent game:
