I played on two teams for Cincinnati this year (a men’s team, and a co-rec team), and we brought three teams total. I figure that’s pretty impressive even if we didn’t fair terribly well in the tournament The range of skill levels was pretty crazy though – we mercy-ruled one team, then turned around and got mercy-ruled by another. It was a good time altogether, even if I couldn’t walk on Monday. And speaking of tournaments, the Cincinnati Broomball Association and Dayton Broomball Association are jointly sponsoring a tournament this summer! Keep an eye out for BroomFest ’09 – I think it’s going to shape up to be a pretty exciting tournament

I played too much broomball at the Des Moines tournament to take many photos, but I did get to shoot at a game and a half for the third team we brought. I was using my old Canon Rebel (which my friend inherited and brought with her) since it’s relatively compact. Actually, I felt like I was a giant trying to take pictures with a dwarf’s camera. I had gotten so used to my ridiculously oversized 40D that the Rebel was almost too small to hold. Funny how that happens. I still love the Rebel though, it’s a great starter camera. Can’t wait to see the photos, but I have to get my memory card back first

I was pretty beat this week after the tournament on Saturday, then coming back to play a local broomball game with no subs on Sunday. A couple crisises at work with a major experimental operation kicking off in Germany this week didn’t help matters either.  And today was District Science fair at UC, which I judge every year. Not that judging a science fair is stressful, but it basically shoots a weekend day for me.  I can’t believe I’ve been judging science fairs for 13 years now, almost half of my life!

I know I owe you some photos with my new macro lens, but it’s got a bit more of a learning curve to it than I anticipated . . . nothing I’m happy with yet. But I’ve got a backpacking trip planned to Shennandoah in 2 weeks, so I should have some good stuff coming back from that Will be my first trip with the new camera as well (plus the extra lens, I hope I can carry all my gear )

Anyway, once you get used to the frigid air and the intricate details of the mercy rule (if a team is up by 4 or more points with less than 10min left in the game, they win. we were rather proud to hold all of our opponents to less than a 10 point spread when the games were called ), it”s actually a rather fun trip. Apparently in Canada, there are only 3 things to do for fun: watch hockey, play broomball, and drink. So needless to say, there are some fun parties back at the hotel. All in all, a good trip this year. Aside from breaking my thumb at least (and yes, I broke it during a game, not a party!). Next year I will remember to get out of the way when my goalie charges the big burly Canadian I”m chasing (we sandwiched him, and he landed on my hand. and actually he was from Minnesota, but that”s close enough to Canada).

Broomball tournaments are pretty much my only opportunity to practice sports photography. Probably because I don”t like watching most sports and only make an exception when I know the people playing (or for hockey. I like hockey). Sports photography definitely has some interesting challenges, and I still don”t think I fully understand it. I”ve watched people with cheap cameras stop some decent action shots without knowing what they”re doing. Meanwhile, I”m sitting here with a Canon 40D and in the (albeit poorly lit) ice rink I had to crank up my ISO to 1600 just to get a shutter speed of 1/200 at the maximum aperture of my lens. Granted, I could buy a more expensive lens to help . . . but this still seems ridiculous.

If you didn”t follow that, ISO 1600 means turning up the “gain” on the image sensor . . . which means magnifying the amount of grain. Shutter speed of 1/200 means I could stop relatively slow motions, but people sprinting or broomballs flying resulted in a lot of blur. And maximum aperture (f5.6 if you”re wondering) means a big hole that lets in lots of light . . . and makes for a very short focal plane. Which means frequently I was focused on, say, a person”s stick (by accident) which resulted in their body being out of focus. I obviously couldn”t use a flash both because it would have been distracting to the players, and the flash is only good to about 16 feet in front of the camera . . . and I was taking photos from the 20 to 100 feet range.

Ice rink lighting is also apparently miserable for color cast (ie it”s yellowish), and it casts terribly harsh shadows. That last one surprised me actually. The lights are pretty far overhead, which normally would soften them a bit (think of the light spreading out over space), plus the ice is white and reflective, which should have thrown some light back up from the bottom. But obviously I was wrong. Anyway, here are a couple of the better photos I got just to prove that I captured some decent ones.

Shot!

Diving for the ball

A nice lift

I just spent all day yesterday at a broomball tournament in Indianapolis. We played 5 games in 7 hours, one of which went into double overtime Needless to say I am a bit sore today, hehe. Anyway, here’s the lowdown on the tournament . . . We walk out on the ice to find it wet cut (broomball regulations say it’s supposed to be dry cut), and then find out we’re using stitched balls instead of rubber ones. That threw off the whole team for a bit, but we won our first game and were feeling pretty good about it. Then had a break where we watched “The Grinch” take an easy first half and then slaughter their opponent in the second. Good news for us, since we played “The Grinch” next and lost We battled our way through the loosers bracket to end up facing the still undefeated Grinch in the championship game of a double elimination tournament. Tie game. 5 min sudden death overtime still didn’t determine a winner. On to the shootout, which we pulled out of with a 1-0 win But that just meant one more game against the dreaded Grinch . . . and by this point both teams were absolutely exhausted!

End result of the tournament: the Cincinnati Royals are the Broomball Champions of Indianapolis!! (and yes, we looked hot wearing our purple jerseys)

I didn’t score in the tournament (I’ve been on a dry spell for awhile now), but I did have 2 assists. That will do for me And I lead the tournament for penalty minutes Yup, big brute that I am (5’7″, 130lbs) I just couldn’t help drawing the first whistle in the entire tournament when a guy twice my size tripped over my foot as we fought for the ball and took a deliberate dive. No one else could catch up with my 2min in the penalty box either, though our team did draw the only other two whistles blown in the rest of the tournament. It was so bad that guys who were “tripped”, “slashed”, or “roughed” were laughing and patting the offending players on the back admitting that it was a terrible call. Oh well.

There would be some photo lessons involved with this story, but the pics from the tournament aren’t posted yet (I didn’t have a camera – I was too busy playing!). There was some brutal sublimation going on, and because the rink didn’t have dehumidifiers there was so much fog and haze that the goalies couldn’t see eachother by the end of the day. Which certainly makes for some interesting photo-taking conditions. I’ll see if I can snag a couple to talk about here soon