On Wednesday night, I was in Austin for the UT v Baylor volleyball game for the Statesman.
I haven’t covered volleyball much this year, and I had never been to Gregory Gym. I got there early so I could figure out the layout, set up my laptop and walk around a little.
Media was set up on the upper level, and I found out there wasn’t really much hope to shoot from the floor. One corner of the court was designated for photo and video, which didn’t allow me to sit where I normally like to shoot – on the floor from one end of the court, facing the net.
That didn’t bother me too much. It was a new venue for me, so I was happy to experiment and walk all over the gym to find a better, unrestricted spot. I shot from about a dozen different places around the balcony and I think it worked out well.
The Statesman’s Kirk Bohl’s wanted to feature the team and he had a small list of players for me to photograph. UT won 3 games to Baylor’s 1.
This assignment didn’t require lighting the gym, so I used ambient light (which really wasn’t too bad), and I used my D700 with my 80-200mm f2.8 lens. My ISO was 5000, white balance on 4000. I thought about bringing my 200-400mm f4 lens, which probably would have been a little better considering I shot mostly from the balcony, but I had about a 15 min. walk from the parking garage to the gym. Adding a 200-400mm lens on to my camera bag, 2 camera bodies and lenses and laptop would’ve made for a painful evening.
Anyway, let’s get to the photos.
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