a (nearly) ABSOLUTE DISASTER!!!

Yesterday, I had the most amazingly stressful assignment yet…worse than any wedding.

I was called by the head photographer at Richmond International Raceway; he had an assignment he couldn’t cover, and he wanted to know if I was interested. Kenny Wallace, NASCAR driver and brother of racing legend Rusty Wallace, and his nephew Steve (Rusty’s son), were scheduled to throw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals’ baseball game last night as part of RIR’s promoting the NASCAR races that are coming to Richmond in two weeks. I basically said, lemme-think-about-it-sure. I had no clue what I was getting myself into…

It works like this: someone sings the National Anthem, then whoever’s throwing the first pitch comes out to the mound, waves at the crowd, and throws a pitch to a catch standing at home plate. They only get ONE THROW. They are only out there for about THIRTY SECONDS. that is all the opportunity you have to make sure your settings are dialed in so that you can nail the shot, because, if you miss it, there are NO DO-OVERS.

On the other hand, it was so absolutely friggen cool to go right through the business office, down the steps, and onto the field!!! That was just awesome. the colors, the greens, reds, yellows, blues–aw, jeez, that, mixed with the crack of the bats and the snap of caught balls and the sweet smell of real grass–it was like a slice of heaven…

And everytime I tried to relax and enjoy it, I’d remember that I had a real job to do with little-to-no margin for error.

So, I spent almost two hours taking test shots of the pitchers throwing batting practice. Every now and then, something would come up with Kenny and Steve that I could photograph, but for the most part, I spent the time watching the sunset, throwing ever longer shadows across the field. Where the mound was in full sunlight when I arrived at 4:30pm, I imagined that by 7pm, the shadows would be well out into the outfield–making metering an absolute delight.

The most frustrating thing was seeing so many thing I wanted to shoot, but feeling that I should conserve battery and memory for the real deal. It’s not like I didn’t have extra batteries or 5gig worth of memory, I was just starting to get a wee-bit stressed.

I thought it might be helpful to get some tips from the Nat’s official photographer. I hunted him down, introduced myself, and told him what I was there for, and what I was up against, especially the fact that I had never shot anything like this in an environment remotely close to this. His first words were, “Well, good luck.” He did give me a few pointers, but he said that these first pitch deals were essentially a crapshoot. He said to try to get as many shots as possible before “the pitch” and to check the histogram real fast and then to quickly make adjustments before the pitch was actually made. Boy, did he really raise my level of self-confidence.

So, I go back over to where the director of public relations for RIR is hanging out with some other media people. He looked at me and asked, “Well, skip, are you ready? You know, the pressure’s on, you only have one chance to get the shot–you ready?” I just about pissed myself. He started laughing, slapped my back, and told me he thought I’d do just fine. I thought I wish I had a shot of jack black or two in front of me.

Oh, and did I mention, I had borrowed a lens for the shoot, one that I had never used before? Oh, yeah, no big deal, just screw it in and there ya go. It was a canon 35-300mm f/3-5.6L. I spent a fair amount of time working with it before deciding that it was just too slow in the fading light. It did a nice job of getting me in for some tight crops, but I really didn’t feel that comfortable with it. I opted for my 70-200 f/2.8L IS. It was ’suggested’ to me to shoot at iso400, and I’ve always felt comfortable at f/2.8 in AV mode with a single centerpoint focus; I figured with so much riding on this, I’d probably be better off sticking with a known formula.

Just like clockwork, everything started happening. The Star Spangled Banner was sung (beautifully, I might add), and the NASCAR promo car came out of the right field wall, driving around the warning track with Kenny and Steve sitting out the open windows, waving to the crowd. I shot them all the way around, looking for shots that included signs and logos that would place them at RFK. I got a shot of them climbing out of the car. I shot and shot and shot and shot. I shot Kenny heading out to the mound, looking down the mound, winding up, pitching, coming off the mound, and getting his ball from the catcher.

I shot steve as he got out on the mound and started his windup. and then…

DISASTER STRUCK!!!

I had shot too much!

My 20d basically locked up because I had filled the buffer.

A full 2 seconds went by before red light stopped blinking.

Two seconds is an a b s o l u t e e t e r n I t y when you are shooting a once-in-a-lifetime event.

As soon as I could, I started shooting again. But, at that point, it didn’t matter, I had missed the shot of Steve Wallace coming out of his windup and releasing the ball.

Steve came off the mound, and all of us, Steve, Kenny, the people from RIR and the people from NASCAR were hustled off the field to our seats right behind the Nat’s dugout. I was still in shock when Keith looked over at me and asked, “Well, did you get it? Did you get it?” I just smiled and quipped, “Yeah, I think I got something in focus.”

Honestly, I was numbed. I had great shots all the way around, and my shots of Kenny were spot on. but, I only had three shots of steve. I decided right then, “Screw it. There’s not a damn thing I can do about it now. Might as well have some fun, and make sure the next part comes out better.”

The next part was photographing the autograph session that had been set up to take place between the 3rd and 5th innings up on the mezzanine. They wanted all types of shots of Kenny and Steve interacting with the fans, signing autographs, posing with fans, etc. They wanted stuff the marketing department could use that fit with the “family entertainment” image that has made NASCAR such a fast-growing sport. Well, of course, there would be no available light, as well as nothing to bounce a flash off. This was one of those situations with my Lightsphere II just wasn’t going to work. Lovely.

So, I quickly started firing off test shots to get my settings dialed in. For this, I had switched over to my 16-35 f/2.8L. I was still shooting at iso400, but had switched to full manual, opting for a 1/80 shutter and a f/5 aperature. This part went just fine. It lasted about 30 minutes, and I got a pretty decent variety of shots.

When we were done, Kenny annouced he was ready to head back down and see some ball. Keith asked me if I was leaving or going to hang around. I told him i’d probably stick around to shoot a bit of the game.

I headed down to the seats just behind to the side of the backstop. Oh, yeah, I was enjoying having a field-pass credential. And, I was pretty much past the ‘missed shot.’ After all, here I was at a major league baseball game, free to go wherever I wanted, to shoot whatever I wanted! so I sat down and shot. I decided to give the 35-300 another go, and man, what a trip! Even as slow as it was, I was still able to nail some pretty good shots.

Then it was time for the 7th inning stretch. Just as people started to get up, the PA announcer invites the crowd to join…Kenny and Steve, singing “Take Me out to the Ballpark!” Holy smokes! I scrambled for position, and finally found a place I could shoot from. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam! I was popping off frames like a mad man, trying every type of shot. Zoomed in tight, zoomed out to get the Washington name in the shot. Zoom in, zoom out, zoom in. Pop, pop, pop, pop!!!! What a trip.

After everyone settled down, I made my way over to where I could get Keith’s attention, and gave him a thumbs up. He looked at me and asked, “Did you get it? Did you get it?” I gave him another thumbs up that he returned. I knew my work was done.

Which left me to go and shoot some more baseball! I made my way down to the row of seats behind homeplate and got in as close as I could. There was a family of three sitting next to the media pit, and the mother/wife seemed more interested in anything except baseball. She probably would have been interesting to talk to if she wasn’t so, well, toasted. So, I tuned her out and started shooting away. Just as the Reds were coming up in the top of the ninth, I had filled my second card, and I figured it was just as good a time as any to bolt.

Even though I unloaded the cards last night, I was too tired to look at them until this morning. Even then, it was with a bit of trepidation that I started to go through them. I had been told to collect all the NASCAR related shots (the track didn’t want the baseball photos) and put the originals in one folder, then to go through and pick the 10 I thought were the best, work them up, and put them in a separate folder. I always hate doing that, because I never know if what appeals to me is what is going to appeal to everyone else.

After sorting them out, I called John, the head photographer at the track, and told him I had a situation that he needed to be aware of, and that if it was going to be a problem, he needed to let me know. As he shoots only with Mark IIs, I doubted if he knew of the technical specs of the lesser cameras (why should he?). So I gave him a quick run down of what it could do, and what it couldn’t, ending with the fact that I had filled the buffer at absolutely the worst time.

He asked me what I had shot-wise, and I told him. He told me not to worry about it, just to email him 3 shots of Kenny and the 3 I had of Steve, then to burn a CD and run it over to the track.

As it turned out, I wasn’t able to get over to the track until a bit after 4pm. Nobody in the PR department was there, not Keith, nobody. So I had someone put it on his desk with a note that I’d follow up with him the next day.

I came home, we celebrated Beau’s 8th birthday with a Chinese dinner, then, just before leaving the house for a PTA meeting, I checked my email, and found a press release from the track, detailing the adventures of Steve and Kenny at the Nationals game. At the top of it was a “media note”: For photos of the Kenny and Steve Wallace each throwing out a ceremonial first pitch and a hilarious photo of the two singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” please visit www.rir.com/media. Please credit Skip Rowland, Richmond International Raceway.

O-M-G!!! Like I didn’t smack that link. Whoo-hoo, what a buzz!

Looks like I learned a couple huge lessons from all this:
1) Pay attention to your camera, and know it capabilities as well as its limitations.
2) It’s never as bad as it seems, and even if it is, so what? Dig in, work through it, and be able to laugh.

Because, who knows what tomorrow may bring …