Lacrosse is hard to shoot!
My son Jorden (who you have seen many times if you read this blog regularly) is the goalie for the Santa Cruz High School Cardinals Lacrosse team. He was also on the basketball team this year. Hes very active and works very hard to keep fit. When he does an activity, he puts 110% into it and I am very proud of him for that.
Like any proud father, I want to shoot his games so he has a records of the things hes done in his life. Until recently, I had not ever been to a lacrosse game, let alone shot one. Truth be told, I had never even watched a Lacrosse game until he made the team. Lacrosse was explained to me as a game that is similar to hockey in the rules, and has all the action and hard hitting as football does without the head injuries. Shooting the first game was a big hit to the ego for me. Being legally blind, this sport was nearly impossible for me to shoot. With my vision, basketball was at times challenging. This games played with a tennis ball sized rubber ball that travels at what feels like a million miles an hour! I had to come up with a technique to shoot the games and get some decent images. When I shoot planes, I have a family member on either side of me telling me the direction the planes are coming from so I have a chance to get a shot. Being on the Lacrosse field meant my regular technique was useless.
The best thing about Jorden being in the goal is that I have a constant target to shoot for. I know at least where he will be. When the mass of bodies roll towards that side of the field I point and start shooting the person the others are converging on. It goes against every shred of being as a photographer to be a machine gun shooter, but in this case it seems to work pretty well. I put the camera on high speed shooting and I am shooting in jpg format instead of RAW. I get a decent range from my 70-200mm lens and the 7d. It took a couple games to get the method down, and I get a lot more unusable shots than good ones, but ones like these make it worth the effort.
Its a tough game to shoot for sure and I have learned a lot as I do from everything I do with the camera.
–EDIT–
This was Jorden’s last game of the season. In an exhibition quarter for the Junior Varsity he tore his ACL. We are waiting for an MRI results and hoping surgery is not on the horizon for him.