Paige Hassen: JRN

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My experience:

Although I have always loved to play sports for my entire life, I have had yet (except the job shadow and until this assignment) to take photos at sports events.

Going from playing sports to taking photos has definitely been a learning experience. Besides picking a good lens to shoot with, you have to be able to anticipate the action and have quick movements within your own camera.

Since taking photos for this assignment, I have learned a lot and grown from taking photos at four more basketball games, but I still wanted to use this game because it was a nail-biter, CMU win, and shows true growth of my skills.

The lens was the hardest thing to use. I picked out a lens that did not have auto-focus (or so I thought). It didn’t work for the entire game, so I was stuck taking photos with a huge, 70-200mm lens trying to manually focus a fast-paced sporting event. This proved to be extremely difficult. I’m surprised I got the level of photos that I actually did. Still, most were blurry in some way, shape, or form. -note: I found out later that the camera had an autofocus setting on the actual lens itself instead of through the camera, but it was still slow and did not work at a separate game I had it checked out for.

Another thing that I learned is how on-game you have to be. What I mean by that is you have to be aware of your surrounding the entire time because as a photojournalist, you are taking more photos than just the players; you are covering a sporting event. This means the crowd, the bench, the players, details, overalls, everything. You always have to be alert and ready. This proved to be a little difficult for me because while it does help that I know the sport because I played it and have a deep appreciation for it, I often found myself so invested in the game that I forgot to pick up my camera.

A lot of the little details I have learned about photography so far helped me out a lot in this game. For example, the battery on the camera that I checked out wasn’t fully charged when someone turned it back in, so it died during the game. But… the good thing is that you are told to always have backups, spares, and extra batteries. I had just that, so I was able to adjust swiftly.

Taking photos of this game really helped me have a passion for sports photography. I didn’t think I was going to like it as much as I did, and now, today, after taking photos at multiple sporting events and games, I can even see a future where I do this. I have always been passionate about sports, so why not continue my love through them in the best way I know how? Through photos! Honestly, it’s quite exciting. It’s even brought back some of my passion for the sports themselves.

Practice obviously makes perfect, so I know this game was not perfect in terms of the photos I took. BUT, I learned a lot from it. I can see the improvement in my own photos, and I’m really just taking them for experience at this point. Sometimes I want to go to sports events where my friends are busy and can’t make it, so what better company is a camera and being able to practice my passion? It’s like the best of both worlds.

I’m looking forward to my future with sports photography. This was only just the beginning, and there was no better place to start than with the CMU women’s basketball team win against rivals Western.