Rainy Football
I pulled an ultimate "I Don't Care" tonight on my sports assignment. I felt sorta bad about it, but I did it anyway. Most of the local high schools decided that they would play football in the rain tonight rather than postpone or reschedule. For the most part, I think games should be played in the rain as long as there is no lightning. There are a couple of drawbacks associated with playing in the rain though. The main drawback is that the school hosting the game will lose a good bit of revenue from ticket and concession sales because a lot of people who would normally attend will stay home instead. That was definitely the case at my game tonight. There weren't many people in attendance. The drawback for ME is that rain and my camera gear don't like each other. The last assignment I shot in the rain cost me $200 in repair work to my camera. After that, I decided that I would not let it happen again. I shot tonight's football game from the press box instead of from the sidelines. I didn't get any decent action photos from up there either.
I thought of several opportunities to shoot from the sidelines but didn't pursue any of them. My first idea was to find someone who would come down with me and hold an umbrella for me. I probably could have made that happen without much trouble. I also thought about duct taping my umbrella to my monopod, which might have worked out, but it was also a bit windy, so I'm not sure how I would have handled that. Thinking about this a little deeper, I need to find some way to mount an umbrella to my monopod. It shouldn't be too difficult to make that happen. I think I'm going to investigate this little problem tomorrow and see what I can come up with...