John M. Setzler, Jr. Life in Black and White

Rain Again and Again

I really do enjoy football season, but this season has been absolutely disastrous from a photographer's standpoint. Today wrapped up the first 11 weeks of the season of local high school and college football. I'm absolutely ready for this season to END. We have had so much rain on Friday nights this year.  I'm actually sick of it.  Last night I was sorta lucky.  It rained before the high school game started but quit right at game time.  Today, however, I got dumped on during Lenoir-Rhyne University's last home game of the season. 

I'm finished with LRU for the season, but next Friday is the last week of the local high school conferences regular play.  The following week begins state playoffs.  Normally we have teams go up until about Thanksgiving, which is three rounds into the tournament, so the end is actually in sight.  With any luck, I'll have less than 4 more weeks of football.  We have several local teams that look fairly strong within the conference, so we'll just have to see how they fare in the state...

Blue Devils Tennis

After the rain cleared out this morning, we had an absolutely beautiful afternoon with blue skies and a few white puffy clouds and about 70° on the mercury to make it all good. I made a trip down to Maiden High School to watch the Lady Blue Devils tennis team play a state championship playoff round.  The above photo is of Kaylyn Key returning a volley during one of her games of the afternoon. 

Tomorrow I'll be back on the volleyball court at Hickory High School as the Lady Tornados continue their pursuit of a state championship...

Bandys vs Forbush Volleyball

After tonight (10/27/2009) we still have three local teams in the run for volleyball state championships. Bandys and Newton-Conover are still in the running in the 2-A division and Hickory is still alive in the 3-A.  I went to Bandys tonight to cover the Lady Trojans against the Lady Falcons of Forbush.  In this photo, Bandys' Kaylie Punch takes a shot over the defense of Forbush's Lindsay York...

Another Friday…

I had the pleasure of visiting Icard, North Carolina tonight for a football game between the Newton-Conover Red Devils and the East Burke Cavaliers.  This game was set to be a good one with both teams having a 5-1 record, especially after Newton-Conover lost to Bandys last week.  I knew the Red Devils would be out for blood, and I also knew that East Burke might be the only team left in the conference who might be capable of stopping the Red Devils.  I missed most of the action in this game because I had to leave at half time when the Red Devils were ahead by a score of 7-6.  During the second half, the Red Devils put up another 21 points and held the Cavaliers offense in check for a 28-6 finish. 

Bandys Marching Band

Another Friday night on the football field for me this week... Not unusual... This is week #6 this year, but the weather was dry tonight so I can't complain. I was wandering around on the sidelines looking for some feature opportunities to go along with the game photos when I decided to photograph Miss Kayla Burke, a sophomore in the Bandys Trojans Marching Band during their performance of the National Anthem prior to the start of the game. 

The Bandys Trojans hosted the defending state champion Newton-Conover Red Devils this evening and it was definitely an interesting game :)  Be sure to read about it in tomorrow's paper... :)

Lenoir-Rhyne Soccer

I made my first trip to Lenoir-Rhyne University's soccer field this evening to photograph the Bears taking on the Falcons of Pfeiffer University.  The new sports complex on campus is really nice.  The only thing I found that I didn't like tonight was that there are no directions to point my camera without something irritatingly distracting in the background, like the car in the photo above.  I'll have to sort that out.  I really need a 10' ladder so I can get up a little higher and shoot at a down angle. 

The soccer team is a lot different than what they had when I was in school at Lenoir-Rhyne.  This team is imported :)  Out of the 21 players on the roster, only six of them are American.  There is nothing wrong with that... it's just different :) 

In the photo above, Dave Bailey (Bath, England) puts his head to work in taking control of the ball...

A Dusty Icon

I went to the Hickory Motor Speedway this afternoon to photograph the 2009 Bobby Isaac Memorial Race. This is usually one of the largest events held at this race track each year, and today, I was depressed by the number of people in attendance.  In past years, this race has always been run on Memorial Day Monday during the afternoon hours.  This year, someone decided to change that.  The original date of this year's race was Saturday, September 19th.  Unfortunately, that day brought rain with it, so the race was postponed until Saturday, September 26, which saw heavy rain all day.  Finally, the race happened on Sunday, September 27th with a much smaller than average field of drivers and, as you can see from the photo, a very sparse crowd.  Running the race on Sunday and competing with NFL and NASCAR on TV probably kept a good number of the people who might have attended this race at home on the couch.

The Hickory Motor Speedway is a true icon in the history of stock car racing.  It is one of the oldest tracks in the country and a lot of NASCAR legends got their starts here.  Races are still held here on Saturday nights between March in October or early November even though the attendance is low. 

I have a lot of friends who are huge NASCAR fanatics, but none of them attend races at their hometown race track.  The track is not a large or fast track, and there aren't any multi-million dollar sponsors on the hoods of the cars.  The purses collected on these races don't begin to cover the costs of bringing a car to the track.  Maybe it's just not glitzy enough to attract the racing fans that live in the area. 

I shot this photo back in 2005 on their 55th Anniversary celebration at the track...  There was a really nice crowd at the track that afternoon... 

Here's a photo from opening day of the 2005 season where free admission was offered, and you can see from the image that there are hardly any people in the stands.  I don't guess kids are very interested in racing these days unless it's on a Nintendo in front of a big screen LCD...

Playing in the Rain

I got stuck with photographing a football game tonight that I knew was going to be a disaster. I absolutely hate shooting in the rain simply because my equipment can't handle it. My cameras are NOT water resistant, and I have had to spend $200 twice in the past to get my cameras fixed after shooting in the rain with them.  Covering the cameras up with plastic helps keep the water off of them, but it also causes the viewfinder and the front element of the lens to fog up to a point where you can't use it.  So, what I do when I get myself into this situation is to just shoot a couple simple photos and turn them in at the newspaper rather than worrying about anything above average.  Since I don't get to use the newspaper's equipment, I don't have the luxury of having them pay for repair of my gear.  I can assure you that when I go to a sporting event carrying a camera bag with $4000 worth of equipment in it, The equipment will come first when the weather is questionable...