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

A Close Game

I went down to Bandys tonight to cover a basketball game between the Lady Trojans and the Lady Red Devils of Newton-Conover High school.  This was definitely one of the better high school games I have seen in a while.  The Lady Trojans battled back from a hefty first period deficit to take the lead, but ultimately couldn't hold on in the end. 

I'm curious to see how a lot of things pan out this year in girls' prep basketball.  The all-powerful Hickory Lady Tornadoes aren't what they used to be, and some of the local teams are chomping at the bit to get a shot at them this year.  The Lady Red Devils of Newton-Conover lost to the Lady Tornadoes by a mere two points last week...  There will be some great competition in this year's Holiday Classic.  Holiday Classic play stars on Monday, December 28 and ends on Wednesday, December 30. 

Wrestling Season

Here we go again with another installment of the constant bichin' from me about having to photograph wrestling.   In my area, wrestling gets almost the same amount of coverage as basketball.  Or at least it has in past seasons, because I got stuck with shooting most of it.  Hopefully this year will see some balance in how much basketball vs wrestling I photograph each week since we have one new photo stringer and a second one on the way.  Since I'm not a fan of individual sports, I just have a hard time getting into wrestling personally.  You can call wrestling a team sport all you want, but until they put more than two kids on the mat at a time and let the last man standing get the win, its an individual sport. 

The above photo is a sample of what I can get at a couple of the schools around here.  The wrestling powers that be want to create 'mood' and 'atmosphere' for the fan base (parents and girlfriends) that attend these events.   That mood and atmosphere is created by turning off all the lights in the gym except for a single merc vapor directly above the center of the mat.  I can make some nice high contrast photos in that environment, but none that could possibly be used in the newspaper, so I have to pop my flash and flatten out any potentially interesting photographs and have no chance at excellence in natural lighting. 
 

Hoops!

It's always a nice feeling when the sports seasons change.  I don't dislike any of the sports I shoot... except for one or two... :)  It just feels good to have a change of pace.  Today, I got to shift gears just a little and shoot my first basketball game of the season.  Oh.. and I forgot to mention that it was pouring down rain.  Football season isn't over for me yet though.  We'll see how far our local teams go in the state playoffs...

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...