Underwater football

13 September 2008: North-wet-stern

It has been a busy month in our house. Paulette was on the road again this weekend so instead of sleeping in I went in the opposite direction. We did not have a staffer to shoot the Northwestern game so I grabbed a credential and some long glass on Friday night and figured I would polish up on my football, I just did not realize I would need a boat to shoot the game.

When I woke up Saturday it was raining and I briefly thought, "I can sleep in and use a wire photo," but I did not want to wimp out so I rolled. I gave myself 2 hours to get to the game but that was not enough, I missed the whole first quarter of the game because traffic was so bad.

With the Edens Expressway flooded all the side roads were gridlocked. When the game started I was about two miles from the stadium and traffic was still so bad it was going to take another hour to get to the game. Being the genius I am, I figured I could save some time on the side streets and my GPS would guide me right to the game. What I did not know was that half the streets in Evanston were underwater. It still took me about 25 minutes to get there and I almost washed out my car in a few puddlakes.

I had rain gear for my long glass but it rained so hard I never bothered to shoot action with my 70-200, by the time I could find the camera in all the plastic and vinyl I would have missed the play. When the action got to the goal line I just backed up as far as I could and shot it with the 400mm. No great shakes on the action I lost a lot of images because of my rain covered lens.

I worked a few rainy features of miserable looking fans and puddles but did not want to get to brave with my cameras.

This game reminded me of a season of Illini games I shot during college in the 80's. I was stringing for AP and was always the guy who stayed on the field while the staffer went in to process and transmit. Every week I shot a game and had to take my gear apart and let it sit for a couple days to dry out. That does not work so well with cameras these days.

Once again a dry set of clothes saved me for my editing shift.

-john