WER Rugby Recap
I am definitely bummed that this was the final Tempest home game of the inaugural season for Women's Elite Rugby. I did have a blast with these games, learned a thing or two about rugby, and met some great photographers that were also on the sidelines. Made an equipment change for this game (as opposed to the NY Exiles and Twin Cities Gemini matches) with my new Tamron 150-500mm lens. I had previously shot these Rugby games at Martin Field with the Nikon 180-600mm lens and was debating purchasing it, but elected to go with the third party lens option. While I did enjoy shooting with it, the lens was HUGE and needed its own carrying case - not particularly sustainable when I want to be mobile on public transportation. While I do sacrifice some distance with a max focal length of 500mm vs 600mm, I can pack the Tamron lens in my backpack and save a few hundred as well.
I also made some changes to my autofocus settings - mainly back button AF as opposed to half-press shutter AF. I think this makes a big difference (as expected by other photographers that recommended the same) to not have the shutter be multi-function. I think the next step for me is to see if I can change up some other AF settings for sports photography purposes and see if that gets me a higher rate of in-focus pictures but for now, I'm pretty comfortable with these settings.
The next big unlock for me is to figure out how to get better at same-hour editing turnarounds while I'm at the fields. I had done this a bit for Tempest but didn't have much luck with getting my hero shots selected for mid-game posts (like the half time score annoucements). But overall, I am really excited about all three of these rugby galleries, and I hope this work to build my portfolio for this semi-pro level of sports lands me other gigs like this in the future.
