Opening weekend

Mark M. Hancock / © The Dallas Morning News

SMU's Rolando Humphrey (No. 26, left) grabs onto Texas Tech's Jarrett Hicks (No. 88, center) as SMU's Ashton Nixon (No. 12, bottom) keeps his ankle during a football game at Gerald J. Ford Stadium at SMU on Saturday, September 4, 2004. Texas Tech won the game 27-13.

It was football's opening weekend in Texas. Even though it's still too hot to breathe some days (although this year has been really nice in comparison), it's still unofficially fall here.

This image made it onto the Sports cover today. I'm happy it got good play. I think this was shot with a 300mm manual focus lens from the endzone. One of the lenses I used was a 600mm (effectively 900mm) f/4 lens. It had worked OK on a monopod for the TCU v. Northwestern game on Thursday, but I put it on a tripod for this game because it's a bit too hard to handle. It's also much less crowded behind the endzone, so a tripod is OK.

It takes a really bright stadium to use an f/4 lens. SMU is probably the best lit stadium I get to shoot. It has great light and the lights are located in the four corners instead of from only the sides.

I used my normal 300mm and 80~200mm on the sidelines, but college football sidelines aren’t as flexible as high school football.

How did y'all do?
If you posted a football image from this weekend, leave a link in the comment section. Even if you're reading this a few months down the line, leave a link to an image that was shot this same weekend. It would be interesting to compare everyone's shots from the same time.

Enough for now,